Body Parts

The Surgeon's Report

2007-01-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

I met with a very nice surgeon, Dr. Semegran, about my hernia last week. He was recommended to me by my general physician, Dr. Chang, by a good friend who is a nurse case manager at the local hospital, and by the office of the gastroenterologist who did the colonoscopy last year.

So, for the fourth time within about 8 weeks, a doctor examined my abdomen and told me that I have a really large hernia. That makes five opinions (mine, Dr. Schwartz, Dr. Caputo, Dr. Chang, and now, Dr. Semegran). Experts agree.

Dr. Semegran asked me to undergo a CAT scan, which is the same CAT scan I am supposed to undergo as part of my one-year follow-up to the hysterectomy: A two-fer! That happens on the 29th. Based on the results from the scan, Dr. Semegran will decide whether the hernia repair can be done laparoscopically or not. Let us all pull for a laparoscopic repair, since recovery will be much shorter, and surprisingly, Dr. Semegran says that he can do a better job that way.

The repair will involve a large piece of mesh and plastic screws and cameras down tubes and I stopped listening after that because I was hysterically laughing at Dr. Semegran’s description of the screws.

I am getting ready for a trip to Arizona to visit my sister, Susan. I had intended to fly as cheaply as possible in as few flights as possible. I am still flying cheaply, but I will be hitting every airport in the United States both coming and going, it seems.

The airline (USAirways) tells me that I can carry a 55-inch carry on with me. This is a bag that has height, width, and length dimensions that add up to 55 inches. I want to go with a carry on because when you are stringing three flights going and three coming home together, the chances of your checked luggage keeping up with you start shrinking rapidly.

I intend to travel light, because I prefer it. Besides, Susan says she will let me wash my clothes at her house for a very modest fee.

She is also treating me to two concerts by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. One is a concert of classic music by Russian composers. The other is a concert of classical music by the Liverpudlian composers known as the Beatles.

A Bit of Good News

2007-01-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I got a bit of good news yesterday. I got a call from my endocrinologist telling me that the ultrasound scan of my thyroid showed nothing wrong. To recap. My endocrinologist had thought she felt a small lump in my thyroid during my last visit with her. Said lump does not appear to exist.

Finally, some good news to report here.

Stupid Banks

2007-01-11T13:37:00.001-08:00

Many of you know that I knit. I knit a lot. I like to knit and I like to be around knitters. I even like to knit socks.

So, when word reached me about an injustice done to sock knitters and to one company that deals in sock yarn, I decided I must tell you of it.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts, a tiny place in Oregon, makes a yarn called Socks That Rock. It is a fine, hand-painted yarn and it is expensive. I have never bought it, nor have I bought anything from Blue Moon, so I have no affiliation.

Blue Moon had a great idea, to create a club for sock knitters. The Rockin’ Sock Club. Members would sign up for $210 a year and would received several kits for socks over the course of the year. (I said it was expensive sock yarn, didn't I?) So many people signed up for this that the company had to create a waiting list, because they can’t make the yarn and kits fast enough.

A success story, no? No. It seems that the bank that Blue Moon runs its credit card charges through decided that there could not be so many people in the world who want to knit socks. First, they called Blue to Moon to ask about the Sock Club and were told that it was a going enterprise. Then they held a meeting. At the meeting, it was decided that the Blue Moon sock club must be a scam and that all the money collected for the sock club must be refunded immediately. You read that right: The bank refused to take the money.

The bank did this without even thinking to run just a tad of internet research. They would have easily found that many, many people (and not just women) knit in the United States and Canada and that many of them like to knit socks. They would have also seen that the sock club was not some cover story for terrorists, drug dealers, or porn merchants, but was a real and very lucrative idea.

Blue Moon had to zoom around quickly and arrange for a different bank to process the orders. They then sent out an email to all their subscribers about what happened to them. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee got wind of it. Stephanie blogs as the Yarn Harlot (http://www.yarnharlot.ca/). She is also the author of three books about knitting with another on the way and she goes around North America talking to groups of hundreds of knitters. She put the word out on her blog, but declined to name the bank. All hell is breaking loose in the knitting world even as I type this.

Many. many knitters are wondering if a business owned by men would have been hit with this injustice. Others point out that porn sites and illegal weapons merchants seem to have no problem with their banks. But selling sock yarn has to be a scam, right? Many of these knitters are demanding the name of the bank, which Blue Moon has not made public.

You think pissing off knitters is a good thing? Think twice. Stephanie started the Knitting Olympics last winter, which ended up getting mentioned in Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. You had to pick a knitting project that was a bit hard for you, start knitting when they lit the flame at the Winter Olympics and finish it before they put the flame out. Thousands, and I do mean thousands, too part.

More importantly, she founded Knitters Without Borders (Tricoteuses Sans Frontiere), which raises money for Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiere). Since the tsunami of 2004, she raised about $120,000. In December, she asked knitters to start donating again and set the goal at raising another $120,000. Knitters hit that target in 73 hours and 36 minutes.

I repeat, you do not give knitters a reason to get on your case. This story is going to hit the national airways by Monday. I am sure of it. And you heard it here almost first.

(Note: Check out Stephanie’s blog, even if you hate knitting. The woman writes severely funny.)

Hello Again

2007-01-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I have been remiss.

It is now more than 6 months since I last updated this blog. All of you. . . Some of you. . . OK, two of you complained about this.

My problem was that I was pretty sure that I didn’t have anything to say. I had come through the surgery well and didn’t have anything else I wanted to comment on. And unlike some people on the internet, if I didn’t have anything to say, I was damned well not going to say it.

Ah, but since this is a blog about my health and my health—or lack of it—has again reared its ugly head, it is time to blog about it. And please, someone tell me if I am whining.

The good news is that I only have a hernia. The bad news is that it is a very big hernia, which is actually good news because small hernias are the ones that cause problems.

When we last left our heroine, she was cheerfully recovering from an abdominal hysterectomy and her scar had healed quite nicely. For those of you who need an anatomy lesson, or at least one on my anatomy, the external scar is what is called a bikini line incision and is horizontally across my abdomen at the level of the top of a bikini bottom, if I wore a bikini, which I don’t.

However, the internal incision, where they cut through the muscles and into my abdomen (and repaired a moderately sized umbilical hernia while they were at it) is vertical. This incision has apparently given way. After the surgery, I was pleased as punch that I had a flat abdomen for the first time since I was around 32. I had no potbelly to speak of, or to run your hand over, not that anyone has tried lately.

But a potbelly developed. First, it was just a little pooching out above the exterior incision. But within a month or so, it got bigger and bigger. I saw Dr. Schwartz. He said it was a hernia. I saw Dr. Caputo. He said same.

Sigh.

So, I am now in the process of checking out good hernia repair people in the Putnam area because this time I want to stay closer to home.

In other news:

* My house is for sale. It has been for sale since early summer. It went on the market about a week before news reports appeared that the real estate market was tanking. (Sigh) It has been seen about 15 times or so. I was thinking it would not sell before spring, since no one usually shops for houses in winter, but this has been a very warm winter and it has been shown twice in January. I would like to stay in this area, but that depends on where I get a better paying job. (I had sworn to myself that I would not sell the house for at least a year after Bernie died. This was a wise idea that bit me on the ass. I knew by the fall of 2005 that I should sell the house but waited anyway. I could have sold it easier then. Sigh.)

* I am looking for a better paying job. What with the surgery, my freelance writing career took it on the chin and I have realized that I need a nice paying full time job. (Note: Please, someone hire me. Just don’t ask me to carry heavy objects, cf. hernia.)

* Is there anything in the universe as dismal as the dating situation for women my age? I had my profile on a couple of dating sites and have gotten nowhere. In a year, I have gone out on two blind dates. I did get turned down by one guy who found out that I had a blog and said that he did not want to be blogged about. As if I would. The worst experience was with eHarmony. Soulmate, my ass. About twice a month, I would be told that I was a good match for some guy. I would be instructed to contact him through the site. By the time I got to the site, he had already said “No, thanks.” I could understand this happening once or twice. But seven times in a row? Even I am not that revolting and these are men who are supposed to be looking for someone just like me. I complained to the management of eHarmony and asked why I was being matched with men who did not want to be matched with me. They wrote back and told me to put up nicer pictures of myself and punch up my profile (which I thought was fine). So, instead of that much-vaunted personality profile matching they say they use, it still came down to how well I photograph. (Big sigh)

* Wait, here is something more dismal! Another health problem! My thyroid has been acting up a bit. I am hypothyroid and take a thyroid supplement. About twice a year, I get my blood tested and they adjust the dose. During this check up, my endocrinologist said she thought she was feeling a node on my thyroid. This got checked by ultrasound last week, but I have not idea what is what yet. She also raised my thyroid dose, which left me feeling jittery and having trouble sleeping over the holidays. Instead of merry, I was cranky.

So, in general, all the parts of my life are up in the air. And I am so lousy at juggling.

Oh, and on a side note, early in the fall, my suscom.net, my ISP, was taken over by Comcast. There was supposed to be a period where mail sent to my old suscom.net address was to be sent to comcast.net. This did not happen. Several people thought I dropped off the face of the earth or some such thing. If you want to reach me, email me at valdeben@comcast.net.

Back to Grim Reality

2006-06-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

The Outer Banks of North Carolina are simply fabulous. A clean white sand beach that stretched north and south as far as the eye could see and a gentle surf, not too calm and not too rough. It was heaven on earth.

Actually, the whole vacation was pretty damned good. It was even an extra day long. I was originally supposed to drive to my brother’s house in New Jersey, stay overnight there on Thursday 6/15. He, his wife Jane, and I would then drive most of the way down to North Carolina Friday and stop off in a motel for the night. This would mean that we could hit the beach for a few hours on Saturday before we were allowed into the rental house at 4 p.m.

Instead, we got the word that we could have the house a day early, on Friday. So, we hit the road at 8:30 a.m. Friday with an incredibly packed car and drove straight through. Most of the car was full of food and supplies for the week. I brought coffee, boxed milk, sugar, and the makings for a large amount of baked ziti. Mike and Jane brought enormous amounts of paper products, several bottles of wine and liquor, and the makings of a really neat sausage and pasta dinner.

On the way, we touched base by phone with my brother Gerald (the official patriarch of the family) and his wife Helen, who were driving down together, and my nephew Paul (Gerald’s younger son), who was driving down with his kids, Matthew, Patrick, and Meaghan.

We got to the house around 4:30. I had never been to the Outer Banks before and was expecting the houses to be farther apart. Instead, these large, nice looking houses were about 10 feet apart. Our house was the third in from the beach, which meant an enormous walk of 100 yards to the beach.

The house was huge, at least 3000 square feet. Four bedrooms that slept two, one that slept four in bunk beds, and a daybed on the ground floor, where the ping-pong table was. I got the daybed because I was the only singleton in the group and because I signed onto this jaunt late. The fully stocked kitchen was on the top floor, with most of the bedrooms on the second floor. This made for a lot of stair climbing each day. There was a pool out back and a hot tub on the front deck, and three levels of deck.

The rest of the contingent arrived at midnight. My sister Sue and her husband Rob had flown out from Arizona to my nephew Mark’s house in Durham. From there, they drove to the Outer Banks with Mark and his wife Kim and their two daughters, Zoë and Talia.

Ten adults, five children under age 10, with one just under a year old. We had a blast. We annoyed each other occasionally, but had no arguments. This is hardly believable to most people. Then again, I don’t believe it either.

Each night, someone was in charge of putting together a dinner. We ate like royalty and the last night, we ate leftovers. Wednesday, Mark arranged a tasting of red wines, which was interesting. Paul made Bloody Marys most afternoons, and much beer was imbibed all week long. I made Margaritas a couple of times. Most nights at dinner, my brother Mike threw out a topic of conversation, such as having everyone name his or her favorite movies or books.

Most days, we all played it loose and did what we wanted to. I usually hit the beach around 11 and stayed until 3 or 4. Mark had set up a screen tent on the beach to keep the sun off his incredibly pale children. It was a very civilized beach. We had cold beers in a cooler.

On Tuesday, I had a personal red letter day. For the first time since the surgery, I did not have a single bandage on any part of my body.

Every day except one, I walked for an hour on the beach. Either I listened to a book on my MP3 player, or I walked with Jane and we talked.

Saturday afternoon, I saw a pod of dolphins. Like I said, it was a perfect vacation.

Vacation, Here I Come!

2006-06-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

I have been back to work at the bookstore since Sunday and have worked all of three days. This means it is time to go on a vacation. I am heading to North Carolina for fun and family reunion. Fourteen of my closest relatives and me. It should be a hoot.

Returning to work has not been too bad, except on my feet. Working in a bookstore is horrendously hard on your dogs. I have walked as much as 4.5 miles in an eight-hour shift, usually while carrying large piles of books.

I was touched and pleased that several customers came up to me to say that they had missed me and to ask how I was doing. The other staffers also said they missed me.

But I am going on vacation anyway.

I saw Dr. Schwartz again on Monday. He says my incision is healed and that the belly button is doing well.

I think I should stay out of his office for a while. I was sitting in the exam room waiting for him and I started doing that thing where you put your hands along the side of your face and pull back to see if you need a face lift. I am starting to get some vanity and I am not sure I like it.

Back to the Real World

2006-06-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

I have been attempting to get things done around the house before I go back to work (tomorrow) and on vacation (next Friday).

I have finally gotten around to completing a professional website for myself. It is at http://www.nasw.org/users/vdebenedette. This is the website that will, I am hoping, increase the number and profitability of my writing assignments.

I am continuing to heal and feel almost fine. I still have a bit of soreness around the incision. My belly button is totally numb. I still have to wear a bandage on that since it is oozing just a bit.

I am continuing to walk. I did 2.5 miles on Thursday, in between rainstorms. I am hoping to get out today and walk, since it is nice and cool, but it is clouding up again as I am typing. I can start doing sit-ups tomorrow, according to Dr. Caputo.

Since I feel that I have been through a lot this year, I decided to treat myself and bought an MP3 player. I got a Sandisk Sansa e150, which has 2 gigabytes, an FM tuner, a voice recorder, and can display a couple of photos. The display screen is tiny, so I won’t be uploading photos and I don’t care about the voice recorder, but I like the memory size and the FM capability. It uses one AAA battery, which means no having to recharge it or throw it away when the rechargeable battery dies.

As with anything electronic, the minute you buy a device, you hear about a much better model. There is now an MP3 player that is also a portable satellite radio player. Oh well. Next time.

Everyone has commented on how thin I look. I have lost about 15 pounds or so, with about 10 of that coming off during the surgery. Now that my stomach is really flat, however, my upper abdomen looks really fat. There is just no pleasing me.

Whole, With No Hole

2006-06-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

The hole where my belly button was has closed up. I am whole and holeless. It sort of looks like a navel again, although it is a petite little thing. It is maybe only about a half inch across. Dr. Schwartz said it would look like a navel, and by gum, it does. Not that I am about to have it pierced or anything. I might contemplate it, however.

I saw Dr. Caputo on Wednesday and he gave me a complete check-up. He said everything is healing nicely. After the exam, he told me that he had decided against vaginal cuff radiation. I see him again in two months for a follow-up Pap smear and after that, I will just have regular check-ups. Hooray.

However, while I was in his office, a miracle occurred. I got Dr. Caputo to laugh. He is a very serious man and frequently when I have cracked jokes he just sort of stared at me. But after he told me that I would not have to have the vaginal cuff radiation, in which a small radiation-emitting thingy is placed into my vagina near to where the cervix was (hence the term “cuff”), I got him. I told him that a friend of mine has referred to this as “radioactive sex.” He laughed.

My main incision, across from one hipbone to the other is almost completely healed, but there is about three inches that are still open and need to bandaged daily. The open area is starting to close up rapidly now.

And the rest of Wednesday was just wonderful, too. Before I saw Dr. Caputo, I ate lunch with Judy Chervenak. I was supposed to eat with both Judy and her husband, Frank, but I got stuck in traffic right by Yankee Stadium and ended up missing Frank, who had to fly to Boston. So, Judy and I ate at a wonderful Spanish restaurant named Malaga. Judy recommended the shrimp and it was wonderful, with enough garlic to knock a horse over. I had this fear that poor Dr. Caputo was going to be flattened by my breath, but then Judy was running off to a dentist’s appointment, which was probably worse.

After Dr. Caputo, I drove down to the Empire State Building and picked up Joan, since we were both going to Tarrytown to see our friend Lanning Taliaferro play in her steel band. Lanning, who is education editor for the Journal-News, plays in a Caribbean steel band called Steel Passion. You have to know Lanning to see why this is so funny, since she is incredibly pale skinned. But then again, so is the majority of the band. She never played a steel pan before last year, but now she is playing the rhythm guitar part in the band, hammering away on three pans.

The band was great and they were playing at the Washington Irving Boat Club, right on the Hudson and in the shadow of the Tappan Zee Bridge. There was a cool breeze off the river and Joan and I ate sausage and pepper heroes and I had a beer. The perfect end to the perfect day.

The other good news of the day is that Dr. Caputo said that I can go swimming again. He says that I can start doing sit-ups on June 11, which is the same day I go back to work.

He also said that I can have sex again. Now I just have to find a man I like. Hey, things are starting to go my way, so maybe I will.

That Creaky Noise You Hear Is . . . .

2006-05-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

I apologize for being slow in getting new posts added to the blog. I think of a good idea for a topic and then never get around to writing it.

My belly is doing quite nicely, but the rest of my body has decided to stiffen up. Or maybe it was stiff and sore for the last few weeks, but I didn’t notice because the abdomen was really sore. My joints all feel like someone added a little cement to the normal synovial fluid.

Example: I went to reach for something on a top shelf and my shoulder and arm seriously complained about doing this much moving. They bitched, they moaned, and I swear to God I heard distinct creaky noises, very similar to rusty hinges.

Because of this, I have started stretching as much as possible. I saw Dr. Schwartz this week and asked him about starting to do sit-ups and other exercises. He nixed the sit-ups, but said stretching and other exercise was probably fine. I see Dr. Caputo this Wednesday and will ask him what he suggests.

I have been hunched over a bit for the last six weeks. I guess major abdominal surgery will do that to your posture. Stretching should help this, too. As I write this, I am throwing my shoulders back a bit and sitting up straighter.

I am trying to take a long walk each day. This means that I get a long walk in every third day. On Thursday, I walked 1.5 miles and didn’t have too much of a problem. I did it pretty much without stopping, although I had to pause and pull up on the abdominal binder a couple of times. Wednesday, I walked around in Manhattan and probably did a mile. Yesterday, it rained. (What, you want me to get wet?)

I am only wearing the binder when I take walks now or when I drive. My whole abdomen still feels a bit jiggly when I don’t have it on. Things feel like they are still a bit loose and are definitely a bit sore. I feel like my abdominal muscles are all very loose, which is why I would like to start exercising them. Still, I think my upper abdomen is a bit swollen and maybe sit-ups would be rushing it a bit.

Stamina is another problem. I have to get moving again just so that the first day back at work doesn’t kill me. I work part-time in a bookstore. I have worn a pedometer at the bookstore and have clocked as much as four miles in an eight-hour shift. The store I work as is large. Going from the front entrance to the back and then up to the front again is 0.1 mile.

That said, let me go take a walk.

Dreams and Prayers (or More Scenes from a Recuperation)

2006-05-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what it means but I have had a couple of odd dreams since the surgery.

About two days after the surgery, I dreamt that I was walking around the hospital looking for the oxygen cannula, that two pronged plastic thing that sits under your nostrils and gives you oxygen. When I woke up, I discovered that I had knocked it away from my face, so I readjusted it and went back to sleep.

Two weeks ago, I had the oddest dream about my mother. In the dream, I was hurt and angry that, not only had she not come to see me when I was in the hospital, she had not even come up to see how I was doing now that I was home. She hadn’t even called. In the dream, I was getting more upset and angry that she was ignoring me. I woke up from the dream still feeling angry and hurt that she had not shown any concern about my surgery. It was a typical bad-dream emotional backwash. After a couple of minutes, when I was more awake, I remembered that my mother died more than 15 years ago. This made me feel sort of stupid at getting angry in the dream. Freud would probably have a field day over that one.

I also remember this odd reverie I had the first day or so after surgery. I was lying in the hospital bed, still sort of out of it from the anesthesia and the pain killers, and I decided that I ought to pray. So, I started saying an Our Father to myself.

Our heaven who art in Father. Not right.

Art Father who our in heaven. That sort of sounded right, but not quite. I tried that one again and got stuck on the Art Father part. Art. God. Creation and creator. I started this theological discussion with myself about God the creator and art being a creation and this went around in circles for a bit. I thought the whole thing was just blindingly brilliant and a major breakthrough in religious thought before I fell asleep again.

I didn’t remember this again until a few days ago and I laughed myself silly over it. This may prove that you should not pray under the influence of painkillers.

I am doing excellently. I feel much better, but not stronger. I have to build up my stamina a lot before I go back to work. I no longer have to wear the abdominal binder all the time, but I usually wear it if I am walking.

However—insert trumpet fanfare here—I am driving again. Believe me, this feels great. I have gone shopping for groceries and gone to the pharmacy and driven myself to church. Yesterday, I drove to the Danbury Mall and met Cathy, who drove down from Springfield, Mass., to have lunch with me. My college friends are the best. After lunch, I had a haircut and did some shopping.

I am also able to sleep on my side now. I had been sleeping on my back for the last few weeks, which meant that I was snoring. My mouth would be terribly dry when I woke up and sometimes it was the dryness that woke me up.

Things just keep improving.

Scenes From a Recuperation

2006-05-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

I am really feeling much better each day, but I still get tired rather easily. The pain is much diminished, except for this cramp that I get occasionally on one side of my abdomen, which I have to remember to tell someone about.

The main incision is healing fine. It is now starting to itch, which everyone tells me is a sign that it is healing. A damned annoying sign, if you ask me.

The hole where my belly button was is doing OK, I suppose. I am still packing it with wet gauze twice a day and covering it with a dressing. I see Dr. Schwartz again on Friday. It just seems a little bit deep to me. I have no idea what this is going to look like when it heals. At the moment, it is deep enough to store spare change in.

I am walking about half a mile on most days. I them come home and take a nap. I am also doing some housecleaning, including cooking for myself and doing laundry. And my napping skills are simply to die for.

So what have I been doing most days? I have been playing around on the computer and watching a lot of television. Mostly I have been watching movies, but I have finally caught up with CSI. In the past, I have rarely watched any series or network television because I have not been home most nights. I confess that I have never seen The West Wing, 24 or Lost. But one cable channel plays two episodes of CSI back to back every night and I have gotten hooked on it. Or maybe I just have a serious lech for William Petersen.

I have also indulged in watching movies, lots and lots of movies. I have seen two different versions of “Jane Eyre,” the Orson Welles version and the William Hurt version. I have watched “Kung Fu Hustle,” which is what you get if you cross a Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes cartoon with a kung fu movie. I also watched “Zatoichi,” which is a kung fu movie that ends with this extended tap dance scene for no apparent reason. (Alright, I tend to like kung fu movies. So sue me.)

And I have been knitting a lot. I have started on Helen’s green sweater, the one that has been two years in the decision process. I have finished a pair of tiger striped socks and started another pair in red and multicolored wool. I am a happy camper.

So, for the bulk of this recuperation, people have been bringing me food or taking me out to dinner, and I have been laying on the couch reading or watching television and knitting. Frankly, I see no profit in getting well.

Further Navel Maneuvers

2006-05-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

I had my regular Friday date with Dr. Schwartz today. And YESSSSS!! The final drain came out. I would get up and dance but I am still a bit too sore for that. I was thoroughly, completely, and utterly sick of having a plastic appendage that had to be emptied twice a day.

In addition to taking out the drain, Dr. Schwartz also took out my belly button.

For those of you who have not been following along, I had an umbilical hernia that was fixed during the same surgery as the total hysterectomy. The hysterectomy incision, or at least the one that shows, is horizontal and pretty much goes from my left hip bone to my right along what would be a bikini line if I ever had the figure to wear a bikini. (I once did have a figure for a bikini, but I was five at the time.) There is another, interior incision that is vertical.

Fixing the hernia created a circular incision around my navel. When I first looked at this after surgery, my belly button was a rather ugly purple and there were black sutures around the incision. It looked like a hairy eyeball.

For the last two weeks, Dr. Schwartz has been telling me that it looked like my navel was healing from the inside out and that the surface skin of the navel itself might fall off. Last week, he removed the sutures, and for the past week, I have slathered Bacitracin on the wound and changed the dressing twice a day.

Today, Dr. Schwartz took a look at it and said that he was going to debride the wound. This is doctor talk for “remove dead tissue.” Lucky for me, the entire navel is numb, because it looked like he was pulling out a lot of stuff. He packed it into a little vial and said that he would be sending it out to be checked by a pathologist. What was left was a hole where my belly button used to be. This hole is about half an inch deep, or maybe even deeper. I have to pack it twice a day with gauze soaked in saline and cover that with a clean dressing.

By this time in my life, I should have a nursing degree. Dr. Schwartz asked me if I could do this myself and said that he could arrange for a nurse if I couldn't. I looked at him like he had two heads. Pack an open wound with wet gauze? Piffle. I had cleaned much bigger surgical wounds on Bernie and had no problems. I could do this. I am beginning to wonder just what I will blanche at. Setting my own fractured arm? Suturing closed a knife wound?

At what point do I turn into someone normal who runs screaming at the sight of blood?

Navel Maneuvers

2006-04-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Home, Sweet Home (Or How Many Parking Tickets Can You Get in One Day?)

2006-04-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

I came home on Thursday. All the way home. I was so happy I could spit.

My pastor Terri was coming up to Putnam from the Philadelphia area and offered to pick me up and bring me home and I jumped at the idea. My family wanted me to stay with them for a few more days, but I was eager to get home. I did not need to have someone be around me continuously, I could walk up and down stairs when I needed to, and there were no physical reasons to stay.

Terri and I got to my house around 2:30 or so and I entered the domain of cat hair. I have two long-haired cats and it appears that both went into shedding overdrive while I was gone. The house smelled musty, but it was home. I made myself a sandwich and settled in.

At around 5 that night, my friend Wendy called and suggested that she bring over eggplant parmagiana fro the Riverside Restaurant in Cold Spring. She did and we ate like queens. I started to poop out around 9 p.m. and Wendy went home.

The next morning, Diane Picirilli picked me up to take me into Manhattan for my first post-surgical meeting with Dr. Schwartz. Diane is the youth minister at St. Andrew's and is a sweethart. She is strongly considering going into the priesthood and is in the period of the process called discernment. We discussed her calling, and the kids at St. Andrew's, and chatted about the church in general both going down and coming back.

The appointment was at 10 a.m. and we made good time. We even found what we thought was a great parking spot on the street.

Dr. Schwartz's office staff greeted me like an old friend. His assistant even helped me undress in the exam room. He popped in and started looking at things and was very happy at how well I was healing. My navel looks very dark but he said that it appeared to be healing well and that the main incision looked beautiful.

But he would only remove two of the drains. He said that there was still a little too much drainage to remove all three. I argued and then tried whining, which didn't work. The removal hurt like bloody hell. He told me to say Poughkeepsie while he removed the first drain. I may have said something stronger. For the second drain, I asked to bite down on a gauze pad. That helped more than Poughkeepsie did. He bandaged me up and Diane and I left.

We left and went back to what I could have sworn up and down was a perfectly legal parking spot. I had read the signs, she had read the signs, and we both thought the signs said that it was legal to park there. We parked at around 9:40. Parking was not legal until 10 a.m. and Diane had had a parking ticket plastered on her windshield at 9:45.

So we were bitching and moaning about it most of the way home. I wanted to buy Diane lunch and suggested that we stop in Mount Kisco, to the Mount Kisco Kosher Deli. Sadly, the deli is no longer there. We walked a block or so and ate at Cosi's, a very crowded and very noisy place that made really good sandwiches. I found myself to be just a bit antsy in the crowd as we waiting in line to order and get our food. I was nervous about getting bumped into.

Diane and I walked back to her car and found a parking ticket on it. We had parked at a meter than had half an hour on it. Diane put more money into that meter. I saw her do it. She is going to contest this one and I will testify on her behalf if needed.

Two parking tickets in one day? On one car? On one mission of mercy? Yeesh.

Looking back over the last week

2006-04-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

By the way, the title of the previous blog is a theft from Christopher Moore’s “The Stupidest Angel” In Chapter 15, all hell breaks loose. Chapter 16 consists completely of “Well, *that* happened.”

It is Tuesday night, a full week since my surgery. I am still at my brother Mike’s house and expect to be here until Thursday morning.

Today, I spent the day alone and took a shower, so I will do fine on my own. If I went up and down the stairs once, I did it about 10 times. I took a walk around the cul de sac my brother and sister-in-law live on and I power napped. It was tough work, but I was up to the job.

All I have taken for the pain today is Tylenol extra strength. I am also on antibiotics. As far as the abdomen and surgical incision, I ache, but it is not really painful. I do have to plan out moves like standing up from a chair, especially a couch, but I am able to maneuver myself around OK. Curiously, walking up stairs (and I normally run) is easier than walking down stairs. I was expecting the reverse. Sometimes I take it one step at a time (put left foot on step, put right foot on same step, repeat), sometimes I do better than that (put left foot on step, put right foot on next step, repeat).

The bane of my existence and the source of most of my discomfort are the three surgical drains that are still attached to me.

(GROSSNESS ALERT!!

A short diversion on the purpose and substance of surgical drains: Frequently after major surgery, the surgeon wishes to ensure that fluids do not collect in the surgical area or along the incision. These pockets of fluid are usually lymph and a bit of blood and whatever. Fluid build up can cause pressure on the incision, it can become infected, and is not a good thing.

A surgical drain is essentially a plastic tube with one end in the surgical field or along the incision and the other end routed out of the body to a clear plastic bulb about the size and general shape of a hand grenade. The fluid collects in the bulb instead of the incision and everyone is happy. The patient, or a nurse if you are still in the hospital, empties out the drains two or three times a day and measures the output.

So I have three ball-like contraptions dangling from plastic tubes coming out of the lowest part of my abdomen. They are sutured in place and I can pin them to my clothing as long as I pin them lower than where they exit.

I shall be blunt. I feel like a man with three testicles. These #$%^%@* things interfere with walking, are uncomfortable when they are resting against my leg, are uncomfortable anywhere else, and are the biggest pain in the ass of this whole experience. End of alert.)

I have an appointment Friday morning with Dr. Schwartz and, please dear baby Jesus, he will remove them then. This depends on how much fluid is still being collected.

So, where shall I start on the whole surgical experience?

First and foremost, New York Presbyterian Hospital is the most professional and best-run hospital I have ever been in. Everyone who came to visit me commented on how clean and nice it was. From the surgeons to the cleaning staff, everyone was cheerful and eager to help me get better. Even the doctors asked me if there was anything I needed.

I had hot and cold running medical students seeing me several times a day. NYP is the teaching hospital of Cornell’s medical school (excuse me, the Joan and Sanford I. Weil Medical College of Cornell University) and I had these three sweet kids looking in on me. Their main job was to take me for walks, including on Wednesday, the first day after surgery.

The student I got to know best was Ida Wong, a graduate of the University of California at San Diego. I asked her why she was going into medicine. She told me she decided to be a doctor because she came down with leukemia while she was a teenager. Ida was cheerful, funny, scary bright, and very nice. She will make a superb doctor. Her cohorts were Jake McSparron (I think I got his name right) and Veronica, whose last name escapes me completely. Jake was a card. As Ida and Veronica were helping me out of bed for the first time, for my first walk, he said he wanted to stretch because he didn’t want to pull a hamstring keeping up with me.

Now, down to the nitty gritty.

I had to be at NYP at 7:15 a.m. last Tuesday. On Monday, Dr. Luo, Dr. Caputo’s associate called me and asked me if I had any last minute questions, which I did.

My brother Mike drove me in and we went to the Admit-Day surgical unit. I told Mike to stick around for about 45 minutes and to go home once I was settled in. I spent too many hours waiting at hospitals during surgery while Bernie was alive and there is almost not really good reason to do it.

I put on the hospital gown and took off my watch and glasses and put them in the duffle bag containing all my stuff. They weighed me. I waited. Several other people were meandering around in hospital gowns. It was the world’s most boring pajama party.

At around 9:30, I was told that Dr. Caputo was done with his previous surgery and I walked down a couple of hallways to the surgical suite. No wheelchair, no gurney, just me walking. Again, stand around and wait.

Dr. Caputo came out in the hall and we chatted for a bit. I asked a couple of last minute questions and we chatted.

Dr. Schwartz came around and I stepped into the operating room so that he could mark up my belly with hieroglyphics or graffiti.

My last memory is getting up on the table and saying something about the egg-crate foam mattress. I don’t think I finished the sentence.

My next memory is being in the recovery room and being told that everything was very clean. I felt like a dump truck had run over me several dozen times but even then I thought that it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting and as long as I laid in the slightly head-up, slightly foot-up position I was in, I would be fine.

What I didn’t know was that it was around 9:30 at night. My brother Mike had started to get worried around 3 p.m. when he hadn’t heard anything. Dr. Caputo called him a couple of hours later to give him a report.

My friend Lori Beninson is an EMT at NYP. Actually, I think she is in charge of EMTs there. She knew I was having the surgery and stopped by the recovery area a couple of times and started to get worried when I didn’t show up by around 5. I finally showed up and started to come out of the anesthesia

The next day I was pretty groggy. I was never really awake, even during the walk, but I was never really asleep. The first thing I know is that Dr. Frank Chervenak pops in to see me with a big grin and the news that Dr. Caputo thought everything had gone extremely well. Frank is Judy Chervenak’s husband and is also head of OB/GYN at NYP and Weill Cornell.

Frank popped in to see me almost each day I was there and, each day he came, he brought me a Diet Coke and the New York Times. He is just the happiest, nicest man on the planet and I could not quite tell him that I hate diet soda. (Friday and Saturday, he skipped since he was taking his oldest son down to Atlanta to visit Emory University. I joked with Judy that he was going to visit the Coca Cola headquarters. He actually did.)

A couple of hours later, Judy popped in to say hello. She also brought me the most beautiful scarab necklace to replace the one that she gave me from Egypt that I briefly thought I lost. She was scared that she had given me bad luck Talk about friends!! If I so much as whispered that I might need something, Judy went and got it. I would kiss the ground that those two walk on if I could bend over that far without hurting.

I spent most of Wednesday in a blur, partly because of the meds and partly because my duffle bag still had not been brought to my room and I didn’t have my glasses. The bag finally arrived.

I was off to a good start and things went better from there. Friends stopped in to visit. Joan brought me lovely white flowers and read to me from a hysterically funny obit in the New York Times. Yes, she came to my hospital bed to read me an obituary, but she knows I love interesting ones. This was the widow of a man named Nudie who was famous for creating over-the-top rhinestone suits for country musicians. Her name was Nudie, too.

That evening, my cousins Virginia, Denise, and Michele came by with my Uncle Micky. They brought this rabbit doll that sang and danced to “Singing in the Rain.” And they sang and danced as they brought it in. I had to beg them to stop because it really hurt when I laughed.

I shall continue this tomorrow.

Well, That Happened.

2006-04-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Just to drop you all a line that I made it through the surgery fine and am out of the hospital. I am spending a day or two at my brother Michael's house. I am typing this on my nephew Thomas's keyboard, which is annoyingly small.

The surgery went very very well. Dr. Caputo said that he thinks he got everything. Pathology reports won't be finished until sometime this week, but he thinks everything looks very very good.

I still have some surgical drains in the wound, which are as annoying as all get out. With any luck, they will be out by the end of the week.

The pain was bad, but less than I was expecting. Then again, I was expecting screaming agony. They did rig my up with a fun IV that gave me Dilaudid (a pretty potent painkiller) whenever I wanted. They refused to let me take it home.

So, I am moving slowly but steadily and each day is a bit better than the last. I took a shower at the hospital this morning, which was nirvana.

I do get tired easily so I will fill you in about my hospital adventures in small doses.

I cannot thank you all enough for your care, love, and prayers during all this.

(The spell check wanted to replace "painkiller" with "binuclear." I am trying so hard not to laugh because it hurts.)

The Calm Before the Storm

2006-04-09T18:08:00.000-07:00

It is now Sunday night. My brother Gerald is picking me up tomorrow to take me to my brother Michael’s house. My bag is packed. I am bringing comfortable clothing. I am bringing books. I am bringing sock yarn to knit into socks. I have arranged for neighbors to watch the house and check my cats.

And I am also bringing with me a hell of a lot of prayers, good wishes, and nice thoughts. Perhaps I should say I am bringing a heaven of a lot.

And yes, I am finally nervous. I am nervous about the pain and about whether I can be on my own when I get out of the hospital. I have been told to ask for pain medication early and often. I intend to. What am I afraid of? The worst-case scenario is that I have to stay at Mike’s or Gerald’s for a couple of days of recuperation. Big deal.

(OK, I am a liar. As a medical writer with more than 20 years of experience, I can think of several worst-case scenarios that would curl your hair. I refuse to tell you about them.)

My mantra continues to be “But other than that, I’m fine.”

Heading Toward Surgery

2006-04-07T23:21:00.000-07:00

So things are proceeding. My surgery is set for next Tuesday and I am trying to get my act together so that I can leave everything in as much order as possible. (I am laughing out loud as I write this at the idea that I can get some order into this house.)

Wednesday, I went to New York Presbyterian for the preadmission testing. They took blood, interviewed me about any allergies I had, did an electrocardiogram, and took a chest x-ray. I also learned that I have to undergo another freaking bowel prep before surgery.

The surgery I don’t mind. But another bowel prep!!! I am not a happy camper. Shouldn’t there a state law or something against making someone do one of these more than once in a month? And, of course, the directions for this one have to be different than the one I did for the colonoscopy! This time I start the liquid only diet on Sunday, drink 10 ounces of citrate of magnesia that evening, keep drinking only fluids all day Monday, and then drink another bottle of citrate of magnesia again Monday night. Then, nothing by mouth after midnight. For some reason, these directions ban apple cider.

Today, I met with plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Mark Schwartz. I need a reconstructive surgeon to collaborate with Dr. Caputo, the gynecologic oncologist because I will be having a rather large abdominal incision with a repair of the hernia. Dr. Caputo suggested it and, what Dr. Caputo wants, Dr. Caputo gets. I was a bit worried about meeting a big-time Manhattan plastic surgeon. Would his office be full of siliconed and Botoxed blondes? Worse, would he have Picassos on the wall? I mean would you trust a plastic surgeon that admires a painter that puts three noses on a woman?

Dr. Schwartz turned out to be very nice and so was his office staff. He earned my eternal friendship by telling me that I don’t look my age, and I wasn’t even wearing makeup. He sat me down and discussed my surgery with me.

Then I went into an exam room, where I was confronted with an absolutely unforgiving wall-to-wall mirror. Lord, there was enough cellulite and fat for three people. Dr. Schwartz came in and actually put me at ease in front of that mirror. Then, he checked out my abdomen. He even took pictures of me practically naked. I told him that I have very little vanity and that maybe I should go out and buy some. He laughed.

The bad news is that my hernia is not a small one, according to Dr. Schwartz. He then discussed the possibility that a general surgeon might be called in to help. We are talking three surgeons, no waiting, here. At what point will they need a choreographer?

My friend Judy met me in Dr. Schwartz’ waiting room after the exam and we went to her apartment for lunch. She did her version of home cooking: she sent out for food. Judy has graduated college, medical school, and law school, but cannot cook. But she is wise enough to know she cannot cook (unlike some who try anyway) and brave enough to not have a problem with it. When I grow up, I want to be Judy.

* * *

There is the possibility that this will be the last time I can post before my surgery. Since this is a very public forum, I figure it is the right place to make a couple of announcements. Here goes:

If something goes wrong and I go into a persistent vegetative state, like Terry Schiavo, please have someone come in and shoot me, OK? I do not want a feeding tube unless I am well enough to ask for one myself. Anything that is expected to give me back a reasonable quality of life—meaning that I am able to think and do most things for myself—is OK. If it looks like I will become a basket case, do not resuscitate me. Are we all clear?

And if, God forbid, I do end up like poor Terry, please make sure that Senator Bill Frist, Terry Randolph, Governor Jeb Bush, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or anyone of similar ilk comes no where near me.

And if someone goes onto my computer and sees some suspicious, and perhaps salubrious, sites in the history of my Internet browser, I have absolutely no idea how they got there. And I am sticking to that story.

A Doctor a Day Keeps the Apples Away

2006-04-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

Last week, I banked another pint of blood and saw three different medical specialists. At this point, I am trying to figure out if there is any area of medicine that is not going to get a chance at poking or prodding me.

As I said in a previous post, I donated another pint of blood to myself. That bruised the insides of both of my elbows since it took them two tries to get a vein.

Tuesday, I saw Dr. Han, the radiologist who treated me for my eye problem last fall, for a follow-up session. She is such a sweetheart! I told her about the cancer diagnosis and she reiterated what everyone else has said: that this is common and that a total hysterectomy will take care of it.

She also told me that she had had a hysterectomy and had done well during it.

Wednesday, I started the clear liquid diet for the colonoscopy and I saw a cardiologist. Generally, I have never like cardiologists, or cardiology for that matter. Cardiologists tend to be pompous and, in my experience, not the warmest of individuals. This dates back to my time spent as a staff writer for Cardiology Times. It is the only medical specialty that I have never felt any affinity for.

However, Dr. Jeffrey Fisher was wonderful, and for that matter, so is his office staff. His main office is packed will all kinds of neat knick-knacks, mostly golf and Sherlock Holmes memorabilia, as well as many paintings and art of shore and country scenes. I know a lot of doctors who love golf, but I’ve never seen one before who had a set of clubs in every room of his office, including the exam room!

He and I immediately started discussing such trivia as the friendship between Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini and other amusements. He said that he was going to administer an echocardiogram in that office and then I would have to go across 72nd Street and down a block to his other office, where I would take a cardiac stress test on a treadmill.

I got into the paper gown and Dr. Fisher administered the echocardiogram, running the ultrasound probe around my chest and commenting on how healthy my heart looked. I told him I was happy to hear that, but that most men commented on my breasts first. He laughed.

Dr. Fisher then gave me a puzzle to figure out. I was to guess what magazine title décor in his two offices represented. I am nothing if not a sucker for a puzzle.

I trotted across the street and into the second office. The décor here was different. The walls were all white and all the art was black and white photographs of New York City. Not a golf club in sight.

At this office, I met a lovely lady named Natalia, who said she was from the Ukraine and had a daughter named Valeria. She explained the whole stress test to me and attached a handful of sensors to my chest. She also double-tied my shoelaces for me. The whole while I pondered the puzzle.

I got on the treadmill and Dr. Fisher came in. I told him that I thought his offices represented Time Out New York, because the first office was all about his hobbies and the second was all about New York. He said it was a good guess, but that the correct answer was Town and Country. Close, but no cigar.

The stress test went very well. If you’ve never had one of these, they start you out at a very slow walk on the level and then increase the speed and incline of the treadmill until you reach a maximum heart rate. You are basically having an electrocardiogram while you are exercising. The test was supposed to end when my heart rate was 146 beats per minute, but he let me go all the way to 160 with no problems whatsoever.

The bottom line is that my heart is in excellent shape.

Thursday, I had the colonoscopy. As everyone said, the test was not bad, but the preparation for it is a pain. I could not have anything to eat that I could not see through all day Wednesday. At 6 p.m., I had to drink a cleansing solution. I had feared that I was going to have bad stomach cramps. I had no cramps but did get intimately acquainted with my bathroom. I also woke up four or five times during the night to go, which meant that I was tired by the time I got to Putnam Hospital Center.

My friend, Gail Kalinoski, picked me up and drove me to the hospital. The only problem was that they had a bit of trouble finding a good vein to use for the anesthesia. The anesthesiologist too two tries to find a good one, adding more bruises to my poor arms.

Less than 2 hours after I got there, my friend, Linda Press, picked me up. I hit Blockbuster and treated myself to three movie rentals. And my lower intestine is also in good shape.

Calmness

2006-03-27T22:33:00.002-08:00

I have been calm about my diagnosis of cancer. I have told friends and family matter-of-factly of the diagnosis and the upcoming hysterectomy, and cracked a few jokes. Most of the people around me have been more upset about it than I have been. What bothers me is that I don’t know why I am taking this so calmly.

Shouldn’t I be more worried? More agitated? Shouldn’t I have cried some or kicked a wall? If I had kicked a wall, I would probably have cancer and a broken toe, but I would have released some emotion.

As I have said, this past year has been a lousy one. It is just over a year since I woke up next to the cooling body of Bernie, the man that I loved and lived with for 20 years. I took that relatively calmly, too.

This is not to say that I did not mourn. I mourned and grieved, but I got things done and cried surprisingly little. I chalked this plaid reaction up to the precarious health that Bernie had been in for many years. For about half of the time we were together, he was on dialysis. Three times a week, he would go to be attached to a machine and have his blood cleaned.

Not every time, but often enough, after I kissed him goodbye and he walked out the door to a treatment, I would think of all the things that could go wrong. Being hooked up to a dialysis machine is very safe, but there are several things that can go wrong, an air embolus or a chemical imbalance or a break in one of the tubes. And he might not come home. Bernie and I also spoke often about the fact that he would probably die years before I did. He was the world’s worst pessimist and, of course, he had to be right about that.

So, I was quite used to the idea that he could die at any time. This is why I believe that I took his rather sudden death as calmly as I did. He was also woefully unhappy in his last few years. Years of dialysis and immunosuppressive drugs had taken their toll. He was depressed and in pain a great deal. His death was a great relief for him. It was also a relief for me.

A few weeks after Bernie died, I had to put our dog down.

Petie was a pit bull with a serious aggressions problem, not a good mix. We had had her since she was 6 weeks old. We trained her, worked with her, medicated her, but she was unpredictable and had come out of a litter with serious behavioral problems. Experts, including professional dog trainers and my vet, had told me that Petie was a disaster waiting to happen. She bit me several times and bit Bernie once on the face, but he loved her and would not hear about putting her down despite the danger. Her aggression problems escalated after Bernie died and I reached the painful decision to have her euthanized. I shed a few tears, but remained calm.

I went through the whole annoying eye problem calmly.

Several people have commented on how brave I am. I think I am just calm.
Bravery implies that I have a choice. So far, I have had few choices. The best treatment for what I have is a total hysterectomy, so I will be having that done. I don’t think I am brave. As Bernie used to say when people called him brave for dealing with his kidney disease, “If I thought being a craven coward would help, I would do it.”

My question is: When will I stop being calm and what will happen to me then?

The only cracks in my calmness come in sleep. I normally rarely remember my dreams, but twice in the last two weeks, I have had what can only be seen as anxiety dreams. These are dreams where I am prevented from getting somewhere or getting something done. Maybe this is a good outlet for feelings that are not coming out any other way.

Today, I banked a second and final pint of blood. I went down to the New York Blood Center, which is a pleasant place to donate blood. They tried putting the needle into the same vein as they used last Thursday. At first, the stick just hurt more than usual, but was bearable. I mentioned the discomfort and the technician moved the needle slightly. She must have hit a nerve or something. I screamed and hit the ceiling. She immediately pulled out the needle and called over another tech to stick me in my other arm.

I have donated well over a gallon of blood over the years and I may have reached two gallons. I was even an on-call blood donor for a few years and was called in when they needed B+ blood. So I know what it should feel like, and this was certainly not it. The second stick went much easier and everything went well. I sat and had orange juice and a cup of coffee afterward.

Years ago, when I lived in New Jersey, I donated blood once or twice at the American Red Cross center in Montclair. Montclair then was simply full of elderly white- or blue-haired ladies who spent hours volunteering at places like the Red Cross. At the Montclair center, you would donate blood, and then this 92-pound lady would walk you to a table and offer you tea sandwiches, little triangles with the crusts cut off and filled with ham salad or tuna. They would get you a cup of coffee or tea and coo over you and tell you how wonderful you were to donate blood. The New York Blood Center was wonderful and had a nice array of little packets of Nabisco cookies and excellent coffee, but it doesn’t compare.

Tomorrow, I turn my attention back to my eye. I have a follow-up visit with the radiologist. Wednesday, I start a clear diet for the colonoscopy and see the cardiologist. Thursday, I have the colonoscopy.

Name That Blog!!

2006-03-24T21:31:00.000-08:00

The original name for this blog had been "My Right Eye," which made sense when it was about the saga of my bout with an autoimmune inflammation behind my eye. Now this blog is about my diagnosis and treatment for endometrial cancer.

I have changed the name to "A Thin Slice of Health," but I am not really fond of it.

Does anyone have a better name for this blog? Anyone coming up with a funny, original, and different name for the blog will be treated to dinner with me. (I can hear all the gasps now!)

So, start those entries rolling in.

In the meantime, you can all add comments to this blog. A blog is supposed to be a dialog, not just a diary.

Do Do that Voodoo That You Do So Well

2006-03-23T18:25:00.000-08:00

So, I was contemplating my run of bad luck and I mentioned this to my sister, Susan. Her response was, “What bad luck?”

Starting in November 2004, I totaled a car. In February 2005, my oldest cat died and then Bernie died three days later. About six weeks after that, I had to put our dog down.

My eye started to act up and got worse, and had to be treated with high doses of prednisone. I then had a biopsy that gave me the worst black eye of all time, and I underwent radiation treatment on the eye.

Then I found that I owed $1800 to the IRS for 2003. (I sent them a check. They sent the money back. I called and found out that I did owe them the money, so I sent the check they sent to me back to them. I got a letter saying that I hadn’t paid. I cleared that up. I got another letter that said that I hadn’t paid. I cleared that up. I finally got a letter that said that I paid. Sigh)

I cannot seem to get past a second interview for a writing/editing job that pays me enough so that I can quit freelancing.

And just when I got out from under the general lousiness of 2005, I was diagnosed with cancer.

That bad luck, I told Susan.

Somewhere, someone is sticking pins into a voodoo doll of me.

Be that as it may, things are proceeding apace for the upcoming hysterectomy.

I went for a series of CAT scans on Monday. For this, I had to drink about a quart of white stuff. The first sip was not too bad. The second through two hundred and second sip tasted god-awful. There were two Hasidic men sitting in the waiting room with me and I wanted to ask them for the Yiddish and Hebrew words for “god-awful tasting” so that I would have more words to describe this flavor, but I chickened out.

The CAT scan was pretty normal. They injected me with a contrast medium and warned me that I might have a hot flash and a metallic taste for a second or so. I felt nicely warm for a minute or so, which was good because the CAT room was freezing. I did not have metallic taste, though.

Tuesday, I met with the gastroenterologist to plan my colonoscopy. He examined me and mentioned in passing that I have an umbilical hernia. I said it was news to me. He pointed out to me that sometime over the last few months my innie had learned to turn into an outie if I clench my abdominal muscles. I asked if this needed to be fixed before the hysterectomy. He laughed and told me that I won’t even have a belly button after the hysterectomy.

So, I am losing my uterus, ovaries, cervix, and navel.

Today, I went to the New York Blood Center to donate a pint of blood to myself. I do that again on Monday.

This will be the pattern for my life for the next couple of weeks. I am starting to look forward to the weeks of recuperation from the surgery. I can use the rest.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel . . .

2006-03-21T22:26:00.000-08:00

So, when we last left our heroine (me), she had come through dealing with an autoimmune inflammation behind her eye. Radiation treatment had worked wonderfully and she no longer saw double or had an eye that looked like a bequest from Marty Feldman. The only side effect had been the loss of some hair behind her right ear.

Life was good. A pretty trying year for me had come to an end. February 27 marked the anniversary of the death of my Bernie. To my mind, things could only get better. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train. I found out I have endometrial cancer.

(Time out here with a special note to my friends and family--I do not want anyone going nuts about this on me, OK? This is quite treatable and I will keep everyone informed of what will be happening. That is the purpose of this blog. I intend to stay reasonably upbeat during what I consider to be an interesting adventure. Any use of the word “ordeal” will be met with serious consequences. Anyone who cannot keep calm about this (at least around me) will be dope slapped. Are we all clear?)

(Second time out for short anatomy lesson: The endometrium is the lining of the uterus. The uterus is often described as pear-shaped, although I have never seen a pear with fallopian tubes. But if you can imagine an upside-down pear in your lower abdomen, the endometrium would be the—yeesh, this analogy is falling apart. Go Google on endometrial cancer for yourself.)

As I had mentioned earlier in this blog (See “More of the Same,” in December), I was spotting pretty frequently and having some mild menstrual cramping pretty regularly, or irregularly, depending on how you look at it. I am perimenopausal and thought this was to be expected. I thought that, after 42 years of unstinting service, my uterus and ovaries were finally closing up shop. I put it off having my regular GYN checkup, taking the attitude that I wanted to concentrate on one body part at a time.

Once the eye problem was a speck in my rearview mirror, I made an appointment in January with my nurse-midwife, Linda Stocker, CNM, who has seen me for a few years. I told her about the spotting and cramping. She did not think it was worrisome, but sent me to have a transvaginal ultrasound exam.

A transvaginal ultrasound is almost as much fun as, umm, OK, maybe it isn’t that much fun. Basically, it is an ultrasound diagnostic study where the ultrasound wand is placed in the vagina. You are up on a table, just like in a gynecology office, and you get told to scooch your butt to the end of the table, again, just like in the gynecologist’s office. And then, the technician politely hands you what looks almost precisely like a dildo. (Not that an innocent thing such as myself would know.) It even has a rather large condom already on it. You get to insert the wand and the technician sits there and checks out your uterus, ovaries, and a few other nearby parts. Considering the amount that you are paying for this test, they ought to make that wand vibrate.

Two weeks later, I was told that the lining of my endometrium was thickened, which sometimes happens in menopause. The next step was to have an endometrial biopsy taken. Linda told me that this would be slightly worse than a Pap smear, which to me always felt like a light pinch.

Slightly worse than a Pap smear. Ooof!! At one point, I thought they were going to need a spatula to scrape me off the ceiling. I thought Linda was pulling my uterus out using a bear trap and a rusty saw blade.

After I pried my hands off the sides of the exam table, Linda told me the sample looked normal and that this was probably a case of the endometrium building up and not being shed properly.

Hah!!

When I called Linda’s office to get the biopsy results, after a couple of minutes, an office nurse came on the phone and told me I had to come in to see the gynecologist the next day.

I asked what was wrong.

Nurse said, “Nothing is wrong. The doctor will speak to you tomorrow.”

I got off the phone and then called back. I pointed out that normal results are sent out on a post card, medium-bad results are reported by the nurse-midwife, and, therefore, any information that requires delivery by the gynecologist is not good news. I wanted the results of the biopsy and I wanted them now. I asked Linda to come to the phone.

Linda’s first words were that she knew I would not buy being told, “Everything was fine, but come in to see the gynecologist.” I told her that I was not going to throw a fit, but that I wanted to know what the results were, umm, NOW. Linda understood and told me that the biopsy showed endometrial adenocarcinoma, well-differentiated. She said it was a common type of uterine cancer and that a total hysterectomy would most likely take care of everything. I spent the next hour or so looking up endometrial cancer.

The next day, I went to meet with the gynecologist, who shall remain nameless. After a couple of minutes in the waiting room, where I seemed to be surrounded by young mothers with newborns, I was escorted into the gynecologist’s office and told that she would be with me in a minute or so.

I stared at the dozens of photos of her and her children and a few knickknacks until I decided to check out her bookshelf. I spotted a book on pathology of the female reproductive tract and settled in for some light reading about endometrial adenocarcinoma.

By the time the gynecologist breezed in 20 minutes later, I’d read about five pages. She sat down at her desk and picked up one of the files on it.

“Your biopsy was normal,” she said, which so stunned me that I didn’t hear anything else she said for a few minutes. I asked her to repeat that. Again, she told me my biopsy is normal.

“But Linda told me yesterday that my biopsy showed endometrial adenocarcinoma,” I said.

She looked at me blankly for a second and then looked at her desk. “Oh, you’re Valerie!” she said as she picked up the other folder on her desk. The diagnosis for me was endometrial cancer.

The gynecologist then gave me a rundown about endometrial cancer, all of which I already knew from having read it on the internet and in her pathology book. I needed a total hysterectomy and she stressed that it should be performed by a gynecologic oncologist, someone who was familiar with the best techniques for both the hysterectomy and for taking lymph nodes around the uterus to look for any spread of the cancer. She recommended a surgeon at Albert Einstein and said he was excellent. Oh, and the biopsy slides were on their way to a second reading at Massachusetts General Hospital.

I left her office with the surgeon’s phone number and called from the car. The earliest appointment that I could get was April 11. As if I was going to wait that long. When I got home, I called a good friend, Dr. Judy Chervenak, who is an obstetrician/gynecologist/lawyer in Manhattan and asked her who the best gynecologic oncologist was. She highly recommended Dr. Thomas Caputo, who is vice chair at Weil Cornell and is on staff at New York Presbyterian. Judy’s husband, Dr. Frank Chervenak, is head of OBGYN at Weil Cornell, which was another point in favor of going there.

(When I told Judy the lawyer/doctor the story of the gynecologist reading out of the wrong file, her response was “And they wonder why they get sued for malpractice.”)

It turns out that all the gynecologic oncologists were booked up because all the best ones were going to some national meeting. Dr. Caputo probably couldn’t see me until the end of March. I called Judy again and she may have pulled some strings because I got in to see Dr. Caputo on March 15.

Dr. Caputo is an older man, very calm, almost serene. His office walls were lined with covers of New York Magazines, since he had been named the top gynecologic oncologist in the city several times in a row. I sat down in front of his desk and pulled out a notepad and asked if taking notes bothered him. It didn’t, but I got the idea that not much bothers him.

He went over the diagnosis and told me what I already knew. I needed a total hysterectomy. I asked him if my ovaries could be saved. From what he said, I gather that I can save them in a jar of alcohol, but cannot keep them any other way. There is no good reason to keep them for a woman my age and many good reasons to get rid of them, according to him, Judy, the gynecologist, the nurse-midwife, and everyone and everything else I consulted. I was seriously put out about this. I like my ovaries.

Dr. Caputo has asked to see the biopsy slides, but noted that endometrial adenocarcinoma, well differentiated, means that it is quite likely that a total hysterectomy will take care of everything. The stage of the cancer will not be known until the hysterectomy, but I a worst-case scenario, I will need chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

He then laid it on the line. If he was to do the surgery, I would have to undergo some CAT scans, have a colonoscopy done (because I had never had one done), bank some of my blood, and be cleared for the surgery by a cardiologist of his choosing. Yes, sir!

So, at this point in time, I have had the CAT scans done and made appointments for the colonoscopy and cardiology sessions. I have also made an appointment for the presurgical testing at New York Presbyterian.

My surgery is scheduled for April 11.

I shall keep you abreast, or a-uterus, of what happens.

Post Prednisone Post

2006-01-16T18:30:00.000-08:00

I have now been off of prednisone for a full week. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.

"Caloo, Calay, Oh Frabjous Day! I chortle in my joy," to quote famous author and mathematician (and photographer of naked children, but let's not go there).

I should take another photo of my face and post it so that I can show you how much better my eye looks. However, I am still experiencing some minor double vision on some mornings when I fist wake up and do a little reading in bed. I will bring this up with whichever ophthalmologist I am seeing next, which is I think Dr. Farquhar at the end of the month.

Now, I just have to lose the prednisone weight gain. (Insert, maniacal laughter here.)

First follow-ups, and some backsliding

2006-01-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long delay between postings. Several things, including Christmas and New Year’s got in the way. In addition, I had a horrendous cold, got rid of it for a week and then came down with another one.

It is now three weeks since my last radiation treatment on my right eye. The eye is no longer swollen and appears to be normal. It is back in the same position as the left eye and I no longer look slightly wall-eyed. I had some redness in the eye and it was quite dry for about a week and a half. I treated it with prednisone drops once or twice a day and moisturizing eye drops once or twice a day.

I did not have any double vision for at least two weeks after the last treatment session. It hit me this past week how often I had been shutting one eye when I needed to read fine print. I had become so used to having double vision that it was a revelation when I didn’t have it anymore.

Ah, but my recovery has not been a bump-free road. I woke up Christmas morning with some double vision. This resolved after a couple of hours and I have had no real problems since. The dryness in my right eye has also resolved.

This past Tuesday, I saw Dr. Robert Della Rocca, the father of Dr. David Della Rocca who performed my surgery. He said the eye was looking quite good.

On Friday, I saw Dr. Kyung Han, the radiation oncologist. She was very happy with the progress my eye has been making and said that there could be further improvement.

As she examined me, I noted that she had a large bandage on one finger. I asked her what happened and she said that she had cut herself badly when, in her words, she “had been forced to cook” over Christmas. Then she confessed that she should have gone to the emergency room for stitches, but that she hated hospitals.

The last piece of good news is that I have dropped from 10 milligrams of oral prednisone down to 5 milligrams and am now on 2.5 milligrams per day. Hallelujah!! After a week on 2.5 milligrams per day, I can stop taking it altogether, according to Dr. Della Rocca.

Prednisone follies are now officially over, it seems. Here again, it appears that I did not know how bad things were until they resolved. I now can actually go for several hours without uncontrollable hunger. I am not talking a mile a minute. I don’t have acid indigestion most of the day.

On the other hand, I seem to be cracking fewer jokes. I have no idea what this means.

During the worst of the prednisone experience, when I was on 80 milligrams, I blamed everything on the drug. Constant hunger? Prednisone. Moodiness? Prednisone. Hurricane Katrina? Prednisone. The continued existence of Paris Hilton? Prednisone. I don’t know what I’ll do now that I don’t have this excuse for anything strange in my life.