So I was just looking over the blog and I realized that I totally left you all hanging in the middle of my little health scare! Obviously, things have turned out OK since the State Department cleared me to come on over to Thailand, but I thought I'd finish the story anyway. My posterity might want to know about this.
I was sent home from my first stay in the hospital armed with lovenox injections and waiting for biopsy results and sort of went back to normal life (though I had to drop out of my Thai class ... lame). It took ages to get the biopsy result, and living with that anxiety was awful. I'd be going along fine and then right in the middle of making dinner or something I'd burst into tears and freak everybody out. And then there were the twice daily injections, which I had to psych myself up for every time. By the way, I hope none of you ever have to use injectable blood thinners. Even with excellent health insurance they are insanely expensive (along with scary to use).
We went ahead and scheduled the surgery without biopsy results, because I clearly couldn't be giving myself lovenox forever and it might be nice to once in a while eat something without pain. Dr. Piper's office squeezed me into a crowded OR schedule and sent me off to get a routine pre-surgery EKG. Someone has got to let these techs know that as soon as they smile sweetly and say they're just going to talk to the doctor for a minute their patient is going to become paralyzed with fear. Three EKGs in a row, just to make sure the results they were seeing were correct. Postpone the surgery. We're sending you to a cardiologist. If you feel one twinge in the area of your heart, go straight to the emergency room.
My mental state at this point was not too good. I called my mom in tears and then bawled all over Sarah and her sister Virginia when they came to pick me up from the doctor's office. It all turned out to be fine, though, because after a stress test and seeing the cardiologist I found out that my heart is just a little extra muscly (is that a word?) in one spot, which apparently made for a weird EKG. Two days of panic for nothing much. Gah!
About this time the biopsy result finally came back as benign. Relief! I don't know if I've ever felt that kind of relief or if I ever will again. I was floating three feet above the ground all day. The surgery was rescheduled for October 23, and I got to stop giving myself the blood thinner injections in preparation for going under the knife.
The day of the surgery was surreal. John took me to the hospital early in the morning, where we signed in and got all of our bracelets and tags and whatnot and then sat in a waiting room with a whole lot of nervous people. Then it was back to surgical prep, where extremely nice nurses made me take off all my clothes and then stuck giant needles into my arms. Now that I have a "history" of blood clotting I get the gigantic gauge needles. Woohoo! Then I had to sign a sheaf of papers while people patted me on the back and said everything was going to be just fine. It was at this point that the surgeon came in to talk to me and happened to mention that he never trusts the initial biopsies and that there was still the chance that we were dealing with a malignancy and that we wouldn't really know until we got the whole thing out of there and checked it out. Yay.
Somewhere in here I blacked out.
Several hours later I woke up in a post-operating observation room feeling incredibly woozy. John says I kept saying weird things like "What's really going on?" and "I can hear you talking about me!" and "I know there's something you're not telling me! Why am I still here?" Embarrassing. They did keep me under observation a little longer than usual because my pulse was pretty fast and not wanting to slow down. Eventually, though, I went to a recovery room where I spent the next four days ... well ... recovering.
I remember thinking after I had my first child that everyone had been so busy warning me about labor and delivery that they forgot to tell me that the real horrors are in the recovery. I feel the same way about recovering from surgery. Disgusting! I won't go into all the catheter-IV-wound-drainage detail here, but I will say I cheered when I could finally walk to the bathroom by myself (still dragging half the room with me, of course) and that nothing feels stranger than having tubes pulled out of various parts of your body. I got several visits from John and the kids and from Patrick and Eliza, which cheered me up, and I did a lot of sleeping. Things were going pretty smoothly except that my blood sugar seemed slightly high ... ahem. I finally got to go home on October 28, when I was met with hugs and kisses and lots of great art.
The post-surgical biopsy of all the stuff they took out of me showed that the cyst was indeed pre-cancerous, and that if we had waited too long to pull it out my life would have been considerably more difficult. Here's to Dr. James Piper and his gut instincts! And here's to the blessing of early detection!
It took a long time to start feeling relatively normal again, and I still can't go go go all day long like I used to (though this may be related to how OLD I'm getting). My recovery also hit a little snag right around Christmas, when I suddenly had to pee every two seconds and my mouth felt sticky with thirst even though I was draining my 10-ounce water bottle eight or nine times a day. After a few days of this, my legs started twitching like crazy and I couldn't sleep. I dropped about 15 pounds in a couple of weeks, and it was back to the doctor for me.
Remember when I said the surgeon warned of the teensy possibility that I would develop diabetes? I'm just lucky, I guess. I was diagnosed with a combination of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and it was back to daily injections for a while, though insulin is far easier to give yourself than is lovenox. To make a long story short (too late) my endocrinologist theorized that my pancreas was traumatized and decided to shut down for a while but would probably get going again after a rest. She was right, and after a few weeks we were able to back off on Type 1 treatment and concentrate on Type 2 treatment. I no longer have to inject insulin, but I do take metformin pills and follow a strict diet. The good news is that I'm losing weight along with keeping my blood sugar in check. The bad news is that my life is changed forever and I will have to relearn how to manage my blood sugar with every international move, because every move brings big dietary changes.
So that's my life now. I'm actually feeling pretty good these days, and Dr. Piper is confident enough about the results of the surgery that I don't have to have yearly checkups on my pancreas, though I will need to watch things more closely than your average Joe. The State Department medical folks are convinced it's safe to send me to most places in the world (though I am downgraded from worldwide clearance), and they're a tough group to please. Things should be OK.
I'll tell you what I learned, though. The blessing John and Patrick gave me when all of this was starting was absolutely right. I did learn how important I am in the lives of my children, and I had love and all kinds of support coming at me from friends and family throughout the world. None of us is alone. I guess I needed something to teach me about that.
I was sent home from my first stay in the hospital armed with lovenox injections and waiting for biopsy results and sort of went back to normal life (though I had to drop out of my Thai class ... lame). It took ages to get the biopsy result, and living with that anxiety was awful. I'd be going along fine and then right in the middle of making dinner or something I'd burst into tears and freak everybody out. And then there were the twice daily injections, which I had to psych myself up for every time. By the way, I hope none of you ever have to use injectable blood thinners. Even with excellent health insurance they are insanely expensive (along with scary to use).
We went ahead and scheduled the surgery without biopsy results, because I clearly couldn't be giving myself lovenox forever and it might be nice to once in a while eat something without pain. Dr. Piper's office squeezed me into a crowded OR schedule and sent me off to get a routine pre-surgery EKG. Someone has got to let these techs know that as soon as they smile sweetly and say they're just going to talk to the doctor for a minute their patient is going to become paralyzed with fear. Three EKGs in a row, just to make sure the results they were seeing were correct. Postpone the surgery. We're sending you to a cardiologist. If you feel one twinge in the area of your heart, go straight to the emergency room.
My mental state at this point was not too good. I called my mom in tears and then bawled all over Sarah and her sister Virginia when they came to pick me up from the doctor's office. It all turned out to be fine, though, because after a stress test and seeing the cardiologist I found out that my heart is just a little extra muscly (is that a word?) in one spot, which apparently made for a weird EKG. Two days of panic for nothing much. Gah!
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| Get-well flowers from the kids I teach at church |
About this time the biopsy result finally came back as benign. Relief! I don't know if I've ever felt that kind of relief or if I ever will again. I was floating three feet above the ground all day. The surgery was rescheduled for October 23, and I got to stop giving myself the blood thinner injections in preparation for going under the knife.
The day of the surgery was surreal. John took me to the hospital early in the morning, where we signed in and got all of our bracelets and tags and whatnot and then sat in a waiting room with a whole lot of nervous people. Then it was back to surgical prep, where extremely nice nurses made me take off all my clothes and then stuck giant needles into my arms. Now that I have a "history" of blood clotting I get the gigantic gauge needles. Woohoo! Then I had to sign a sheaf of papers while people patted me on the back and said everything was going to be just fine. It was at this point that the surgeon came in to talk to me and happened to mention that he never trusts the initial biopsies and that there was still the chance that we were dealing with a malignancy and that we wouldn't really know until we got the whole thing out of there and checked it out. Yay.
Somewhere in here I blacked out.
Several hours later I woke up in a post-operating observation room feeling incredibly woozy. John says I kept saying weird things like "What's really going on?" and "I can hear you talking about me!" and "I know there's something you're not telling me! Why am I still here?" Embarrassing. They did keep me under observation a little longer than usual because my pulse was pretty fast and not wanting to slow down. Eventually, though, I went to a recovery room where I spent the next four days ... well ... recovering.
I remember thinking after I had my first child that everyone had been so busy warning me about labor and delivery that they forgot to tell me that the real horrors are in the recovery. I feel the same way about recovering from surgery. Disgusting! I won't go into all the catheter-IV-wound-drainage detail here, but I will say I cheered when I could finally walk to the bathroom by myself (still dragging half the room with me, of course) and that nothing feels stranger than having tubes pulled out of various parts of your body. I got several visits from John and the kids and from Patrick and Eliza, which cheered me up, and I did a lot of sleeping. Things were going pretty smoothly except that my blood sugar seemed slightly high ... ahem. I finally got to go home on October 28, when I was met with hugs and kisses and lots of great art.
The post-surgical biopsy of all the stuff they took out of me showed that the cyst was indeed pre-cancerous, and that if we had waited too long to pull it out my life would have been considerably more difficult. Here's to Dr. James Piper and his gut instincts! And here's to the blessing of early detection!
It took a long time to start feeling relatively normal again, and I still can't go go go all day long like I used to (though this may be related to how OLD I'm getting). My recovery also hit a little snag right around Christmas, when I suddenly had to pee every two seconds and my mouth felt sticky with thirst even though I was draining my 10-ounce water bottle eight or nine times a day. After a few days of this, my legs started twitching like crazy and I couldn't sleep. I dropped about 15 pounds in a couple of weeks, and it was back to the doctor for me.
Remember when I said the surgeon warned of the teensy possibility that I would develop diabetes? I'm just lucky, I guess. I was diagnosed with a combination of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and it was back to daily injections for a while, though insulin is far easier to give yourself than is lovenox. To make a long story short (too late) my endocrinologist theorized that my pancreas was traumatized and decided to shut down for a while but would probably get going again after a rest. She was right, and after a few weeks we were able to back off on Type 1 treatment and concentrate on Type 2 treatment. I no longer have to inject insulin, but I do take metformin pills and follow a strict diet. The good news is that I'm losing weight along with keeping my blood sugar in check. The bad news is that my life is changed forever and I will have to relearn how to manage my blood sugar with every international move, because every move brings big dietary changes.
So that's my life now. I'm actually feeling pretty good these days, and Dr. Piper is confident enough about the results of the surgery that I don't have to have yearly checkups on my pancreas, though I will need to watch things more closely than your average Joe. The State Department medical folks are convinced it's safe to send me to most places in the world (though I am downgraded from worldwide clearance), and they're a tough group to please. Things should be OK.
I'll tell you what I learned, though. The blessing John and Patrick gave me when all of this was starting was absolutely right. I did learn how important I am in the lives of my children, and I had love and all kinds of support coming at me from friends and family throughout the world. None of us is alone. I guess I needed something to teach me about that.
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