Big Health Update - Tick Tick Baby - It Is A Go

I will be having a huge surgery on January 17. I'm gonna need to muster all the feisty I can find. I didn't want to talk about it here till it was a sure thing. Today at 1:30 pm I called the surgeon's office to confirm that I'll be attending the surgery for sure.

We will discuss in future blogs what our supporting cancer fight theme characters will be this time. I'm leaning toward a full on justice league style group of Pirates and Sharks and Honey badgers etc from past surgeries with the possible addition of Karen the cougar from the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. 

I like her name and the sheer stupid ugly sweet silliness of the whole movie. Cause this surgery is going to be ugly and it's up to us to inject the silly. (Please note the movie is also quite profane and sacrilegious so please don't watch it if that's an issue.) 

Also Karen, my sister not the cougar, (That could get awkward) just suggested a buffalo too because it's a huge animal and this surgery is huge and I love my Trader Joe's buffalo but the Buffalo Bills football team? That team just can't win enough and has broken my heart once too many times so buffalo are out except as incentive to get well enough to go stateside to visit Trader Joe's.

However all potential surgery mascot ideas are welcome and will be subjected to the same strictly scientific scrutiny as human Karen's idea was. 

Anyway the surgery is a Total Pelvic Exenteration. Spell check and I had never heard of it before a few weeks ago but now we need to add it to our dictionary.

Basically the bottom part of me will be inside out after the surgery. Remember how I had those three big scans that were all clear? Well if they had not been clear they would not have offered me the surgery because the whole idea is to remove access to my inner body to the cancer which seems determined right now to march on in.

I asked a lot of questions about what will happen without the surgery and it isn't that great. There aren't any fun options but I've been given 50-50 odds that this surgery will completely cure the cancer. 

When I think about my friend Andrew who was given zero odds of surviving and still fought like a bloody tiger till the end and my friend Michael who also did every damn thing in his power to stay I realize that 50-50 odds are a massive chance and I am grateful. Many people do not have any choices and I do.

So on January 17th they are going to shut down all normal waste production exits and reroute to exterior bags. They will take out a lot of other stuff as well. It will be a 9 hour operation with me being in the hospital 3-4 weeks afterwards. There will be three extraordinarily skilled experienced-in-this-exact-surgery surgeons one of which is a plastic surgeon. Most people prefer to have work done on their face or upper body but apparently I just have to be different. My friend joked that I'll be an underwear model after :-)

Listen it's been a rough month having all these tests. Worried that the tests would be bad and worried almost as much that the tests would be good - knowing I'd be offered this surgery if they were. And yes I'm nervous and scared and anxious but what's the point of living there? I'll face this. We'll face this. You all have NEVER let me down. 

Listen carefully. There are no words that you need to say if you can't think of any. I know EXACTLY how much many of you love me and I feel it ALL the time. I am the luckiest sister and aunt and great aunt and friend and cat mom and blogger and even photography volunteer on the planet. I have a great life and if this is what it takes to keep ticking, well, tick tick baby!

Okay enough of that!

The halls are decked over at supportive housing

And I love the view of the new gazebo!

 

 

Snow!!!!!!

No little friends today. They're smart enough to stay home.

Thanks for listening.