Can't Touch This

Way back in late June of 2010 while I was still in the hospital recovering from my mastectomy,  I remember each breast surgeon's nurse (my roommate's surgeon works with my surgeon in a partnership) coming to us and giving us a "care and feeding" lecture on our new selves.  We were told, in particular, to be careful about getting burned.  Because nerve endings were disrupted (destroyed) in the surgery, the reconstruction areas would have no feeling.  (I desperately hope this will not be permanent, but based on personal experience, well, I just keep hoping.)  The shiny side of this (if you want to look at it that way) is that any further surgery I've had on that particular area just doesn't hurt.  It's so odd.

At any rate, she said to be careful about too-hot showers, mostly.  But also she said not to cook with that area "exposed."  Now, I do not regularly cook topless.  Jokes about men cooking bacon come to mind but all joking aside, there are WINDOWS all over my house, and sometimes (now adult) male children.  So, cooking barechested over an open flame is not going to happen until I get old enough not to care what people see.  And maybe by then I'll have some feeling back, anyway, so it all works out.

We acquired a Roomba the other day, and that same day I bumped into something, as usual, chest first (other than stubbing my toe endlessly, which is decidedly not numb.)  I felt a little like the poor Roomba; it bumps into something, and its sensor bumpers make it turn around and go someplace else.  The difference is, it FEELS somehow that it has run into a thing and reorients itself, then merrily heads off in another direction, while I just look around to see if anyone else noticed.  

This morning in the shower, I flashed back to the whole "being careful in hot showers" advice.  In a classic, really belated case of "I wish I'd thought to say that at the time," I realized that being in the location that they are on my body (not like a toe you'd dip in or a hand you'd wave in the water) the odds of me making a shower hot enough to burn one part of me while NOT burning the rest of me were pretty small.  (Doesn't the water usually hit you kind of all at once?)  But in June of 2010 I didn't think of that quick retort, probably because of the little anesthesia thing, the pain thing, the waking up missing major body parts thing.......

So a question I did not ask at the doctor's office the other day is: will more surgery disrupt the nerves even further, and take me back to square one on getting some feeling back (will I ever NOT be on square one?)  As my priorities in life constantly rearrange themselves, I'm beginning to wonder how much I really care. It's one thing to say you don't care, but it's another thing entirely to follow through when you walk into things/people without realizing you're actually touching them.

Meanwhile, the Roomba (no name yet) provides distracting entertainment.Yesterday (the day we unpacked it) it got stuck on one of the sticky traps we keep under the sofa to catch crawly things.  It went quiet for a while, screamed something, and gave up.  Not lethal - Rod fixed it last night - but kind of hysterical.  Alex says it needs googly eyes.....