If You Can't Say Something Nice

How's the rest of that joke go? "Then, sit next to me."

Since there doesn't feel like there's much 'nice' to say, I have been adhering to the more traditional end of that line, which is not to say anything at all. The final pathology reports came back in on the lymph nodes, and there is, on a much closer inspection than I'm sure was possible even 5 years ago, a bit (piece? glob? atom? a centimeter) of cancer in one node. So the reports went to the oncologist and she has submitted that the samples be onco-type (sp?) tested, I guess to determine a course of treatment. She asked me why Dr. McIntosh didn't schedule another surgery to take a few more nodes, and I said I was told she didn't think it necessary.

So, Dr. Ligresti will call Dr. McIntosh (they are on first-name basis so Louise will call Merle) and discuss this. I feel grateful that the two of them are "teaming up" on my behalf, honest I do. I'd just rather it not be this way. (Dr. Ligresti's first words to me when she called after receiving my report from the hospital were "Why can't you just be boring?") And, after I grilled her about chemotherapy (how long does it take, do you still get really sick, how long until your hair falls out - all questions that nobody can possibly know the answer to in my particular situation because we haven't even GOTTEN to that point yet) she had SO much patience, listened, and said, "Stop talking as if you're definitely having chemo. We don't know that yet."

And, she laughed (sympathetically, not insultingly) through my justification of how I can't have my hair fall out while we are still having prospective members visit the synagogue because really, who wants to look scary to the young children you'd like to attend your school? Any other sane and busy doctor would have simply said "Let's discuss this later." But not this lady. She says I shouldn't worry because by the time we have to make those decisions it will take a few weeks to lose hair and we should be past that prospective member timing. This, my friends, is a mensch.

And, three weeks to the day of my surgery, I still have both of my drains in. Yes, they are still there, and they are still draining, and they still get stuck on everything, and I have lost all interest in keeping track of the totals because it feels like they're never going to go down enough to make them come out. So Rod is recording the 24 hour amounts for me, along with everything else he is doing.

Here's the straw/camel's back scenario: Last Friday morning I called in my drainage numbers to the plastic surgeon's office, as they had asked me to do every day, and the nurse (Pat) said they sounded low enough for us to come on over at 2 and she'd "get those drains out." So we haul to Englewood, she takes a look at the collection bulbs and basically tells me she can't take them out because there's still too much. I joke that at least I'd better get a write-up in a medical journal for this, and she tells me that there was someone with drains for 7 weeks once, but, not to worry, that one had "issues." Seriously?

While I'm there, I calmly and reasonably mention that since it's been almost 3 weeks since the surgery, the Valium I hadn't wanted but that they had insisted I take to relax the muscles had run out and could they prescribe more. No, she says, "I can't do that. Try a glass of wine." I am not a doctor but I'm pretty sure this is not a very professional response. I don't even ask why. (Maybe at that point I look like a Valium addict? What does a Valium addict look like?) Back in hot car, 40 minute drive back to our neck of the woods, and I have HAD IT.

So I called Dr. McIntosh's nurse-practitioner's voicemail, left a completely honest summary of the situation, and not five minutes later she calls my cell and says "Hi, it's Pat. What's the number of your pharmacy?" This is who we call Angel Pat. I can't even come up with a suitable moniker for the other Pat. I'm sure she's a good person, really.

I don't care any more. Frankly, if I thought I could write down that no fluid drained for 3 days in a row and get away with it and then they'd take the damn things out........... (No, I wouldn't. I'm depressed, but I'm not an idiot. If the fluid needs to get out, it needs to get out.)

Here's the thing. I'm worried that something BIG and WRONG (and in my wildest most horrible imagination means another surgery of some sort, and soon) is causing the left side to not be dropping off as fast as the right is, although Rod assures me that the difference between the two is not that great. But, it will be enough to make a determination about whether or not one (or both - haha) could be removed.

Our family's annual trip to Cape Cod is scheduled for next week, and if I still have tubes runnin' out of me, I'm not going. (Because of Andrew's work schedule he is going up a few days later, so I might salvage part of the week if the powers above see fit to have the drains removed in between when the rest of the family goes and when Andrew goes.) So, between the worry that there's really something wrong on the left and the worry that by Friday (that will be going on FOUR weeks since the surgery) I will still have drains, that's a whole lot 'o worry.

Today at 6 we have another appointment with the plastic surgeon to survey the landscape in question and to hold our breath as Rod reads off the last 3 days' worth of 24-hour totals from the drains.

Yesterday morning, Rod made me get up, get washed, get dressed, get HUMAN, and as I sat in all my human-ness in my chair, the doorbell rings (Sunday morning? huh?) and in walks one half (his "better half" being in Europe for a while) of our dearest and unfortunately no longer geographically nearest friends. Garry Karner (who many think is Rod's brother, and might as well be, as close as we are despite the miles between us) flew from Houston for just a day, just to visit me (and Rod kept the secret.) And as much as I love you all and I really don't want visitors because I'm too unsettled in my own skin right now, he just sat and talked with Rod and the boys and we joked and watched TV and went to Kohl's (yes, Elyssa) and sat some more and it was like old times - old, normal, nobody is sick and cranky and uncomfortable, times.