Before surgery.
I showed up at the surgery center, which is about 100 yards from the main hospital, for my "minor" surgery on Friday, Charles dropped me off and I kissed him goodbye so he could go off to work. No big deal, right? I checked in at the front desk and they asked me who my ride was "That depends on when I am released." She told me it would be fairly soon after the 11:15am surgery so my aunt would be picking me up around 1:30.
I woke up hungry and I asked for a sandwich but was given Sprite and honey grahams of which I ate and drank all of, the nurse called my aunt and I got up to get dressed but there was a problem 😬 "Ummmmm, hey can I get more pads and another pair of that mesh underwear?" I asked. When the nurse came into my cubicle she stopped short at the pool of red in my bed. "Let me change your sheets. Please lay back down while I call your surgeon, we should probably put pressure on the area and see if that helps."
Crap.
Apparently this was something my surgeon was worried about after he cut me open and didn't find an abscess. What was causing me issues was a bunch of necrotic tumor, this of course he suctioned out of the small incision, irrigating the area of which he could barely see. Apparently there was a LOT of blood. He tightly packed the hole with a shit ton of gauze and hoped for the best.
After some time the nurse checked my bed but the bleeding was still the same. They changed the pad again and the bleeding was still the same...The anesthesiologist came in and told me to stop eating because my surgeon decided he needed me to stay overnight and he wanted to take me back into the operating room again but I couldn't stay overnight in the surgery center and the hospital was full. The only way I could be admitted was through the ER and in an ambulance. The paramedics showed up to drive me less than two blocks but the hospital refused to take me. My surgeon called the ER and begged them to give me a temporary room anyway "She will only be there less than an hour! The O.R. is prepped and ready." He begged the doctor in charge and they said "She sounds like she needs us, go ahead and send her."
I asked the cute paramedics if they could play the siren for me "You really want us too?" Of course I did and so my short ambulance ride was accompanied by a siren announcing my arrival. When they wheeled me in the back entrance they pointed out a suitcase that was on a rack to the side amongst a bunch of other unclaimed belongings and told me it had been full of meth from a patient they had brought in a couple of weeks before who had smuggled it from another state "Who smuggles meth here?" I asked.
I was barely in the Emergency Room when I was taken up to be operated on again. Down, down I went, into the Fentanyl/Propofol haze. The 9 million feet of gauze was pulled out AND...The bleeding had stopped. My surgeon repacked the wound a little less tight and I was kept overnight in Short Stay where I finally got a sandwich.
I was home before noon the next day.
I saw my oncologist today and I am still stable if a bit anemic...Again, I lost quite a bit of blood so that made sense. She is happy I am stable and she thinks this trial is keeping me so until I am put on the right immunotherapy. I asked her why they can't just take all of the tumor out "If the tumor is attached to anything and you cut it out, chances are you will still have tumor, so there is no point." So I said "I guess I just have to shrink it out myself." She agreed.
Here's to shrinking my cancer into oblivion, cheers.
Everyday I feel a little better, everyday I have a little less cancer.
Until next time ❤️
Home after surgery.