It slices it dices

My dad had a very odd sense of humor. One of the most memorable “funny” things he would do is ask people if they wanted to compare scars. Having endured a number of surgeries including appendix, gallbladder, and his knee, he quite an assortment all over the place. Since I had my appendix removed when I was in high school I had a formidable scar of my own to present and it never occurred to me that this wasn’t funny to most people. Since then, I’ve had so many other surgeries that I actually forget some when I’m counting them up. I think I could finally take him on and win! And that’s not even due to the most recent surgery I had, which was on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. In my last post I wrote of the impending joy of having my port removed, but it was truly an emotionally awesome event. It wasn’t without pain or trauma, but totally worth it all said and done. I considered posting a picture of the extracted port and the surgery site, but the gross factor isn’t worth it for people who are a bit squeamish (perhaps a subtle indication that dad’s jokes are only funny to a select group of people with a sick sense of humor – me included).

So the surgery was kind of cool. I went to my oncologist’s office (I know – weird that it wasn’t at the hospital). I donned a sexy pastel flowered robe that closes in the back, some cool blue booties, a matching fashionable hair net, and wrapped myself in the toasty but blankets that are so familiar to medical settings anticipating my oncologist’s arrival.

I got to be awake for the whole thing and they numbed up the area and then cut cut cut away. He had to stop a few times to numb up more of the area – yeah – when they cut places that aren’t totally numb it kind of hurts! I think I was so excited that I could have endured the whole surgery without anesthetic. We kept up a nice constant chatter (probably to keep me distracted) and he was kind enough at one point to reassure me that things were going fine… cause when you’re lying powerless on a table while someone’s hacking away at you, the time seems to tick by quite slowly and you start to wonder what the problem is. Finally he got a good grip on the thing, yanked it out, sewed me up, washed his hands and promptly checked his phone for messages. That’s the kind of efficiency you like to see!

All in all a good way to spend the morning and I headed home with the hopes of spending most of the day lying on the couch playing video games enjoying a well-earned vacation day. I shouldn’t admit that I finished drafting one performance appraisal in this state – but I felt it needed to be done. I also had a tiny bit of a scare that evening as I still had some bleeding, but a change of the bandage and another hour of video games with a 4 pound bag of sugar on my chest putting constant pressure on the site quickly resolved the issue. Now just a few more weeks of ouchiness and I should be right as rain.