Worst Day of the Year

Whoever invented February 16 ought to just be shot. Its just a bad, crappy, awful day. And this year has lived up to its full potential with flying colors.

In a nut shell, my cancer markers are positive and there is a new nodule in my thyroid bed that wasn't there before, but is unfortunately too small to biops, so i'll be doing an MRI in March.

This never ends.

Human pin cushion

As per usual... I'm waiting and I'm scarred. It's my favorite week of February. The week where i get poked and prodded, and find out if I'm still cancer free. I've decided that needles fuck with me. I don't really mind them so much, I'm fine with the physical part of being poked. But what sucks is that I'm not so great about thinking about it. It started Friday; blood work for a pregnancy test. Couldn't just pee on a stick, no, for the testing I'm doing they actually needed a serum... Tomorrow is the first injection of thyrogen, followed by a second one on Tuesday, then blood work on wed. and more blood work on Friday followed by an ultrasound and potential biopsy, and then i see my doctor on Monday for the results... Human Pin Cushion.

Thyrogen... side effects: nausea, headaches, etc... basically, even if I handled this stuff half as well as i did in the beginning, the side effects alone would mean I'm not going to be a shiny happy person. It's also one of those things you can't take when your preggers... hence the blood work pregnancy test, nor do you wanna get knocked up within 6 months afterwords... not that I would, but I dislike having my options taken away

I hate ultrasounds... its my least favorite part about being sick. I would rather just be cut open or radiated... its irrational, but its the truth.

I'm tired. And I'm tired of having to deal with this stuff. It wears on you. Tares you down bit by bit. I don't have hope... I don't hope that things will go well this time... its too crushing when it doesn't... I just wait... start planning... be prepared for the worst... have the back up plan. Its harder this year. I'm about to graduate school... I'm supposed to be making plans and back up plans for my regular life... having to create back up plans in case I'm sick... ha... sigh...

Back to being tired... I realize I'm doing a lot... I do a lot so i don't have enough time to sit and think too much... I rationalized if I'm too busy to deal with being sick, clearly I can't get sick... I discovered this time last year that was not how the real world actually likes to work.

But being tired started over break. I thought maybe it was just that i needed the rest. But I'm still sleeping... if I don't make myself get up, I sleep for at least 12 hours... all the time. I go to bed earlier than i ever have... EVER. and i keep gaining weight. They kept dropping my meds... I'm afraid they've dropped too low. I'm going to ask if they will put me on a T3, T4 regiment. I hear that using both helps with things like mood. Doctors tend to only treat what they see is necessary and skip what makes the brain happy... a hippie hypnotist told me this. Yes, I went to see a Hypnotist... He hit more nerves than your normal head shrink does in the first 5 minutes of talking.... and that was before he tried to hypnotize me... it was just something to try. But so I started reading up, and decided I really haven't felt normal in 4 years.

oh yeah... that's the other head fuck. Next Monday is 4 years. 4 years since i got a phone call congratulating me about getting in the the University of Richmond School of law... the first law school i got into... followed by 3 hours later getting a call telling me the biopsy had come back "suspicious"... It was he first realization i had cancer. So no pressure this week at all. I'm not worried to the point of being unfocused. I'm not panicking. Irrationally planning. Or snapping at people b/c they can't quite deal with their personal problems at all. *sarcasm* Oh yeah, I don't deal well with compassion anymore. People and their personal problems should just shove it if they made other commitments. People who use their shit as excuses, can kiss my ass if they really think they're going to get compassion out of me, or level their workload on me to pick up their slack. We all have issues. You get as much slack as I would expect, and part of growing up is knowing when you are more of a problem than a help in a project or to a team, and sucking it up and pulling out if you can't juggle accordingly.

Sigh... I was so much stronger than this 4 years ago. I wish nothing phased me... the way it did then.... now i border between numb and more tightly wound than anyone on the planet.

My nose is empty

So today was.... weird, and probably one of the most disturbing experiences i have had yet.

I guess I should rewind a bit. The surgery happened, it went well. The pain, not so bad, sort of felt like a bad sinus infection or a mild migraine.

The scar, excellent... it healed super nice, you can't even see that anything is there really... unless you are me, and sit up real close to the mirror everyday staring at it.

I didn't even have a black eye really. With my glasses on, you couldn't even see the stitches... This was sort of sad b/c you sort of want to show off the shiner.

There's still a little pain and swelling now, a month later. Its not bad, and its mainly due to the tubing.

There was one tube in my nose for the past 5 weeks. Usually its taken out after 3. I opted to wait and enjoy my break at home. Its sown into the side of your nose, and looks like a macaroni. This is annoying as all hell. For the first couple weeks you fear sneezing it out. Then you catch a cold and sneeze out the stitches, only to realize its staying in place. Then a few days ago... it started whistling. But today... today was glorious, as they pulled it out.

My least favorite feeling in the world is stitches being pulled out of my skin... noodle out of the nose... same principal. And then it feels super weird and hallow... and suddenly you can breathe normally from that one nose hole. then it feels like there is a hair flapping around, and then there's sneezing... excessive amounts of sneezing... bring tissues with you if you get this done. Not only is there sneezing, but the tear drainage, yeah, that goes straight out your nose.

What i didn't realize was that the tube in my eye doesn't come out for another 6 weeks. This tube is freakish, and i didn't know it existed till i tried to rub it out the first day. It runs from the top tear duct to the bottom tearduct, and is what actually reconstructs your ducts. Surprisingly enough, they let me wear contacts again, despite the tubing, just as long as i knew to take them out immediately if anything got red or irritated. This makes me happy, as i've been in glasses over a month... not something I'm at all used to.

Besides relearning how to sneeze in order to avoid blowing out the macaroni tube the most unpleasant part of this has been that I've had to be on anti-biotics the whole time... so over a month of anti-biotics, its sort of messes w/ your system a bit.

So answers to questions and random things to know:
1. The initial needle in the eye... no it doesn't really hurt... its feels weird, mainly b/c you've never felt anything in that spot before and you suddenly are filling it with saline... its just an awkward pressure

2. This is actually a really long process... your looking at 3 months from surgery to end... there aren't a lot of complications... but just know that's how long it is

3. The tube in the nose can come out after 3 weeks, sometimes the top hidden stitch isn't dissolved, and so it doesn't pull out easily. Also the longer you have it in, the better you heal w/out having to worry about scaring over the hole. So if you don't mind the antibiotics, I'd say take an extra week to heal and dissolve stitches.

4. Grab an eye back.... the kid with eye holes. I found sticking in the fridge and throwing it on for 10-20 minutes really helped with pain and swelling.

5. After surgery... make sure you get "nose slings" my doctor gave me a bunch of these... basically... all it is is medical tape with some gauze... then you stick the gauze under your nose and tape it on. This is fantastic. Your nose bleeds/runs for like 2 days... even if you were allowed to, you don't want to blow your nose b/c it sort of hurts. Rather than dabbing and rubbing every thirty seconds, just stick this stuff on, and it takes care of it... especially when you are sleeping.

6. Take at least 3 days off, and be prepared to take one or two random ones. I kept on the big painkiller wed-Friday morning... but i only went off on Friday b/c i was getting ill to my stomach. Its either a reaction to the anesthetic or the narcotics... we haven't figured out which, as you don't really have one with out the other, but i've noticed day 3 after surgery is always sort of nauseating for me... i'm guessing its the anesthetic getting out my system. But yeah, that day usually sucks... and then 3 days later, the swelling went down, but then it sort of throbbed a lot sort of causing a migraine... i was also in the middle of finals... b/c i'm smart like that.

7. If you have runny eyes, but one is better than the other... stand your ground and just get both done at the same time. I didn't. My right I was really blocked, so they just did my right eye. In the months since that decision was made, my left eye has gotten a bit worse... not as bad as the right, but still pretty annoying... so i just keep kicking myself.

And overall, things are a lot better. Even with the tube still in my eye, the tearing of the right eye is definitely less than it has been in the last 3 years. This makes me immensely happy, and a more pleasant person... especially now that the noodle is out of my nose.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M LETTING SOMEONE CUT MY FACE IN A FEW SHORT HOURS!

Preemptive fear

So my eye surgery is going to be on Wednesday. And what I wouldn't tell anyone around me is that as usual, it scares the begeebees out of me. That's right, 3 surgeries in 4 years and they still scare the begeebees out of me. First there's the superficial fears about how the surgery will go. What if it doesn't work? What if I'm stuck in a state of teary eyes for the rest of my life? What if the scar doesn't heal right? How much is this going to age me? What if i can't cover it up? I'm going to be a freak scar faced individual.

Well then maybe I'm overreacting to the whole thing. Maybe i don't really need surgery. Maybe this really is bearable. But then again I was at an advisory board meeting yesterday and trying to schmooze and talk to board members, powerful people who want to do things like, take my resume, and b/c of a combination of walking there in the cold, and throwing on enough make-up to hide that I'm in the middle of exam season, my eyes were basically balling excessively, and the only excuse to fall back on was contact problems... an incredibly bold faced lie, but one i use so often, that sometimes I even say it when I'm wearing my glasses.

Then next logical question is whether or not I'm doing enough. I'm only getting my right eye done, but the left eye has been getting worse... I don't want to do this twice. Sure it isn't as bad as the right eye, but there's still big gopy tears that stream down from it from time to time. So it isn't blocked? You still call a plumber when you you have a slow drain b/c you know eventually the water just isn't going to go down.

There's the irrational fears too. More along the what if side of things. What if something goes wrong during surgery? What if I have a bad reaction to the anestetic? My mom is allergic to anesthesia. What if i can't bounce back right away? Every time i do surgery i feel like a part of my brain dies... i feel forgetful... Thought its probably just in my head (pun not intended).

All of this is frustrating. I was stupid to schedule this now... but when else would i do it? really? Side effects suck. I just want to get back as close to normal, or where i should be, than before the cancer came and started screwing around with my life. These little, seemingly insignificant side effects, really aren't that at all. They are inconvenient annoyances. Permanent reminders of what has happened. And often it is the smallest of these things that is the straw that will break the camel's back.

I'm not particularly smart or talented or motivated at anything. And in that way, I have a lot of normal things working against me, the same obstacles as every other normal person. Its times like now where I feel like the only people that should get cancer (not that anyone should get cancer) should be people a lot stronger than someone like me. Someone that has more going for them so that they can make this their big challenge to overcome. Because if you are just sort of all around mediocre to begin with, how can you really do well? I'm babbling... so I'll stop now.