My Hair is GONE!!

On Saturday, my hair was falling out everywhere so it was time to take it all off! My friend, Vicki, who had the honors, had some fun with it and gave me a mohawk first and then mowed right down the center of that. She had some giggles. I was too afraid to look while it was being done, but had my DH take photos as she was working. I must say, it is good to have it gone. There was hair everywhere and now the house is mostly clean again!

I'm bummed because it appears I might have some kind of virus. No fever, so that is good, but I'm feeling achy and that's no fun! I'm hoping it doesn't delay my next chemo scheduled for this Thursday.


Now, back to the drama of waking up in ICU on August 19th.


I opened my eyes and knew exactly where I was. I saw my nurse walk out of my room and I could feel the tube resting on the back of my tongue. It was quite uncomfortable, but all I could think was to just keep breathing. The nurse came right back in and told me to cough and out she pulled it! Thank Goodness!!!

Apparently, Pete had just been sent home for some much needed sleep. They didn't want him around when they took the tube out. Kate came in at some point and advised me that I had taken 10 units of blood over the course of the night, about half before surgery and half during. The bleed was a very small (just larger than a hair) artery on the side of my bladder that had gotten nicked. They had been able to get ahead of the bleeding and get me stabilized for a period because it was so small. When she opened me up again, she first had to drain off and clean up about 2 quarts of "fluid" (does that translate blood, I wonder?) before they could find the culprit.  Also I found out that the tumor was the size of "an NFL football!"  It had completely wrapped around my right ovary and also my ureter, but she is a wiz-bang and got it all out with little problem.  Lymphoma is a different type of cancer in that doesn't spread and grow into other organs so it was contained. I believe it is essentially lymph cells gone bad and growing at crazy-fast rates, but don't quote me on that.

So anyway, the rest of that day and that night were spent in the peculiarly rest-less ICU. I fell asleep finally around 6:00am and woke up at 7:00am.  One of my problems was that my heart rate had been really fast all night, hovering something over 100.  It's hard to sleep when your heart is beating that fast! Sometime around 9:00 that morning I felt like my heart was beating even faster and I looked over at the monitor and it was 117. I rang for the nurse.....no response. Within seconds it was up to 125, rang the bell....no response. This went on for what felt like a long time, but was probably under 2 minutes and then I just started banging on the bell until the nurse came in. She came RUNNING in and by that time my pulse was up to 150. I felt like I was about to take off! I think she was somewhat annoyed with me. She explained that they were aware my heart rate was high and they thought it might be the Lasiks I was on (this is a diuretic). They felt it was taking the fluid out of my blood instead of out of my tissues. So she immediately put a bag of fluid on my drip and seriously, within a few minutes my heart rate was back down in the 100 range.

My dear sweet husband dragged himself back to the hospital around 9:30 I think. By 11:00am they were talking about taking me to the regular nursing floor. All I could think was, "how am I possibly going to move from this bed??"  Naturally, I had no use of my stomach muscles and what I didn't know was that I was carrying lots of extra weight in the form of fluid in my tissues. When they perched me up on the edge of the bed I still couldn't imagine how I was going to take the one step over to that darned wheelchair! When I took one step it was like I was in someone else's body. My legs were huge. But I did get there and was taken up to a nice private room where I was greeted by a most wonderful nurse named Catherine. I loved this gal!

Catherine quickly gave me some tips on how to move over, into and out of the bed in ways so as not to "drag my girl parts across the bed!" Once I got settled, it was here I began to realize just how swollen every part of my body was! I tried to put something to my mouth and found my arm so swollen I couldn't reach my mouth! It was then, my husband said, "Dude, I gotta tell you, your ass is HUGE!" and then started giggling like a little schoolboy. Now, I need to explain that we have the type of relationship where I'm okay with him talking like that to me. He loves me dearly and there is no doubt about that. When I saw him start giggling, I started giggling, which in itself was interesting being that I had a brand new 12" vertical incision up the middle of my belly. When he saw me start to giggle, he giggled harder and we were lost that way for a few minutes. So, huge arms, butt, legs etc would explain one reason it was so hard for me to move. And they wanted me to start walking immediately! So I did, very slowly up and down the halls.  It took a few days, but by the time I left the hospital 4 days after checking in, I was able to move more easily. Interesting though that when I got home, I was still 10 lbs more than before I checked into the hospital and they took out a giant tumor and all my reproductive system!

Well, I don't know about you, but I've had enough for today! Back in a day or 2!

Be well!
Melanie