The journey begins
 

Finally get my surgery this week. Oldest son visited this weekend, had SUCH a good time ... made Turkish coffee for the first time, yumm. And he fixed my SAS/Excel incompatibilities, showed me how to use the dang programs, basically made it possible for me to do my coursework during the next two weeks. And he fixed the weird color on my TV! Hooray!!

I'm ready for this. Not so much for the injection on Wednesday, which involves not one but TWO injections deep into an area that - let us say - is right up there on my list of places NEVER to want an injection. But I think I'm psyched for the surgery. Time to get on with this, get treatment going, take back my life. Even if it involves temporary crud and no-hair days.

And I can use SAS and Excel now! Woot! (Small but sweet victories)

Good luck and Great vibes , Fuck cancer !!!!

You go Ortho!

You'll do awesome, ortho.

Wait, wait, lemme check...

Oh yeah, you're cool. :thumb2:

Smile, darling.
Hair grows back. I refer you to my list of things for Brianna to do regarding hairloss.
NB - Bri felt she looked like a potato when she lost her hair.

All my best wishes and love for you.

Good luck, Ortho!

*hugs* best foot forward babe!

We're with you every step of the way! X


Sent by thought transference

Thanks so much! Looking forward to getting treatment going, as I said. Not so much to the discomforts etc., but it's all part of the package. I'm really crossing my fingers and doing some visualizing that nodes will be negative (of course they are what they are, but if I picture them negative it can't hurt, right?).

Wouldn't you know ... developed a sore throat in the past 24 hours. Arrgh! It won't prevent the surgery but will add to the post-intubation throat pain. I'm sucking on zinc lozenges and scarfing down the Vit C.

The wait/anticipation is worst than the actual treatment, because then you know your making progress. You'll buzz through this, write a book about it, NYT best seller for months, book tour, Letterman & Leno, crown heads of Europe and Asia...

Be sure and stop in the Cellar to say high to your old buds. When you get a little time, that is. ;)

Hopin & praying the best for you.

Good luck Ortho!!

I was afraid of those shots, too, ortho, but they DIDN'T HURT at all!! Really!

and Sundae's suggestions are both hilarious and fun to do. I esp. like the one about whipping off the scarf and implying the shampoo made your hair fall out - also the bald-head painting is a very cool thing to do. and wear big earrings. Tell people you're Shaft's girlfriend. :) good luck honey. And take those drugs!!

eta: the GOOD drugs. The percs and vics and ati's and so forth. The chemo they MAKE you take but the others-----PRN!

Hope all goes well, ortho.

Best to you, Doc.

Glad its finally here for you Ortho...the waiting is tough. I hope the best for you.

Hey, Ortho. Just wondering how you are.


Sent by thought transference

I was thinking the same -but looking in the wrong forum for the thread. hope all went well.

Let's just take a moment to say ... FUCK CANCER!


Sent by thought transference

Nothing yet from orthodoc? That seems a bit unorthodoc's.

That surgery is pretty disabling, especially if any lymph nodes were taken.

If you're checking in and don't feel up to posting, then know we're thinking of you Orth :)

there goes Dana, putting words in my mouth.

wait.


make that taking the words out of my mouth.

You're Dana's sockpuppet. :lol:

Hey guys, thanks for the good wishes. Since the 6th I've been feeling pretty much like I lost an argument with a Mack truck; haven't even gotten on a computer 'til now.

The surgery went well enough, although the plastic surgeon had some trouble with the reconstruction - I had a 'lat flap' done, where they take part of your latissimus dorsi muscle and pull it around to where it was never meant to be, and I guess my lat argued about the whole deal. Wouldn't you know ... be nice to your muscles, work them, develop them, and they get argumentative. :p:

I had a positive lymph node on quick section (quick pathology check done on the sentinel node(s) during surgery) so they took a bunch more nodes. Then I found out some new things, such as that I'm allergic to Dilaudid and Percs. And the old medical jinx followed me - if you're a doc, you get the most 'interesting' complications. I'm so over the whole 'this NEVER happens - theoretically it can, but we never see it' thing. And being woken every 30 minutes 24/7 for blood pressure checks because it's fallen into the 'amoeba' range ...

So I had a bad few days but have now turned the corner and am feeling more human. Being home = finally able to get some sleep! I got a verbal on the path report last night and it seems there's only one positive node out of the ones they took, which (given there's at least one) is the best possible news at this point.

The plan from here is: rest, recover, catch up on my reading and assignments for this week, rinse, repeat. I see the onc next week and we'll settle on a plan; looks like chemo is happening but I shouldn't need radiation. Have to build my hemoglobin back up before chemo (it dropped like a stone during surgery) so hopefully I'll have a few weeks to do that first.

And, of course, I have to catch up on things here! I missed you guys! :)

Oh, we missed you too honey:)

Sounds like you've had a bitch of a time the last week. Glad you're feeling a little more human now :P

What are your assignments like at the moment? Are they interesting or workaday?

Most of them are pretty standard. I have to get going on some bigger projects that'll be due later in the fall - have to turn in my topic and initial literature search soon and then work up a presentation, sort of thing. Projects using SAS software - I know it'll be good to be proficient at writing code for it but right now it's an :eek:! And I have an Occupational Hazards Assessment lab that I have to figure out along with my group; we each do one part of a workplace analysis and report each week. Climbing around in factories isn't going to be on my agenda for a couple of weeks. And weekly quizzes in some courses. It should all be manageable if I can stay caught up and then work ahead over the next three weeks or so.

Sounds like something you can get your teeth into without requiring massive amounts of creative energy.

My favourite kind of task :p

Hi Doc, glad you're on the other side of it.

Hi orthodoc! Monster and I were just talking about you- I'm so glad to see the surgery is over and you are home. Hospitals are the WORST (except for the MS04 - are you allergic to that, too?) allergies to dilaudid AND percs? Holy Moly! that totally sucks! I hope you are getting some sort of pain relief- vicodin didn't even touch it for me but then I'm not exactly naive to narcs. ;)

wishing you well and soon. :flower: :flower: :flower:

Good to hear from you! Sending warm thoughts...feel better at the soonest, strong lady!

Ortho, thanks for checking in.

I'm glad you're through the tough patch of surgery and feeling well enough now to get back into things a little.

So good to see a post or two from you here, Ortho. Keep on getting better!

Glad to hear you are doing well. Stay strong :) Kick Cancer's ASS!

Welcome back Ortho.
So glad to hear you so positive after surgery.

"But that never happens" isn't just a Doc's disease. It's an administrative one too. How many times have I been told that the system is automated and I will receive what I am entitled to if I only wait? Nearly as many times as I have had to spend a lot of time and patience fighting for what should be mine by rights. "Well it's never happened before!"

Look after yourself and get everyone who loves you to do the same.
Except the ex, whatever he claims.
We can't rub your feet but we're here if you need us. Trilby says she will even come see you in person. She might rub your feet, but it's not up to me to promise on her behalf.

Thanks again for all the good wishes ... wow, I get tired easily right now. I nod off mid-sentence, practically mid-word, even though the Vics aren't really doing the job pain-wise. Still, it's so good to be home. And now that the anesthetic's out of my system I have a clear head. Hooray! That's making me happy. :)

glad you're back ortho. I feel sorry for the truck though.

Physician, heal thyself!

Glad to FINALY hear you are doing better !!!!!
Stay strong !!
Oh and FUCK CANCER !!!!

Sounds like a rough time, glad that's over, now all you have to do is get better, and do all that school stuff, and, and... Hey, at least you'll be busy, right? :D

Yep, my goal for today is to stop waking up with the imprint of my keyboard on my forehead. :rolleyes:

:lol2:

I told you the vics wouldn't do it babeh!

tell 'em you want oral morphine. STAT. It turns your tongue blue but who cares?

I kept thinking, "I'll feel better tomorrow, I'll feel better tomorrow.." until day six when I still felt like crap and went to the ER for pain relief (IV dilaudid but I'm not allergic) and then the percs p.o. the percs took the edge off but didn't really get rid of the pain. DON"T SUFFER! Docs don't do enough to address pain issues in my opinion. Until they actually HAVE the thing they don't know what it's like.

get something better than vics. those just make you nauseous and headachy. get something else. I know the percs don't work for you but there has got to be something better they can use. What mg are your vics? coz if they're 5/325 I'll be PISSED.

Don't piss her off orthodoc

Actually 5/325s would be better than what I have, because you can take 3 of them at a time. I have 5/500s and 2 is the limit per dose.

Another bump in the road today ... I found little blisters in the surgical area today after showering, and the color there didn't look right (on the weekend, the house staff were worried about necrosis, although they didn't pump up the fluids when my pressure dropped into the 80s systolic). I called in and they saw me in clinic within an hour; I was figuring wound infection, which would suck because it'd ruin the reconstruction. But reality sucks more. I'm going to lose a big area of skin to necrosis unless they can turn it around with hyperbaric therapy.

If it responds (which isn't likely), good. If not, I'll need a full-thickness skin graft (more, painful ++ surgery). I'll have a nasty patchwork series of scars and a delay in my chemo schedule.

So I went for 'intake' at the hyperbaric clinic. I really didn't know anything about the practicalities of it. Wow. There's a major risk of fire and explosion so I can take nothing in, have to wear only an all-cotton gown (no synthetics or plastics), no creams, makeup, hair product, deodorant, nada; I can only watch TV or sleep during the 2.5 hour treatment. I can't drink any carbonated beverages (and beans, I assume, are forbidden! :eek:). No alcohol, inside or out. I get a bracelet that grounds me to the chamber, then the chamber is grounded outside. If I wear/do something that breaks the rules, I kill both myself and the tech. Nice. :yelsick: Possible side effects include seizures, vision changes that last 2 months, hemorrhagic blisters on my eardrums with possible rupture, and GI reflux. I get to do this twice daily with a 3-hour break between sessions for five days straight.

New experiences, hooray! But this one wasn't on my bucket list. :eyebrow:

Oh, one sort of cool thing - the hyperbaric chamber is exactly like the chamber in The Fifth Element that they used to 'reconstruct' Leeloo. Guess I'll just lie there and pretend I'm the female supreme being. ;)

you don't have to pretend with us, ortho.

Why isn't it likely to respond? I ggogled people's experiences and they seem very happy and positive about the ffects of the chamber with no more surgeries. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places? Or is yours worse than average, or are you just going for worst case scenarios so as not to get your hopes up?

Hoping for the no more surgery option...... have fun ibn the chamber. Can you wear a single white cotton glove and pretend tobe MJ when you get bored of leeloo?

I'm not optimistic because the skin is already breaking down and the color is bad - it's progressed very very quickly over the day. However - if the dermis (lower layer) can be kept alive until some new blood vessels form, if this will pink up and heal, I'll be ecstatic, don't get me wrong! I hope for the best but, the way it looks and feels now, I'm preparing for the worst.

I'll see what fun I can have in a 'Leeloo' chamber, heh heh ... but options are limited, I can only wear the all-cotton gown the tech gives me. She's very focused on safety (which is good). Guess I'll check through the DVDs tonight and see what I can bring in - she'll play a DVD for me if I want. Anything has to be better than daytime TV. :rolleyes:

ask her about the glove.....

Ok fun you can have in a chamber with DVDs.

Some Torpedo movie? What about Honey I shrunk the Kids? maybe you could have her put red dots on the windows.....
Are you allowed to move in there? Can you do a little pilates? (with the areas that don't hurt, natch)
Will she play porn?
Can she transmit interwebs and you can dictate cellar posts to her?

Surely you can bring a book in there, too? That's what most of the kids I know do.

Taking a break between treatments - the first one wasn't too bad, actually. Almost pleasant! Doing lots of visualizing. I hope SO much that this will fix the problem. I'm visualizing healthy tissue supported by all that O2, and everything healing up.

No books allowed, unfortunately. That was the first thing I asked and the first thing she said. Think of all the studying I could get done! Watching a DVD was fine, though - I have to go ransack some $5 DVD bins at WalMart later. I could just listen to music and doze, but she has me breathe room air by mask for ten minutes at a time, twice during the session (to lessen the risk of O2 toxicity). It'd have to be a very light doze. Still, it's restful. Crossing my fingers and toes that this will work.

Glad the treatment wasn't so bad, Ortho. *hugs*

Positive visualisations from me to add to yours!


Sent by thought transference

Ortho, tell them you want the shit w/o the acetominophen. that's what limits your dose; they add that shit so junkies won't take enough to get high--it destroys the liver. It's fucked up ten ways to Sunday. Tell them to take their crappy acetominophen and stick it where the sun never shines.

I was liking my oxycodone 5mg after my surgery. I told them no you-know-what.

Tell them.

Tell them you need a fentanyl lollipop.

You have never been so sexy to me as you are right now!

Do it, ortho! tell 'em to FUCK their acetominophen or give you a PCA or goddman something!!!!!

You're right- this necrosis thing IS sucking hard; but the visualization stuff really DOES help so keep doing that. And get some freaking ativan ffs. What's wrong with these people?

Sending healing thoughts your way, sweetie. And get a freakin' pain team put together. I know it's a bitch, but go ahead and do it. MAKE them see you.

:blush:

You guys are BOTH just too sexy! ;)

I'm doing pretty well on the Vic along with some Flexeril, actually - it only takes a sniff of whatever and I'm out like a light. Morphine po would be excellent but I'd never wake up. And I'll keep the fentanyl lollipops in mind ... but I'm only scoring 1 for 3 with synthetic opioids. Sigh. Anyhoo ... doing not badly. I do have some Ativan and you bet I used it last night. Still didn't sleep, but I didn't care as much. :rolleyes:

Second session went well and I can swear there's some positive change. The tech said they do see positive changes very quickly so maybe it's not just wishful thinking. Guess I'd better hit the books tonight before my high O2 levels wear off. Really - she said the high O2 lasts several hours. And I noticed today that I wasn't lightheaded, which I have been ever since surgery and that big drop in Hb level. Time to hit the books! :)

My Mum was given tramal when she was sick. She really hated it. I think oral morphine is probably great for some people, but the constipation can be a real bitch too. When Dad amputated the tops of a couple of fingers, he was given endone. He hated that.

If you're able to cope with the pain it's good though. Sometimes just having something to take the edge off is better than totally wiping yourself out.

Glad you're feeling better today Ortho. Just stay positive. You'll get there in the end.

xxx

ortho, can you get anything study-related on DVD? like audio textbooks or something?