First, I must say I haven't posted anything in several days because I had a full 5-day week of chemo last week. It seems that each subsequent cycle of treatment is harsher than the last for me. The good news is it was my last cycle, most likely. I cannot put into words how ill and uncomfortable I felt over the weekend, even up until now. I can say I have never looked forward to anything more than feeling normal and healthy again. They say it takes 6-8 weeks for chemo to start leaving your system--I only hope that happens sooner for me. I await the day when I do not feel the punch of the side affects, the day my hair starts growing again, the day my skin coloration goes back to normal.
Now, back to telling my story...
By now it was early evening
and I still sat with my mother in the ER, waiting for a spot to open up for me
in the Operating Room. My younger
sister was home alone in South Jersey, so as soon as it was time for me to go
into surgery around 10 pm I knew my mother had to leave. I was sorry to see her go but she
promised to return the next day once I was in recovery, and I knew she
would. The rest of the evening was
a blur; the surgery didn’t take long but I remember being miserable when I
awoke; my throat hurt and burned from the breathing tube and I felt the
anesthesia wearing off as I became more aware of the cut across my lower
abdomen. Eventually I fell in and
out of sleep until the next morning when my mother was standing next to my bed
all of a sudden. I was grateful
for her presence; the nurses, irritated me and I just wanted my mother’s
consolation and not theirs. Though
I complained and whined to her about the pain and the overall aversion I have
to the sterilized scent of hospitals, this surgery would be nothing compared to
the subsequent one I would experience weeks later.
The next morning I was told
it was time to go home. I was
shocked at this suddenness, but my surgeon was convinced as long as I could
stand up, walk and sit down there was no reason for me to be in the
hospital. I was fine with it and
called my mother right away to come pick me up. When she arrived a few hours later, she asked if I wanted to
recover from my surgery in my apartment in New Brunswick. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or
not so I didn’t answer, but then she laughed and said she would never let that
happen. I was unable to take care
of myself and frankly I was the only person who kept the apartment semi-clean,
as my roommate seemed to have no problem with not only washing dishes but
cleaning anything at all. I knew
this would aggravate me even more being helpless in bed, so of course I
returned to my mother’s clean and tidy comfortable home in South Jersey.
It was nice being home. My mother and younger sister helped
bring me anything I needed. It was
glorious, even. I felt remorse,
asking for food and other needs to be brought to me, however after a few days,
I was astonished that I was feeling better already. On the Friday of the week of my surgery, my mother and I
returned to New Brunswick for a follow-up appointment with my surgeon. The appointment was going well—he said
the incision looked great and removed the large stitch. I could return to work sometime the
following week if I wished (which, of course, I didn’t and my mother gave me a
look that said “absolutely not”).
But then something happened.
My surgeon stopped talking and told me to sit down in a chair next to my
mother—I was confused and unsure of what else there was to say. The atmosphere of the appointment
changed. He said the pathology
results from my cyst had returned, and it was in fact a tumor. A mass of cancerous cells. I didn’t know what to say, so I said
nothing. Even as he said it, for
some reason I can’t explain why I wasn’t more troubled by this news. My first thought was wow, how did I get
cancer? But my immediate
subsequent thought was, well, at least they took it out and it’s gone! Not so much. It would get much more complicated.
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