I am clean!!!

Good news happened today - I am free of cancer - the margins are clean.

Also hard day - anyone that says having a catheter that hangs almost down to your waist from an open wound is not horribly and constantly painful, clearly has access to better pain killers than I do.

In the large scheme of things, this will be done and just a memory, but in front of me is 7 days of this - plus radiation 2x daily - and no bathing for a week as a bonus shot to whatever dignity I have left.

What I am having trouble getting over is the 'creepy' factor.  It's so creepy and obtrusive, I made myself look at the wound when the nurse was showing my friend Sally how to change the dressing. 

Because of it's placement and where the tubes are sticking out, I can't even change the bandage myself, so Sally has signed on as bandage changer this weekend and Judy has been to my house twice today because I am soaking through the bandages with gusto.

Talk about testing the limits of friendship - they have more courage than I would if the circumstances were reversed.

During the surgery to insert the catheter - someone fainted in one of the other rooms causing a flurry of people and activity in the room I was in - made me think about how lucky I am in the land of cancer. 

The cancer I had was caught early, it has not invaded any other part of my body, I did not have to make hard choices about mastectomies, chemotherapy and other scary places to go.  I only have to live thru 7 days of this and I can move back to the land of the living.

This is a much easier ring of hell to live through than some others.

Time to examine how I am living my life and what my thoughts are creating - I'll bet I can do better than this.




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