I am sitting here with a big dressing over my port site. I ever so errantly commented to my doctor today that my dissolvable stitches on my port site and the few dissolvable stitches over my jugular vein had not dissolved, but had popped through my skin and had sat there red and a little swollen, irritating me for weeks.......
I've had smarter thoughts pop out of my mouth.
She called my surgeon and I was told to go down to his nurse and get them *snipped*. I had one snipped a couple of weeks ago and it involved a nurse gloving up and getting a pair of sterile scissors and snipping off the naughty end of suture erupting out of my skin. So I thought it would be more of the same.
I was so wrong.
I waited a bit, then my surgeon and two of his nurses came into the room. I thought I was just waiting on a nurse practitioner..... I told him, smiling nervously, that this was much more than I was
expecting and that I certainly was not expecting him to drop everything
and do this for me today.
He said it was no problem, he wanted it done right, then kind of takes command without saying too many more words. He proceeded to glove up, do a sterile surgical scrub, draped the site, and started to "snip"..... And tonight, there are a couple of holes in my skin, I am on antibiotics for two weeks, and I have an aforementioned huge dressing that is to stay in place for forty-eight hours.
Really. When I saw the surgical drape and surgical scrub come out of the cupboard, I knew I was in way over my head.
My brain decided immediately that the irritation was not all that bad after all.
But Dr. P. said he "always did everything the right way, and was way too respectful of infection to do it any other way".
I was very glad to hear that and all, but, my-oh-my........
Scott had thought the same as me - a few simple snips and I would be done - so he waited in the waiting room, having seen enough sharp instruments for the day. (one L-shaped needle in my port usually is enough to do him in for a bit)
While standing over me, scrubbing me up, Dr. P. stopped and paused for a moment, asked me if I had a driver to take me home, then went to work.
It didn't hurt so much, I was just rather surprised. The drape covered my face so he instructed me a few times to take a deep breath.
Lamaze breathing and distraction techniques have come in so handy during my lifetime.
I am afraid to call my oncologist tomorrow with the news that I have a couple of open holes in my body, expressly over my oh-so-easy-to-infect port area and that I am on antibiotics. For two weeks...... wowsers. He said he didn't care what anyone said next week, they were not allowed to use my port - it would take time to heal.
And I am to stop in and see him for follow up next Wednesday, so I'm guessing I better not miss any antibiotics, or I'm guessing my "best surgeon ever" just might let an understudy do my next surgery on his clock.
Allow me one more thought: I've seen a lot of surgeries on animals. After watching him work today, and seeing the clean results, I am so relieved that he is my surgeon. He is pretty awesome with those tools.
*******
I was so rather despondent last week, so consequently decided to turn bad. I did what all bad and despondent women do at times - I ate chocolate ice cream. I went to a party. I exposed myself to lots of germs. I drank a little wine. And I do mean a little - I still rather favor my liver to stay put for the time being - but even though my palate is completely gone for tastes of any kind, this one wine that had been gifted to us smelled so good. Then I tasted it, and it tasted good. It overcame the metallic taste in my mouth and filled me with the reminder that goodness and happiness and fun still existed somewhere in my life.
Just that one wine.
The chocolate ice cream was a gift from a friend as well. Morven and David brought it out last Wednesday night and we ate it like there was not a knot of fear in my belly. Like there was not a lasting bad taste in my mouth from the long day of somber information I had just had placed like a heavy load on my soul. Like there was still something that tasted good and went down smooth and didn't hurt my belly.
And loosened the knot some in the process.
The party, was something awesome. My little twin granddaughters were born Memorial Day weekend five years ago. They had a little party, and were so delighted with their special tiered cupcakes, their gifts, their celebrated status. Their aunts and uncles and grandparents and a few friends gathered together and helped them to celebrate their gift of life for another year.
Something about the number 'five' maybe makes one reminiscence. We remembered the night they were born. We remembered how very tiny they were. We remembered poor Chloe having to be placed in the incubator and strong Zoe frowning unhappily at her surroundings soon after birth.
I remembered that I got to hold them in a few hours and cherished that encounter. And cried. I watched their heart monitors calm for a bit as I held them, and it reminded me that it is so good to be held even when you are too tiny to know the difference - and yet you do. In the wee hours of that early morning, the grandparents and parents all had a little party of happiness and celebration in that hospital room with a too tired yet so proud mom and dad; grandparents that once again marveled at the miracle of life; and it is a moment that is sealed forever in my memory.
There are so many things that can go wrong with an early twin birth, and yet two little wee girls and their mum and dad had come through it all so blessed. Their mom and dad looked pretty beat up as if they had been through another war, but they all came out of it blessed.
So we celebrated all of that on Sunday with a party and cupcakes and chicken wings and spinach dip.
I ate two cupcakes. They were pretty awesome.
I left after a while to come home and take a little nap. Millie-bean was upstairs in the crib - which as an honest three year old she would not sleep in anywhere else - but she so loves the crib idea here and was trying to nap as well. Her dad and I heard a few thumps, and found that she had thrown all the pillows and blankets on the floor to soften her landing then decided to roll over the railing and "bump" out.
She retold her crafty planning to me a couple of times.
I offered to have her lay down with me. She snuggled close on my pillow and talked and talked. Not thinking, I got up and changed hats while chatting with her.
She stared and stared.
Millie, once surprised, is not usually at a loss for words. I tried to lessen the impact and said "so what do you think of Grandmum's little bit of hair, Millie-bean?"
She said, eyeing my mostly grey-silver sprout of hair now, "you, yuu look like an old lady. you - yuu should make your hair black again." Then thinking quickly and using her hand motions and rapid eye movement when spouting forth great ideas - motions that are so dear to me - continued "Um, yeah, yeah, make it black again."
My hair has not been black since I met Loreal fifteen years ago.
She thought a bit, then said "I think you just wipe it on", and she sat up in bed and showed me how to wipe on the black color, using her blond head as an example. Then she smiled and laughed and said "yeah! you just wipe it on, Grandmum, like this!" Then she laid back down and told me as I laid down and held her close "I love you, Grandmum!"
She is the only person other than Scott to see my head without covering and my now little bit of growth. And even though she seemed a bit taken off guard, she still accepted it all and spouted forth love for me.
And shared some advice as well.
*******
Now for the big news - I had another miracle today. My white blood cells did something they were not supposed to do. After my chemo refusal last week I forgot to call and cancel my appointments lined up today for my "first day of cycle six chemo".
I was too busy being despondent.
And eating ice cream and drinking less than an ounce of wine and going to a party.
Plus I had a migraine on Monday, that kind of laid me low in a dark room for the whole day, so I will blame the "thinking" part on that.
As I tried to explain to three different reception desks when I got there and realized my mistake - that I was still stuck in cycle five of chemo and had forgotten to change my appointments - and that no one had much hope of me making it into chemo today, I was told to keep my first appointment anyways.
We waited. Then they did the blood pull. Then we waited some more.
They were busy. All of Monday's holiday appointments apparently had to be squeezed in somewhere this week.
We were finally placed in a room, and waited a bit more. Julie came in the room and I searched her face for answers but could not read it. I said out loud what we had all been thinking the past week and told Julie that this must mean my blood results showed poorly again.
She's quite a poker player, that one. She smiled really big and said "No, they're good!" She was amazed. Scott was amazed no matter what he tries to say otherwise. I was amazed.
White blood cells take five days to turn over and repair - with good cooperative bone marrow, of which mine is not. With my results last week being so low, everyone, everyone knew it was going to take at least ten days for it to repair enough to get me back into chemo treatment. Maybe even longer.
That's just fact - not lack of hopefulness.
So while Julie is explaining, in flies - flies - Dr. Mrowzik. She was excited and smiling and very happy.
We had a little party.
Julie and Dr. M in all seriousness wanted to know what I had done to accomplish that feat. I shrugged my shoulders remembering how bad I had been and said "I ate two cupcakes one after the other".
Then I became an open confessional. They were the priest and I could not shut my mouth to quit talking and spilled everything. I had been such a perfect patient, then in a moment of deep despair had gone off the deep end for a week with the lowest white blood cells ever, and could not shut up.
Lying is not my strong suit.
Scott blurted out "it was the wine". I wasn't so far gone that I was going to confess that.
I told them that even though I had been so careful to use rubber gloves and my pink impermeable raincoat and blue rubber boots when outside touching plants, that not thinking one day, I had taken my shoes off and put my feet in the grass. And now had a rash on one of my toes.
They frowned and told me to please not touch anymore plants for the next three weeks.
Then I said seriously, "you have no idea how many people are so earnestly praying on my behalf".
I should have said a lot of things about the hand of God, how God was working, how He loves to surprise us sometimes. But all that came out of my mouth was cupcakes and prayers.
White blood cells just don't do that. Especially with me. And we all knew that. But God moved His finger once again, and a miracle happened on Olentangy River Road again today.
Even though my tongue and brain could not spit that out, and praise God at the right moment, we all knew that we were witnessing a miracle in that room today.
*******
I have mentioned before how I love the fact that the God I serve, ordered His people to observe holidays with great meaning and great examples and great word pictures to teach everyone Who He is. What He is about. How to know Him better.
Passover is one such holiday.
On the Seder Plate there are seven bowls for all to taste. Some have blessings to go along with them. Some are questions to involve the children at the table to learn as well.
Sometimes, I have greatly wondered and pondered if my life these last six months have been following the bowls of the Seder Plate.
One of the first steps of the Passover Seder is to ceremonially wash your hands to show a clean heart before God. Maybe studying Exodus and Shalom and Chaos last year were some of my cleansing.
Starting the Seder Plate, you take parsley and dip it in the bowl of salt water, then shake the salt water off. It has various meanings, but one meaning is that the salt water represents the tears of the children of God as a result of their slavery.
I have never felt so enslaved. And my tears came unbidden for weeks and weeks.
The leader then pulls up three pieces of unleavened bread - matzot - and says: "This is our bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. All who are hungry, let them come and eat. All who are needy, let them come and celebrate the Passover with us."
If hunger and neediness can signify my soul and it's deep need for God to come and meet with me and satisfy my hunger, then I want to come and eat.
The Seder meal cannot be eaten until the story of Passover is told with great joy and gratefulness. The sages teach that in each and every generation one should look at the Passover story as if he or she had actually been the one to leave Egypt. We are to look at it as a time to commemorate our own personal deliverance from the bondage of Pharoah and the gods of Egypt.
My life has been placed in front of me to where I cannot look away and pretend like I did not - do not - live under Pharoah and his gods in some ways. Celebrating Passover brings me to a point of realizing the bondage, the chaos, the enslavement to gods that are not my God.
When the three pieces of Matzot bread are lifted up, one broken, and I cannot say "Blessed are thou, oh Lord King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth" -- if I cannot say that and realize Who is feeding me when I live in the land of plenty and am suddenly forced on a diet that I cannot even taste to judge if it is pleasant or awful - if I cannot honestly and purely say who brings forth my "bread", then what good am I in the Kingdom of Heaven?
***
If I ate the bitters off of the Passover Seder Plate last week, and have experienced the unbidden tears of my torment and bondage to this disease and what it has meant to my life, today I certainly tasted one of the four cups of wine that is to go along with the Seder Plate.
My tears have been turned to hope and joy at seeing a Redeemer that claims me. A redeemer that takes great joy in showing Himself to me and making me understand on an ever deepening level what He is about. Who He is. Why I need Him ever more than I ever thought.
I had the wine of the Holy One fill me with simple joy. I had the pleasure of tasting chocolate ice cream and glorying in the way it can fill my senses. I went to a party to celebrate two little lives that I hold dear. I felt the green cool grass under my feet, and it filled me with calm. I had a hilarious conversation with a sweet wee one, that still makes me laugh when I think of turning my hair black again.
If I serve a God that can give me pleasure in the midst of Bitters and enslavement and fill me so deeply with simple pleasures in life that He calls blessings, what more of a mirror can He hold up to me of what He was trying to teach me in Passover? This year, anyways. It seems He keeps taking me deeper and deeper and giving me more and more.
I cannot do justice to the whole idea, nor explain it well. But it has been a thought process that has taken over my brain these last two years and I never really understood it. I still don't, but God is in the process of opening it up for me and using it as a word picture, as a teaching tool to allow me a glimpse beyond the curtain.
And I thought Passover was something I never needed to think about......
I came home with yet two more new drugs today. I need a pill caddy and schedule to keep them all straight. My body, in my doctors words is "wearing down". I am probably going to need more rounds of chemo after my surgery along with radiation.
But, my Redeemer still hands me a cup of joy. A bowl of pleasure. A party in the middle of the desert.
In my soul, I am leaving Egypt.
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