Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021
It is almost time for my brother's wedding!!! My brain is focused today on wrapping things up at work so everyone has what they need from me before we head out on PTO for the weekend. And it’s also on everything that needs to be done here (we have not started packing) before we can load up and hit the road. Lots on the brain, why not add one more thing.
I met with my surgeon on Tuesday to check out the port-removal scar and he removed
the sutures from the incision. When I left the appt. it seemed like everything looked good and was doing just fine. But today, I noticed the scar seems to be pulling apart and the only thing preserving the incision is what appears to be some kind of liquid bandage. I called my surgeon’s office and ended up texting a picture of the incision to his assistant. My Dr. said that he wasn’t concerned, it looks like it is coming apart a bit but that it should be alright.
So I took his word for it and hopped in the shower. But the liquid bandage must not have liked that very much because I look down after a little time in the water and notice some red liquid (blood? Iodine?) running down my chest. A small hole had opened up in the liquid bandage and it was now leaking this fluid. My sincerest apologies - this is a pretty gross situation in my opinion, so please feel free to skip ahead.
My Dr. called me later in the day and I told him that it had opened up more and a hole had materialized in the liquid bandage, but that we were planning to leave town tomorrow for the wedding and would be gone all weekend - I asked, "What should I do?" Again he reassured me that everything would be fine and that the infection probably left behind some fluid that needed to be drained and not to worry.
Friday, Sept.3, 2021
The trip to Louisville was not bad at all, my girl did GREAT in the car - she slept for a few hours and then just played with her books, toys and watched the cars driving by until we arrived at the hotel. We woke up this morning and ate breakfast with my family and then headed out to the Louisville Zoo for the morning. It was a great day! We did a lot of walking. The giraffes walked right up to the fence but my little one was unimpressed. The elephants had a little baby in their pen, and yet she was was still pretty unimpressed. But when the hippo went swimming right by her face, she was entranced! And then the gorilla, man, you would have thought he was having the most important conversation with her, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
We then returned to the hotel for naptime and my husband accompanied my parents and brother to go set-up the rehearsal dinner venue. I rested a bit and then began getting ready for the dinner. Unfortunately, while I was getting ready, my port-removal incision opened -- all the way open. I was freaking out. It looked like I had been shot and dug the slug out of my chest; I know I can be a dramatic individual, but this is not a dramatization of the situation. I am not super squeamish, but this was about all I could handle. Liquid bandage - completely gone. It was very clear that God did not put me on this earth to be a doctor, yeesh. I sent a picture to my surgeon’s assistant and basically said “HELP!? What should I do?!” She said she’d send it to my surgeon. He called me in less than an hour’s time, thank goodness. I was thinking that we were going to miss the rehearsal because I’d be sitting in a Louisville emergency room waiting to get stitched up. But he once again assured me that this was nothing to panic about. I could pack the wound with gauze and cover it with a bandage, but that ultimately the wound would heal from the bottom up over time and everything would be alright.
I was NOT alright. I was pretty much dissolving in panic - I felt completely alone because this seemed far too gross to share with anyone (who wants to see that?!) and it was a very important weekend for my brother and our family and I didn't want to pull focus, yet again, from the wonderful things in everyone's life. I had been doing enough of that all damn year. So I kept my anxiety fairly quiet and tried to pull myself together, finished getting ready because we had a wedding to prepare for. By that time Cory had returned, Peanut had woken up, and so we all got ourselves ready and headed out to the venue for what turned out to be an extremely beautiful evening.
---- For the rest of the weekend I would fill the wound with Neosporin and dress it with large, cumbersome bandages. Unfortunately for me, I was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress for the wedding, the bandage was very obviously visible, which I was self conscious of so I did my best to cover it with makeup (which of course did not really work). The ceremony was beautiful, full of meaning and sentiment, and the reception - well we danced the night away - my girl was completely in her element and enjoyed running around all over that pavilion. She stayed up way past her bedtime and loved every minute of it! ----
And sure enough, by Sunday I noticed that the wound was healing “from the bottom up” as my doctor had said it would. It still completely grossed me out, but it was getting shallower every day. But just as soon as one situation starts to right itself, something else goes a little sideways.
I noticed over the weekend that my left foot was feeling odd, numb. I had chalked it up to all the walking we had done at the zoo in shoes that maybe didn’t have the best arch support. But I realized that it had been feeling that way since earlier in the week, maybe since Wednesday even, and now that feeling seemed to be spreading to my toes. I even noticed the odd sensation in my face - my nose and part of my cheek were numb, tingling. I had a hunch that this “odd feeling” I was experiencing was probably the neuropathy that I had heard described as a possible risk of the Taxol chemotherapy, and was definitely something I would need to address with my oncologist
.
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