Navel Maneuvers

Sorry that I haven't been keeping up with the blog. I am at home and you would think that I have plenty of time to do it.

I have been getting stronger each day and feel less and less like a beached whale. I am able to move with a lot more assurance and I do not live in dread of the occasional sneeze or cough. But I do find that I get tired very easily. I have Percocet for pain, but I find it makes me a bit sleepy.

First, the good news: The pathology report came back clear. All the lymph nodes were clear of cancer.

Yesterday, I went into the city for two doctor appointments. My friend Susi drove me down in my car and we parked in a parking lot. After last week's parking ticket fiasco, damned if I was going to park on the street.

I saw Dr. Caputo first. He took a look at my navel and put a new dressing on it. The main incision is healing very well, but my navel is not. It had started oozing quite a bit on Thursday and I had called Dr. Schwartz about it, but he said not to worry, especially since he would be seeing it the next day. I had been told to put silver nitrate ointment on the belly button and change the dressing once a day. It had oozed a bit since day one, but I was told this was to be expected. However, the amount increased greatly, which is what triggered the phone call.

Dr. Caputo said that I am healing very well, but that I need to be out of work for eight weeks from the surgery. Gee, twist my arm. He also gave me a full report on what he found. The adenocarcinoma was limited to the uterus and had penetrated only a couple of millimeters into the uterus wall. I have a thicker than average uterus due to fibroids, so this penetration was very minimal. He mentioned that there is some controversy over whether radiation is needed after this type of cancer. He is undecided as to whether radiation treatment is needed and appears to be leaning away from it. However, it would be a type of radiation delivered directly to what is called the vaginal cuff, the top end of my vagina right where my uterus used to be. I would undergo three sessions of this. Dr. Caputo said that he would make a final decision after I heal completely, but I get the idea that he will probably not use it.

Susi and I had lunch at a fast-food place called Chicken Bar and then went to Dr. Schwartz's office. Dr. Schwartz has the nicest staff! If wasn't for that god-awful mirror in his exam room, I would love going there. This is the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mirror that makes you want to have every type of plastic surgery ever invented and a few experimental ones for good measure. This mirror is so bad that you consider blinding yourself to prevent yourself from ever seeing your own body again.

I had full hopes that Dr. Schwartz would remove the final drain, but he decided to leave it in for another week. It is still collecting too much fluid to remove. He then took a good look at my belly button. He removed the sutures around the belly button, making it look a bit less like a hairy black eyeball. He also warned me that it appears to be healing from the inside out, which means that the top layer of skin may slough off. In other words, my navel may fall off. He gave me another prescription for antibiotics and told me to slather my navel with Bacitracin ointment instead of silver nitrate and change the dressing once a day.

I had still been holding out hope that I could go to my sister's house in Arizona with a side trip to Mexico next week. My brothers, sisters-in-laws, and I had been planning the trip since January. I finally realized that it would be foolish to travel with a surgical drain, sutures, and a belly button that might be about to fall off, especially to Mexico. I called Sue and gave her the bad news.

So what have I been doing, other than seeing doctors? Mostly sitting at home knitting and watching stupid movies. I am knitting a pair of socks and am about to start a sweater that I owe my friend Helen. Almost three years ago, I put up the offer to hand-knit a sweater at my church's auction. Helen won it, being the only person who bid on it, and has slowly come to the decision of what she wanted. She chose this lovely soft green alpaca and wants a cardigan with a bit of lace at the edges. So that is my big project for my time off.