"I'm a bit of a crepe hanger," she said.
One of the problems to be solved in this mess called mastectomy recovery was the accurate recording of the drains. I want to do a good job. I don't want to miss this.
They sent me home with a sheet that looked like it was photocopied from the original mimeograph chart used since 1948. Columns and rows gave me room to write in the ccs and a column to total. "If you want to total them, that's fine or... you can leave it for them to do," the nurse said in the hospital. Heck, yes I'll let them total it. What am I?
Rebelling against the ancient sheet, I started writing the volume down in a little spiral memo pad I'd been dragging with me for notes. After the first couple of times, this seemed just as old-fashioned a method as the first. I have a phone. I have technology. I can improve on this, I thought. So, I started using the "Keep" app, thinking "see, this way I can EMAIL the file to the doctor's office! They ain't seen nothin' like me!"
The first few days after being home, it was all very scary. "Stripping" the tubes and draining the bulbs did not come easily. It was like I starring in, "The Three Stooges in Pop Goes the Drain Bulb" and I was all three stooges. The other issue was that the little cups they gave me to measure the output had lines and numbers molded into the rigid, clear plastic, making it very hard to read. I just hoped I was doing this right.
A few days later, I entered the day's first output into Keep, and accidentally hit a button. I hit the "make Polly freak and believe it is lost forever" button. You know that button. I burst into tears. I was dead, there's no way I can remember all that! After a total meltdown, I found the list in the archive, thanks be to God, and restored it, and resolved then to record both on my phone and my little memo pad, until I quit freaking out about it. In the end I found and used Google Sheets app. It is like Excel spreadsheets, and I could calculate drain totals and daily totals.
But all of this really didn't matter. All the doctor cared about was: is the total less than 20 ccs two days in a row. That's it. I realized this yesterday when the nurse took a quick look at my carefully recorded and totaled output sheet and said, "Yep, drain 2 can come out today."
"Is it going to hurt?" I asked Dr. D. "Yes. It will." "Okay, well, I like to brace for the worst," I said, laughing. She laughed, too, and went to get the nurse. The nurse came in and told me what was going to happen, what it would feel like, why she was doing what she was doing. It was nice, in a way, to have it not just explained, but almost over-explained. It was soothing. When everything was ready she asked me to take some big, deep breaths. She said this would prevent me from getting light-headed. "Here we go."
"That's it?" I asked. "Yep, that's it. You did great." It felt weird, but it didn't hurt. I was a superstar!
No, I'm not. As turns out Dr. D. is a crepe hanger, and she admitted it. "Hanging the crepe" is an old saying referring to a doctor giving a patient the worst possible outcome. If it proves correct, the doctor was right. If not, the doctor is a savior. I laughed out loud. Just another reason to love Dr. D.
I feel 5 lbs lighter with only one tube and bulb to contend with. I don't need to invest in any kind of drain tube containment system now, I can just shove it in my pocket and tuck the tube under my shirt.
I'm in another holding pattern now. I have one task ahead and that's the removal of the other drain. But other than that, no appointments on the calendar. No idea when chemo will start, what kind it will be, when I'll need the wig. I was doing a bit of hand-wringing about this in the appointment yesterday. Dr. D chuckled and said, "You just had surgery a week ago." So I told her I would just wait and try not to worry. Someone will call with the appointment information, just like before, and we'd all go from there.
Dr. D said she had heard about my blog. That her staff had told her about it. She said I would "get" to experience everything except the hormone therapy part of breast cancer, so I'd be able to write about it all. In that moment I realized it's even obvious to other people -- there's a reason for this. And it's bigger than me.
This morning during my Examen I was imagining Jesus asking me "what do you seek?" I waited, thought, prayed.
What does life -- work, love, life, relationships, activities, thoughts, actions -- what does it all look like now, now that I have had cancer? What do I seek?
A way forward.
One of the problems to be solved in this mess called mastectomy recovery was the accurate recording of the drains. I want to do a good job. I don't want to miss this.
They sent me home with a sheet that looked like it was photocopied from the original mimeograph chart used since 1948. Columns and rows gave me room to write in the ccs and a column to total. "If you want to total them, that's fine or... you can leave it for them to do," the nurse said in the hospital. Heck, yes I'll let them total it. What am I?
Rebelling against the ancient sheet, I started writing the volume down in a little spiral memo pad I'd been dragging with me for notes. After the first couple of times, this seemed just as old-fashioned a method as the first. I have a phone. I have technology. I can improve on this, I thought. So, I started using the "Keep" app, thinking "see, this way I can EMAIL the file to the doctor's office! They ain't seen nothin' like me!"
The first few days after being home, it was all very scary. "Stripping" the tubes and draining the bulbs did not come easily. It was like I starring in, "The Three Stooges in Pop Goes the Drain Bulb" and I was all three stooges. The other issue was that the little cups they gave me to measure the output had lines and numbers molded into the rigid, clear plastic, making it very hard to read. I just hoped I was doing this right.
A few days later, I entered the day's first output into Keep, and accidentally hit a button. I hit the "make Polly freak and believe it is lost forever" button. You know that button. I burst into tears. I was dead, there's no way I can remember all that! After a total meltdown, I found the list in the archive, thanks be to God, and restored it, and resolved then to record both on my phone and my little memo pad, until I quit freaking out about it. In the end I found and used Google Sheets app. It is like Excel spreadsheets, and I could calculate drain totals and daily totals.
But all of this really didn't matter. All the doctor cared about was: is the total less than 20 ccs two days in a row. That's it. I realized this yesterday when the nurse took a quick look at my carefully recorded and totaled output sheet and said, "Yep, drain 2 can come out today."
"Is it going to hurt?" I asked Dr. D. "Yes. It will." "Okay, well, I like to brace for the worst," I said, laughing. She laughed, too, and went to get the nurse. The nurse came in and told me what was going to happen, what it would feel like, why she was doing what she was doing. It was nice, in a way, to have it not just explained, but almost over-explained. It was soothing. When everything was ready she asked me to take some big, deep breaths. She said this would prevent me from getting light-headed. "Here we go."
"That's it?" I asked. "Yep, that's it. You did great." It felt weird, but it didn't hurt. I was a superstar!
No, I'm not. As turns out Dr. D. is a crepe hanger, and she admitted it. "Hanging the crepe" is an old saying referring to a doctor giving a patient the worst possible outcome. If it proves correct, the doctor was right. If not, the doctor is a savior. I laughed out loud. Just another reason to love Dr. D.
I feel 5 lbs lighter with only one tube and bulb to contend with. I don't need to invest in any kind of drain tube containment system now, I can just shove it in my pocket and tuck the tube under my shirt.
I'm in another holding pattern now. I have one task ahead and that's the removal of the other drain. But other than that, no appointments on the calendar. No idea when chemo will start, what kind it will be, when I'll need the wig. I was doing a bit of hand-wringing about this in the appointment yesterday. Dr. D chuckled and said, "You just had surgery a week ago." So I told her I would just wait and try not to worry. Someone will call with the appointment information, just like before, and we'd all go from there.
Dr. D said she had heard about my blog. That her staff had told her about it. She said I would "get" to experience everything except the hormone therapy part of breast cancer, so I'd be able to write about it all. In that moment I realized it's even obvious to other people -- there's a reason for this. And it's bigger than me.
This morning during my Examen I was imagining Jesus asking me "what do you seek?" I waited, thought, prayed.
What does life -- work, love, life, relationships, activities, thoughts, actions -- what does it all look like now, now that I have had cancer? What do I seek?
A way forward.
I'm still praying for you, kiddo! (By the way, great artwork. What's it from? It sort of looks like something out of "Alice in Wonderland" or "An Illustrated History of Newark Memorial Hospital.")
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