August 13

A few more things surfaced in my memory from yesterday:

It turns out that the fact that my left vocal cord isn't working has a lot more impact on me than just effecting my speech. Dr. V said that your vocal cords actually move together and move apart based on talking, swallowing, etc. They move together to protect things from accidentally going down your airway passage. So the fact that the left one isn't moving is leaving my airway susceptible to aspirating things more easily. He said this is something they can try to correct later down the road if need be. They can actually move the non-working chord over a little bit so that the working chord has a better chance of making contact when it tries to 'close'.

And I  mentioned that the incision length in my leg seems to have doubled. It occurred to me that the first time I was shown the length, the doctor was probably just showing me the length of the flesh that was being removed. Dr. V was showing me not only the length of flesh, but how far up the scar will go from taking out all the associated veins as well. I remembered the same thing happened with my arm graft. I thought there would just be a circle on my wrist because they forgot to mention the ~6 inch incision above the circle from the vein removal.

I got a little more insight into the trach thing. If they do NOT need to remove my voice box and they feel I will eventually be breathing on my own, then they will put in a trach, which I guess is a temporary apparatus that allows me to breath through my neck. If they DO have to remove my voice box, which means I will be breathing through my neck for the rest of my life, then they will simply insert a tube into a permanent hole in my throat that does not have a device attached to it. It's just a hole. That was something that wasn't really clear to me before. For some reason I was picturing the trach apparatus as being permanent. Meanwhile, gifts of scarves will be most appreciated if the second scenario happens. ;-P

I think Nurse Jo Ann and I are starting to get the measure of each other. She started to give me a hard time yesterday, I saw her open her mouth, I saw what response was about to come out, and I gave her "the look". She paused, then closed her mouth and moved on. I'm glad to see she's trainable. And just as a point of interest, she kept making comments that I should leave my overnight bag in the car and have someone bring it up after surgery, and she was talking about the doctor giving an update to whoever was in the waiting room when surgery was over, and blah, blah, blah. I finally told her that there would be nobody waiting and that I specifically wanted the doctor(s) to call Justin and give him an update once everything is over and done with so that he can then make a couple of phone calls to the peeps who feel they need immediate updates and then he can update the blog. I could tell that she was going to insist that I must have somebody that I could have waiting to see me afterwards, which is when she got 'the look'. Some people just don't understand that privacy is a valid option. The last thing I want or need is having someone hovering over me when I wake up. Unless it's a nurse asking me if I want some Ativan!!

My sweetheart of a buddy/coworker, Toby, has volunteered to take me to the hospital tomorrow, and he wants to pick me up on Thursday as well. I don't think I mentioned it but he sent me a huge, gorgeous bouquet of flowers a couple of weeks ago along with a 'giant' hug and he's been offering up his dad's services as a dentist and sending me links to cancer centers across the USA. He was also texting me at strange hours from China just to check up on me to see how I'm doing. Talk about feeling loved! :-)


Fun stuff:

The Segway thing on Saturday was fun! We got to bomb around in the woods, going up and down hills, and barreling around corners. Too cool. Afterwards we stopped at Barnes and Nobles so that I could use the gift card Kim got me and baby doll wanted to buy me a present as well. I walked away with quite the haul! I got a pair of warm, fuzzy pink booties to keep my tootsies warm in the hospital, I got a clip on book light in case I actually have a roomie in the hospital this year. Kind of weird that I didn't have one last year but I was okay with that. I forget how much extra it is to have a private room but if it's not too crazy, expensive, I might buck up the money for it this year because that was really nice last year being able to watch TV at 3:00 am when I had insomnia.  Anyway, I also got a novel called Girlfriend in a Coma, it looked interesting. And I bought a big book of Jumble puzzles. Not the most taxing puzzle for the brain but a lot of fun to do!

I have a major dilemma going on right now. I don't know if I should take my iPad into the hospital with me or not. It would be awesome to have it! I could blog, send e-mails, and play games. But it's a $500+ pice of technology and I would be so scared to have it stolen. What to do, what to do.

Sunday I was pretty darned productive. Ran a ton of errands and got a lot of prep work done for my upcoming hospital stay. I also got in a good nap or two, or course. Plus I watched a couple of movies. I saw The Switch (very cute), I watched The Truman Show (an oldie but goodie), and I watched The Secret Garden (I've read the book, they actually did a good job with the movie!).

Yesterday after my 3 hour appointment of fun, I met Sam, Mark and the kids at Seabreeze. Had a blast going on some of the rides with them and basically just absorbing the essence of adorable kids. It was good to get to hug them one last time before what's likely to be a long period of absence.

Today I had lunch with my friend ElRay. It was awesome catching up with her, we haven't talked in years other than an occasional FB post.   She's my crazy friend who decided to have a baby at age 50! Yes, I know, she's seriously certifiable but she is happier than I have EVER seen her. Of course, this is the woman who's run the Boston marathon and has many other noteworthy accomplishments under her belt so it didn't surprise me too much that she would tackle the role of motherhood head on this late in the game. Maybe some of her daring and drive rubbed off on me at lunch today and will help me kick this cancer shit to the curb!

That's about all the fun that's planned between now and the big day. I'll be spending all of my spare time running around doing prep. So far I've trimmed all of the furballs nails, and gave them all flea drops. I weeded my flowerbeds. I assembled  another storage cabinet in the basement and got all of my house supplies organized. I ordered some prezzies for Justin as a thank you for all the surgery related stuff that he's going to be doing for me (man, he's the best!). I still need to find a snow plowing service for this winter because I don't think I want to handle any shoveling that may be needed. And I noticed yesterday that Wegman's has Halloween candy out already. I was really tempted to load up. As you can tell, I'm trying to think of things that I should get done now that I might not feel up to doing for the next three months. Of course, I have a ton of freakin' awesome people lined up who are eager and able to do whatever I need, be it mowing the lawn, grocery shopping, taking the furballs to the vet, or whatever. And baby doll seems to really want to be my main go-to which is okay in my book since he's definitely the #1 person in my life. I really appreciate that I have so many truly fantastic human beings in my life. It feels good to know that I'm so well loved. :-)