No real artwork this week, because I’ve sort of been taking it easy. I did manage to take this photo, the day before my staples were removed. I couldn’t let them go away without at least one photo. Awesome, and gruesome.
So. I obviously had surgery, on March 5th. I went in expecting to have a robotic procedure, with a few tiny incisions, and a quick recovery time, but somehow, in the pre-op room, it changed to robotic or possible abdominal—meaning, a big, long incision, with a big, long recovery time. Sure enough, as I was coming out of the anesthesia, I heard my doctor’s voice saying, “Lisa, your uterus was the size of a soccer ball. I had to do an incision.”
Well, duh. I told him he wasn’t going to get it out of any tiny little holes.
I spent three days in the hospital, and then a week at home under the care of friend Amy, getting up every four hours to take pain pills, and walk from the bedroom to the kitchen and back, with the occasional multiple laps around the kitchen island. Everything was uncomfortable, and nothing tasted good, and I was alternately whiny and unconscious, but Amy stuck it out, and by the time she was gone, things were getting a little better.
Now, the staples are out, replaced with some ridiculously itchy tape. It still hurts a little to get up and down, whether I’m sitting or laying—but once I’m there, I’m pretty much pain-free. My back hurts from laying down so much. I’m up to walking a mile every day. I’m cleared to drive as soon as I feel I can manage the truck in an emergency situation. I’m still not allowed to bend or stretch or lift anything heavier than a carton of juice, which means the dog hasn’t had any real puppy love since Amy left, and is being navigated out the back door with the broom instead of being scooped up and deposited outside.
Best of all: when I went in to have the staples removed, I got the results of all the biopsies. The cancer was confined to my uterus, and had not spread. My oncologist said he couldn’t make a compelling argument for chemo or radiation, so I only have to see him every six months for checkups.
Take that, cancer!