Monday, May 2, 2011

Ethel and Alice have been very bad girls....

I'm quickly learning that cancer could care less about MY plans. Last week seemed like a month. I was sick all week. I saw two dr's on Monday that said I must have just had a virus because I had absolutely no other symptoms, besides the fever. On Wednesday, that all changed. I still had a fever on Wednesday, so I texted my plastic surgeon and asked if I should be worried. She asked if Ethel or Alice had any swelling or redness. I noticed that Ethel had a little redness, but I wasn't sure if it was anything to worried about. So what does one do? I told Alice to say cheese and I took of picture of her and texted it to my doctor. Once she saw the text, she told me to come into the office. Sure enough, Ethel hadn't done what she was told and she had a minor infection. It was nothing that antibiotics shouldn't clear up. Alice, she was still being a good girl and healing nicely. Thursday came and went -- I don't remember much because I was super sick. I felt horrible. I couldn't figure out why I felt so bad. Here we were post surgery by two weeks -- I should be feeling better by now! So on Friday, I was still feeling pretty shitty, so I texted my doctor again, but this time I noticed Alice was getting a little red. And, of course, I was still running a pretty high fever. So, back to the office I go - my appt. was at 3:15. Bobby took me this time, so I didn't take my wallet or anything with me. I honestly thought we'd be home and hour later. When Dr. Chan saw it, she said "I don't like this, I don't like this at all." Great, just what I wanted to hear. So, she did a needle aspiration with one of my favorite 60cc syringes. Thank goodness I couldn't feel it because she filled up the entire thing. She said she would send it off to the lab to find out what kind of infection it was and start me on some different antibiotics. She left the rooom. A few minutes later she came back and said I think we need to change course a bit, we need to go to the operating room tomorrow. I was speechless. However, it quickly became apparent that getting a room on Saturday was going to be difficult because the schedule was full, so we opted for 10:30 Friday night. Then it changed to 10:00 and finally 6:00. When we decided to do it at 6:00, it was already 4:30. We had no time to process anything, we just went. Now that it's all over with, I think not having time to process anything was a good thing. It was a very fast growing infection and we needed to get it taken care of - pronto. If I had waited until after the weekend, it would have gotten much worse and the tissue expanders would have been removed. That would have sucked. As it is now, I'm stuck with 2 drains again. They are such a pain in the butt. I'm amazed at how much better I feel, though. All week last week, my body was fighting the infection instead of healing me from my surgery. No wonder it seemed like I was progressing so slowly. So, since all of this happened, I'm pretty sure chemo won't start this Friday. I'm kind of glad because that means I get to have a nice Mother's Day....so I'm keeping my fingers crossed chemo gets delayed a week or two.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hattie-luv...you give me chill bumps with your positive attitude! I am SO proud to be related to you, words can't even describe exactly how proud I am of you.

I am keeping you & your family's names on the Temple prayer roll, so know that literally thousands are praying for you daily.

My ex-hubby, Mike, had colon cancer & he swears that it is having a positive attitude, just like yours, that has kept him going all these years...21yrs cancer free. So you just keep that beautiful chin of yours up & damn those wicked cancer cells all to hell!!!

I love you, Sweetie...