I have felt continuously worse the last two weeks - worse than I did the first two weeks after surgery.
Each day I felt myself stepping farther into a cave of head-swimming-don't-stand-up-fast malaise. I'm fine, but I'm not fine. My head was *swimming*. The only thing that felt safe and "better" was flat out time on the couch.
I expected when I stepped down off of the Percaset to have some withdrawal even though I had only used it continuously for a week and a half. After watching Scott go through a lot of surgeries, the word "Percaset" in our house was no longer a noun, but a verb. I watched him after each surgery have the euphoria that comes along with *Percasetting*, as well as the snap-easy-anger that hitches a ride on that bus, too.
I knew from long experience that you don't escape step-down - although patients will tell you they do. They will tell you "it's not a big deal", even when you can see honest evidence before your eyes that they are in withdrawal and possibly one step away from a drug-rehab facility.....
I knew all of that and expected a few days of withdrawal. But, it didn't feel better after a couple of days and daily my head became fuzzier and more of a headache and was sending such commands as "don't turn your head too fast or you might really faint". It took four seconds for my brain to catch up with my eye muscle movement, and when it caught up, it wasn't all that happy about having to swim through whatever syrup was accumulating about it.
It seems the difficult thing after surgery - which I was fully aware of - is not sometimes the surgery itself but the fallout from the, um, *controlled substances* one is given to use to cope with the pain and to get you back on your feet quickly.
(And if anyone reading this is getting any bright ideas - I'm straight up informing you that I saved my last Percaset for the big "drain-pull" day. It's gone.)
So Sunday afternoon, I made my fuzzy, swirling brain sit down in front of the computer and look up drug issues - none of this was making sense. I tracked the start of this to two weeks ago and remembered that the pharmacist had changed out my antibiotic from Keflex to the cheaper and more available Cephalexin. It didn't make sense that an antibiotic I had taken before would be causing an allergic reaction now, but maybe.
Then I realized my mistake and a possible loophole in my surgery-follow-care -- the doctors and nurses and pharmacists all are very careful to go over your current drug list with you. After seeing my surgeon and oncologist the same day two weeks ago, my surgeon said to go ahead and start using Aleve for inflammation and also, to keep using the muscle relaxer. My oncologist, gave me the go-ahead to start back on Ambien after being off of the Percaset for a few days.
Each night I lined up an Aleve, Ambien, Cephalexin and muscle relaxer and took them all within a half hour of each other.
I KNOW BETTER.
Plus, due to lingering chemo-gastro-issues, I was not eating for three hours before going to bed - so I was effectively taking them all on an empty stomach.
MORON.
My mistake I thought: the pharmacist didn't know I was going to start taking my Ambien again as he refilled the muscle relaxer. My surgeon didn't know that my oncologist had ok'ed my Ambien - the Ambien that had been "upped" during chemo......
I was not thinking well enough with everything being dumped into me and pain and all to figure it out. And while I am on the subject - this is reason number one why I do not want to give up a personal relationship with a local pharmacist, no matter how much the insurance company pushes the 'mail-order-meds'. I need a familiar voice on the other end of that phone these last eight months to guide me through these deep-drug-waters. I need someone to help me sort out what "over-the-counter" meds I can take with my scripts. I need someone that has my drug-allergies bring up a big warning every time he checks my list. I need someone to give me five thyroid pills when I am leaving town because somehow I have messed up somewhere and am in danger of not having my body work if I cannot get a few days of those to hold me over until I get back into town and can pick up the doctor's call-in script.
This past year, I have talked to my favorite Buehler's pharmacist more than my family doctor.
I know a little more about drugs than some people, but even then - I'm not thinking especially straight right now - he is.
But after talking with the pharmacist today, and my oncologist office, they are thinking I should have been shaking off the brain "fuzziness" a little faster and that the interactions of those two drugs should not be that long-lasting. I stopped the muscle relaxer on Friday and took my last Ambien Saturday night.
She wants me to do a brain MRI "just to be sure".
I don't like the idea behind it, but on the other hand, this will help us know better going into the new chemo what we are dealing with - which I'm guessing is just basically Karen working with half a brain after certain drug cocktails. I think they may have forgotten just how really *sensitive* I am to most drugs.....(sigh, hand on forehead).
PLUS, and this is totally selfish, but I kind of see an MRI coming down the pike at some point in my future anyways, and I would rather have that on the "study" tab, than my next chemo round that will not be under the sweet umbrella of "new-drug-study" care.
***
My best friend started back to school yesterday. He didn't take on any jobs this summer except the title "nurse". Wiping up blood and dumping drains twice daily does not show up on his "top 20 jobs" test results on any personnel testing.
Probably not even the "top 200"....
The closest anything-medical he has done, was filling up five gallon buckets with ice water and pushing a runner's shin splint leg into it on the bus ride home from cross country meets. Sometimes, if a trainer was not handy, he would wrap a few ankles and such - but that was more than enough *medical* for him.
But this summer he daily swabbed my three drainage holes with iodine swabs, reading the manual a few times to make sure he had perfected the technique - touching the open-skin part first, then making concentric circles farther and farther out from the wounds. Put a beret on him and he would look like an *artiste* using a brush while doing them.
I have to say, I had some pretty spectacular iodine circles on the side of my rib cage for three weeks, twice a day.
And not one drop of infection.
In fact, he has become quite a student of doing "sterile" and is now rather fond of the ease of using latex gloves. He uses them when he is weeding outside because we have poison ivy in a few spots. He uses them to dig in the garden so he won't have to scrub his hands so much. He uses them when he is preparing my fresh beets for roasting so his fingers won't be red for three days.
They just kind of pop up *everywhere*.
He's come along quite nicely this summer - he went from almost having his head hit the desk when they were explaining to him the post-surgery-needed blood dumping with the drains, to doing such an exact measuring and recording with the fluids that the nurses gave him a GOLD STAR when looking over his weekly records.
And I miss him horribly these past two days. He has been my rock, my steadier, my helper, my nurse, my chef, my "get-happy-guy", my everything for a long summer.
Adding insult to injury, his morning coffee tastes so much better than mine.
***
I told someone a couple of weeks ago, that this whole year has been a year of regrets and repentance for me.
R&R has taken on a whole new meaning.
In my study the last couple of years of some Jewish Rabbis and such, I came across the three holidays that are commanded by God to be celebrated by his people. And after kind of wondering about them, reading about them, then looking them up several times in the Bible, I never found anywhere saying that we should not still be celebrating those.
You can argue that back and forth, and I don't even care about that part of the conversation, but what highly interests me both last year and this year again, is Yom Kippur - the highest Holy Day of the year according to the Jews anyways - but the whole concept of that holiday / holy day is the idea of repentance. The idea of atonement. The idea of underlying joy in the midst of all of that. And then the celebration afterwards that is basically saying "God heard us - we are forgiven another year!!"
And those Jews know how to do a celebration it seems. It's supposed to include a lot of dancing and wine anyways.
We can argue that Jesus gave the final atonement and that we don't have to do that anymore. I get that. But I had never, ever in my life spent a whole day thinking on my sin in my life - and for me it wasn't just for the past year, but my whole life - thinking on it, then seeing it's hold over me, seeing the ugliness of it all and how I had called it a lot of different things - called it anything but *sin*, then wanting to purge myself of it.
I chewed it over for a long time - not just the one day. I wanted to face it, get rid of it, then start anew. I wanted to change my ways. I wanted to amend and atone.
It's so easy to get to middle age and have a whole lifetime of subtle lies and "protections" and walls and hurts and "personality nuances" stack up and become "ok".
We in America, or at least me, can find a lot of different ways of dealing with this, none of which include looking at our own deeply inset, deeply protected depravity. I know people that have learned to manipulate, and it was wrong twenty years ago, but today "it's just how I do things". I know people that have insulated themselves behind a wall of "fundamentalist-Christianity" and come to the point of refusing to live in this world, reflect God in this world, because they are too righteous. I know people that can point out everything another Christian does wrong, or believes wrongly, but are unwilling to take a look at their own innards, to weed out what they themselves might be lacking.
I remember a pastor in a church I was attending many years ago noting that many times Christians are the least able to see their own sin. He stated as a case in point that most times when standing in a line at the grocery store and upon hearing someone being rude or argumentative or demanding at the checkout line, that he would be afraid to look up as it was most likely someone from his own church, and they would then turn and wave hello to him.
I relate to that, I myself had learned how to be a "bully" in business to get what I needed to get done quickly and correctly.
So I thought about it all, then thought about me. My sin. My protected parts that had not been based on anything other than it was the best way to survive at that time. And how we can hide behind "that's not my gift" or "that's not part of my personality" or "it's easier to judge others than purge ourselves". Or, "I had to do that to keep my job".
Then a couple of months later I found that I had cancer, and I found out what a real *purge* of evil in your body is all about.
You should get sick over it - you should hate it that much. You should recognize how fast it can grow and take over your soul. The *purge* of that evil within should be as bad, if not worse than the discovery itself.
I didn't even know that cancer was in there. I didn't have any idea how long it had been there. Someone else had to find it for me, and point it out to me.
In hind sight, I had got very used to the symptoms, and when discussing them had them minimized, so I had convinced myself I was "fine".
We in America seem very able to turn a blind-eye to our sin. We are very able to make our sin not hurt so bad. Or look so bad.
And no one can ignore symptoms better than me obviously.
But trust me, God has had me in a classroom tutoring me very closely on my past sin - both pre-meditated and unintentional. I haven't had any escape. I haven't had a chance to "get back to work" to push it all away. I haven't had a chance to be distracted by books or movies or even basic life because I couldn't do any of those.
I was in the front row, maybe the only student tied to the desk.
It's all very personal, and not something I think can be published. It wasn't secret sin that jumps to mind immediately - I'm not an alcoholic or druggie. (well not including the last three weeks plus.....) I don't spend time fooling around with other men, nor do I want to.
But I have some deep-set issues that finally at age 50 could not be put in the back seat any longer.
And it sadly seems that maybe alcoholism or drug addiction or other "diversions" might have been easier to take on - or less evil than sinister "simple" ignoring humanity sins.......
Issues like, have I loved the ones around me like I was supposed to? Like I have been commanded to? Have I *reflected-God* when faced with amazingly maddening voices on the other end of the telephone *help-line* that was anything but helpful? Have I just walked away from relationships that disappoint me beyond what I considered "repair"?
I still believe that in issues dealing with immorality - especially immorality against children - those issues need to be righteously stood up against. God has confirmed that within me. I explored that and someone needs to be the STOP sign anytime that issue is brought up. We in America want to do that with people we don't know, but when it is a relative or friend, there are few who choose to enter into the pain of standing against it all.
Especially within the church, because we cannot surgically separate that from the idea of "forgiveness". We kind of skip over the parts about dealing with the horrible crime of child sexual abuse, aka "immorality", because we kind of think that God wants us all about forgiveness. He wants us to do both, but we don't 'get' how to do that. Most people think if they have to err, to err on the side of forgiveness, because that's easier and less messy than the thing that actually takes care of the real sin.
That is why the sin of immorality against children in America is not stomped out yet.
I could write a book on this, but God reinforced the "good stand there", yet, ugh, there have been other times, when I chose wrongly.
One that I can talk about openly without hurting others happened just last week - the day that I realized this was the completion of "week 3" after a major surgery. I know I had not recovered from six months of chemo before jumping into surgery. I knew I was a little bit slower healing because of that.
But I sobbed and sobbed and Scott just listened. He had taken care of himself after a lot of surgeries for big chunks of the day because I was running back and forth from work trying to care for him, trying to keep a job, trying to do it all. I thought I had done pretty well.
Day number 21 when my muscle wall was still aching, and my arm and rib cage were still searing with pain when moved errantly, told me differently.
I remember when our daughter Heidi had her tumor removed from her brain and she had an eleven month old baby and a two year old toddler in her home. I took three weeks off from my job to stay at their home with her and care for the children and laundry and all the work that goes with two active children, but I remember in my minds eye, the look on her face as I pulled out of the driveway to go home to get back to my "part-time-job" that I thought I needed.
She needed someone to be there for maybe six months. And here I was leaving her to deal with it all after three weeks.
Because I didn't have enough faith that we could make it financially if I quit my job. Because I didn't have enough faith that God would take care of it all if I did what I knew in my heart I should have done. I could line up some good reasons but I knew that God was telling me differently.
And He has spent a good part of a year showing me that I didn't need that job afterall. I could do what the Bible commanded in the area of care for others when needed, and He would take care of the rest.
So my soul has been in mourning for a long time because I am *feeling* the pain I knew hurt in others, but didn't realize how much. And that's not just surgical pain.
I've had no escape. Nothing to do but look at it all and confess it all and after all of that, I am now honestly looking forward to Yom Kippur this year. I want to get rid of all those regrets, learn from them, learn from the very hand of God, then take on my atonement and celebrate.
God has spent almost a year washing me, nay - *scrubbing* me - from the very depths of the deepest part of my innards, spirit and soul.
The Jewish people say it this way: "Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year, the day on which we are closest to G-d and to the quintessence of our own souls. It is the Day of Atonement. "For on this day He will forgive you, to purify you, that you be cleansed from all your sins before G-d" (Leviticus 16:30)"
Whether He gave me this opportunity to live thirty more years, or whether this is preparation for facing Him soon, I don't know. But I know that the "washing" - the scrubbing of years of accumulated dirt and filth and cover ups and trying to make it all smell good has felt so cleansing.
Knowing what I know about the Messiah doing the atonement for our sins is even more meaningful to me now. Delving deeper into personal sin and the years of band-aids and half-notices when called up on it makes me grateful for a Messiah that cleanses me daily if I take the time and honesty to do it; but to also know that we have a God that cares enough to listen to us deeply look at this issue one day a year to show Him that we are serious about wanting His cleansing, is well, quite frankly - healing.
And then He says "get happy about it".
I can't wait for Yom Kippur this year. I have felt these last few months that my soul was pointed straight towards that.
What a holiday. What a Holy Day.
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