Another Load of Life

At last! I and my blog are together again! I am in raptures!

Not long after my last blog entry, things started to go downhill. By the 8th of May I had developed an infection (not of the surgical site) that caused a fever of 102.8F, and landed me in the hospital where, as it turned out, I also had an infection in the right side of my chest, although it was not the reason for the fever. I spent the weekend snuggled up to IV lines full of various antibiotics and then, on Tuesday, had to go in for surgery to remove the tissue expanders and the infection and to place drains into the area again. (One of my surgical drains had fallen out while I was in the ER - sigh!) I would like to note here that this is, according to my surgeons, an unusual occurance for this type of surgery so it would not be right to anticipate such things if anyone reading this might be approaching their own mastectomy surgery or surgeries. It was a combination of some confusions on my part, some miscommunication (not a lot, though), and adverse circumstances due to my own physical condition, weight issues, etc. I finally got to come home yesterday, after a nine-day hospital stay, and am feeling so much better!!!

A hospital can be both an interesting and a frightening place to be. With the advent of this infection and all that attended it, it felt as if all of the efforts, both counseling and medicinal, that have gone into helping me get my head together and my life on track, were blown completely out of the window for a day or two (or three or four!). It was no fun for me to have to revisit thoughts and emotions I had considered, with tremendous relief, as something now left in my past. It had never occured to me that the stresses from the surgeries and the infections and the hospital stays might put me back into a mind set I had struggled so hard to be free of, having failed to overcome on my own, and then, finally with the help of several people with the training and expertise to do so, was finally stepping away from and into a slowly growing anticipation for better things to come in my life. So that was yet another blow. Fortunately talking to some of the on-call people from the psychiatry department and the chaplains' office, as well as several very kind and understanding nurses, some long-suffering (young) physicians (and one mildly traumatized male nursing assistant who looked as though his grandmother had dropped her drawers in front of him), helped ease that difficulty and I feel little more myself, a little more back in control, but also a little more fragile in certain ways, than before this second episode in my saga of cancer and surgery took place.

Finally returning home was a treat like few others. Yes, all the clutter and mess are still here - I am not yet able to deal with it and my sweetie-pie's housekeeping skills, though very willing and energetic, are not quite from the same school mine developed in. The cats still urp on the rug and track litter, there are still book-eating beetles, flying, nasty, bitey, little bigs here and there, etc., etc., etc. But it is good to be back. Supposedly toddlers and pussycats do not retain certain types of memories for more more than a given span of time. This means that a young child whose mother goes away for two weeks will not necessarily recall her when she returns. With cats, this span of time is only supposed to be about a half an hour. I beg to differ, at least about the cats. All of our cats knew exactly who I was when I came in the door after nine days away. They all knew my voice. They all came over to say "Hello," and they certainly remembered their special "snuggle configurations" that we have developed over our years together. I will have to be more cautious this time around, take more precautions; I do not want to have to endure another infection right now, especially not with another surgery and the strong likelihood of chemotherapy looming. I am hoping that further treatment will proceed without any more complications so we may all put this episode behind us and get on with our lives. I also hope there is sunshine ahead, instead of clouds.

Hopefully, whatever the source of these infections, they will never recur and where ever I was exposed to them can be determined and dealt with before too many other people fall prey to them as I did. It is not so much the more private venues of potential exposure that worry me in that they are a little more under control than the more public venues. I was driving before I was supposed to be in order to make appointments I could not otherwise have gotten to and, during those excursions, stopped to run a brief errand, perhaps a quick stop at a local department store for a prescription or a local supermarket for a few easy-to-fix food items. I also had visiting nurses checking on me and the thought that any of those situations might have yielded an exposure to the organisms causing the problems I went through, or wondering if it was something lurking here at home, is a matter of concern. I certainly hope the contagion never got past me to anyone else.

It feels so good to be back at the keyboard and back at my blog, but I am going to wrap this one up now - it's already way too long!

Blessings, joy, peace, love, and commitments that do you good to all who find their way to my humble home.

Izzlebug