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Not me cause I have one of these. Works a treat and is my new BFF!
Had the chance to FaceTime with Caleb tonight
I asked him to put Whiskers on the phone so I could see his sweet little face for myself. Is it just me or does he have a bit of a more "seen the world now" look in his eyes?
You all tell me that I'm courageous. Yeah, well right now courage is all about getting up the nerve to go to the washroom. Hoping it starts getting less painful at some point in time.
I really want one of these specifically for the drying feature but don't happen to have 4-6 thousand dollars laying around. Maybe if it could also remove my myriad of stitches....
I tell myself that it's not even been a week, that with the knee I was just getting out of the hospital at this point so I certainly didn't expect my stapled wound to be all healed up, but gosh, hopefully this skin heals faster than knees!
Nice quiet day today. Nobody performed surgery on me or anything! I actually took a nap for the first time in forever and Karen and the kids came over. I told Harry that the "kids are coming!" and he spent the next half hour doing this:
Until finally..,,
I thought he'd be happy to go for big walkies with mobile people, but this is pretty much all he did.
Caleb took these nice pictures!
Karen took Whiskers to the vet and got him looked at. He got a shot of antibiotic and some flea and worm medicine just in case and he's going to need to eat higher calorie kitten food for a bit till he's back to normal weight. He seems very grateful to be with his people again. And they're very grateful to have him. Imagine, he was gone almost a whole month he sure must have some stories to tell!
Yesterday meant the world to me. I didn't think I would be able to go to see Emily sing because of the surgery and then thanks to Henry and the inflatable ruby ring of comfort und ease (IRRCuease), (strained anagram explained here) at the last minute I was able to go.
The look on Emily's face when she saw me was totally worth it.
Tonight I made a little movie of yesterday. Despite IRRCuease my office chair is not my friend so I had to do it in bits and pieces. Finding just the right place to sit on IRRC is a lot harder than you'ld think. Really glad I just happened to hit the sweet spot yesterday at the concert in only one try. Never ever did I dream that standing up would hurt less than sitting!
However I've been doing my physio so walking hurts too. Probably a good thing because the inside of my knee feels so good that I sometimes forget to really lean on my rollator and I'm not supposed to do full weight bearing on that knee till after the next (and last) knee replacement.
My camera work was a bit shaky at the beginning of her song but I got a grip and it went okay.
here's the movie
Great job Emily!!!
Btw I hope you appreciate that since I introduced 2 or three ear worm songs in this post they (might) cancel each other out. But probably not! Hee Hee.
Hercules was my ALL TIME favorite cartoon when I was a kid.
Why not watch an episode here for old (or too young to ever heard of it) times sake here
My life has improved since Henry found me a little red inflatable donut pillow to sit on. I was even able to go see Emily sing at her concert today!
She did great! There were 3 of us recording her so I'm sure you'll see a movie soon. It was so fun to come sweeping in on my wheelchair to surprise her!
In other news Harrison has cut his first workout video:
see it here
In other OTHER news I also got a sitz bath (a bowl where in you sits) and bought a new air conditioner today. What a day!
I want to thank all you sweet folk who switched your Facebook profile pics to our Cure Crotch Cancer logo - meant so much. Now go ahead and switch them back so I know who you are! Seriously that SO made my week! So did this:
Edited to add: oops i don't think this got published so the last two may be out of order.
Guess what! My sister's cat Whiskers is back. He somehow hitched a ride from Elmira to Waterloo where he was rescued by Pet Patrol. I guess a lot of stray cats are found near the university because students want a pet for a semester but this time they found our little guy!
It's quite the story. Karen got whiskers micro chipped when he was a kitten but it wasn't placed properly because when whiskers was taken to the vet today and they scanned him they found it way back near his bum. (It should be between the shoulder blades) The vet was just going to stop scanning when it went off! Whew and yay!!
I got a bit of the old cold shoulder from Harrison when I got home last night. He cannot emphasis enough that all this being away over night business has got to stop but today there were lots of smiled and cuddles.
Well it is certainly interesting to have your genital body geography moved about. It's too bad I don't have any gender identification issues because this would have been an excellent time to take care of that. I don't know that there's a whole lot more I can say in polite company except ouch! I do have enough pain relief so don't worry about me. Luckily laying down and sitting in my easy chair are good, other chairs not so much. I think this picture bears repeating
Very happy to be home and will leave the Jurivinski's and their dog BoJangles to their own devices.
Really grateful to Dr Elit for being so patient during the cancer surgery. She could just as easily given up the injectable dye hunt and cut me open. Instead she carefully found each and every lymph node in my groin and removed them with very little, comparatively speaking, tissue damage. (its gonna hurt to sit for a while!) Dr Elit said that she thought I was going through enough and that she wanted to make it as easy as she possibly could. She also came to see me 3 times in 48 hours.
It's funny last time I had a male room mate this time I had two male nurses.
The community nurses have already been here and I'm all set up with mr mew. It was good of them to come at 9:30pm and they were happy to do it
Thanks to karen and Henry for making it possible to come home today. So looking forward to not having an iv that alarms every 10 minutes all night long thanks to how it was put on my a grumpy pre surgery nurse. She was so grumpy that I laughed because I thought she was kidding. Oops.
Hard to believe all this All happened in 48 hours!
Ah the sweet dulcet tones of a hospital in the morning! A poor gentleman across the way had been hurling his guts out all night long. He's the type of thrower upper that adds a shout to each retch.
My lovely room mate snores in a quiet refined way that actually helped me get whatever sleep I did considering my pump went off literally ever 10 minutes. Once there was actually something wrong!
Three quarters of the way through the night I found out that the call button was NOT the picture of the nurse that said Call Nurse like it is in London so that was a handy thing to learn.
Just looked all cheery and peppy for Dr Elit's team so as to further the cause for heading home! Fingers crossed!
Hello, I'm fine and still cant quite believe how blessed and rich I am in people that care for and about me.
The surgery went really well and I'm only here overnight due to some over zealous (though admittedly caring) physicians. My surgeon would have let me go home esp since I don't even have any drains, but medical over ruled her on the grounds that I look like someone who may have sleep apnea and wasn't tested before hand which is their policy.
I know that I will likely be in some really big time pain any minute now when the epidural totally wears off but right now what hurts the most is the iv site they put in today.
So they were able to remove the cancerous growth and locate and remove all of the groin lymph nodes. They were able to locate them using a Nintendo Mario kart game (that's what it sounded like) and so did not need to make the more sweeping cuts that would take longer to heal and require drains. Yay!
I will need to wait 3 to 4 weeks to find out if the lymph nodes are involved with cancer and know if I'll need chemo and or radiation but if they're clear I will be in very good shape. Either way Dr Elit will follow me for 3 years which is reassuring.
Well here I sit in the hospital that Nora Henderson built. Sure enough the patient rooms are I the old part. It dingy and hotter than hades but karen found the fan so I can't complain.
Also karen found me some supper that was NOT jello and so now I look forward to tomorrow morning and hopefully heading home.
Thanks again everyone!
Well tomorrow at 7:30 I check into the Juravinski hospital in Hamilton to have a cancerous lump removed from my perineum and have both lymph nodes removed from my groin. Aka I'm having a vulvectomy.
My family and friends and I thought vulvectomy was a silly sounding word so they've been making me cards and videos and anything else they can think of to speed me along the way and I've been posting them in this blog.
For example this came today from my nieces:
How awesome is that?!
I am so truly blessed to have so many of you walking this journey of double knee surgery and cancer surgery along side me. This blog is the best way to keep on top of my day to day stuff but I'll try to post to Facebook at times as well.
Today was clear fluids and I learned that if you're hungry enough Jello can actually be tasty. Harrison however was not getting near the stuff!
They tell me that tomorrow's surgery should just be day surgery so hopefully I'll be home tomorrow evening and here's hoping that the lymph node biopsies will be clear indicating that the cancer has not gone systemic. I imagine it will take some time to get that information but I'll keep you posted.
My next knee replacement should be down the road this summer sometime, at least 8 weeks from now. I'm recovering very well from the first stage of the knee revision and things are going well with the picc line of antibiotics that I'll still have for 2 to 4 more weeks.
Again thanks so much for your love and support and prayers. I am truly grateful for each and every one of you!
We had a win today for the pump, hope to keep the trend going! Yay!
Was taking pic of Harry and me today...
when he reached out and took a picture too!
He's going to have to work on the lighting aspect of his art.
Tonight was poker night at Henry and Marcia's. As you can see a good time was had by all!
Caleb might have won it all but lucky for the rest of us he had to go home to do some homework! Todd ended up being the final winner - of the game as well as the strange new health food ingredient with these delicious sea weed cookies.
My friend Maureen didn't design a card but she find a pretty cool art installation. Who knew there were 39 ways to paint vulvas on plates to honor women!
Cool!
Maureen also tried her hand successfully at song writing:
(to the tune of Yesterday by the beatles)
vulvectomy.
ruthe needs to leave this cancer
far away
i wish that she could have fun and
trek to L.A.
Vulveeeee-ectomy
Love it! I'd far rather be trekking to L.A. instead of eating jello all day tomorrow!
Today was quiet. The pump messed up again as usual. It's good I'm taking these pictures of the error messages cause the nurse was able to use them to try to explain to the pharmacy what's going on. They suggested trying changing the schedule an hour earlier so the pump won't think the bag is as empty. Fingers crossed!
I had to change the battery at 4:30 am. I'm sure not going to miss all the beeping when I'm loosed from this machine in 2-4 weeks and I have a whole new respect for people who are on oxygen or other machines for the rest of their lives.
My friend Melanie just graduated as an art major and came up with this totally awesome V day card!
Truth truly is stranger than fiction! Thanks Melanie!
