It was only yesterday, less than 24 hours ago that I was delivering our son. Today I wake up to face the first step toward fighting this Cancer. Well, not the first, but I certainly don't view Aiden's birth and death as a 'step' in beating Cancer, as I know some people do. He is a miracle who sacrificed his life...to save mine. So getting out of bed, I go straight to "Aiden's Box". I touch his little hand and foot prints and I ask him, as I did when I was in labor, to help give me strength.
Jon and I begin our morning as always. I watched him as he also went to "Aiden's Box", touching the prints lightly, standing there for a moment quietly before we begin our day. Our morning is filled with coffee and chatting. We reflect on the night before and the fact that we have so much to face. How this is just beginning. How insane it all seems. It still seems pretty surreal and we are still slightly spinning from everything that has happened. But we are so content and at peace with the decisions we have made along this journey so far. And we know that we must ready ourselves for battle...a battle on every front. And we are more than ready.
What we were not quite ready for was what was to come of this 'simple little 20 minute procedure"...
We arrived at Kadlec at 11:30am as we were told to. They took us immediately back into the area where you apparently get ready for and recover from this sort of surgery. I have a variety of nurses and staff come in and go over different aspects with me, check every stat and hook me up to lots of gadgets. Listening to what they were going to do, the way they spoke about it as if it was more simple than getting a filling at the dentist was a little mind boggling to me considering how serious this really was. I mean...they are implanting a port, with TWO rubber entries (like an IV but with two ports rather than one) into my chest wall (into the tissue and muscle there)...this is connected to a tube that will move up my chest wall a bit and loop down, enter a major artery and be moved basically down into my heart chamber...
I am sorry but that just does not sound like something I want to be awake for, no matter how 'out of it' they think they can get me. Getting me 'out of it' is pretty difficult as it is, but whatever, I am laying there in a gown all hooked up to a million monitors so here we go. If only it could have been as simple as everyone had made it sound.
I was rolled into the surgical room. It was cold and sterile. They put me on a surgical table shaped so that my shoulder blades would drop down at the sides...not too comfy, but what is 20 minutes, right? I had to turn my head to the left as they constructed this sterile tent over my head. I could just barely see out the left side. They continued to wash, disinfect and had plenty of inside jokes to share with each other...some of which they apparently thought I would enjoy, but I just wanted to get this thing going.
The "surgeon" (who, come to find out was filling in for the regular surgeon but should make her no less qualified, right?) comes in and they give me a shot of something into my IV that in their mind is just great and should have me pretty out of it. Wrong. They begin numbing the incision site with a needle. Ouch but oh well. And they begin the procedure...I am going to spare you two hours plus of details here, but I will say that I am not sure how my body made it through that after what it had gone through the day before. Apparently, it didn't do all too well considering they had to contact Dr. Rado to find out if he wanted a blood transfusion done due to the loss of blood and an already way too low blood count. During the surgery, they had several complications, varying from the 'normal' kink of the tube that needed to be fixed, to having to place and replace the port itself...which consisted of lots of pushing and ripping through my tissues and muscle...then at some point they had a "bleeder" that they could not stop...and I felt every moment of the hot sticky blood pulse out onto my neck and into my hair...all the while laying in that same terrible position...Anyways, so they were concerned in the end he would want a transfusion...
Thankfully he did not. However, the instructions I was given when leaving there were more about what to watch for in case I fell out and needed a transfusion rather than what in gods name to expect after this hellish procedure and how to handle the intense and unreal pain I was in. I had pain medicine at home from Aiden's delivery so I was instructed to take extra of that. But within hours I realized nothing on the planet outside of a coma could help alleviate this pain.
Jon had been a complete wreck while I was in there for my procedure. He was told he would barely have time to grab something to eat before he would need to be back to wait for me...it was two hours after he returned before I was out of surgery. It wasn't till the very end that they bothered letting him know that while it took "longer than planned", I was fine. Now that we were home, he could hardly bare watching the pain I was in. It was radiating up into my jaw and ear. On top of the pain, I had this contraption on my chest that looked like something out of a horror film. There was a gigantic clear piece of tape covering tubes and clamps and you name it sticking out of my chest. (You can find pictures of this by following the "Medical Updates Only" link at the top of the Blog Page).
I ended up calling Dr. Rado although it was after hours because we had spent a long time looking things up about this procedure, and in a nutshell...this wasn't right. Dr. Rado was not happy with how it went..wanting to know the name of this "temp" they had doing my surgery. He said it was ridiculous that it took that long and that I was in so much pain. So he had me double on my pain meds and had me coming in the next day to be seen by them.
So the rest of the evening was spent with Jon having to do just about everything for me since I couldn't really move my right arm and with me hoping I would be able to get something that resembled sleep. Even with the pain medicine pumping through me I could hardly breathe it hurt so bad. Oh well, tomorrow is a new day and hopefully this will chill out. The pain would be more tolerable if I just knew whatever is going on is SAFE. Because it sure doesn't feel 'right'. I look forward to going to Dr. Rado's office tomorrow and at least getting some peace of mind.
