just call me murphy....

what a week full of excitement! my love and i got up at 5:30 am, thursday morning (last week) in order to make the patient registration time of 6:15 at the hospital....i was to have my portacath installed...yay! we get there, i get weighed, changed into my lovely hospital gown, and sit there patiently as they TRY to get an iv in me for the procedure. luckliy, the nurse gets it on the second try....in a tender spot, but it was in and that is all that counts. this is supposed to be a 30-45 minute procedure that i would get to go home right after. we figured....in by 6:15, home by 8:30..back in bed by 8:35 and we can pretend that we slept in and roll out of bed, happily snuggled at around noon. great plan....too bad....

i wake up in the recovery room and it is already 8:30....the procedure took WAY longer than it should have....the last time that happened, i had to stay in the hospital overnight. i guess that they had a hard time finding the vein needed (they needed an ultrasound to find it...it is lower than most peoples)...and that my veins are small. now that i look at it, it is in a diferent location that i was told...kind of half way between my collar bone and my boob. anyway, the surgeon came in and told me that they think they may have punctured my lung, and that i needed to have a chest xray and wait two hours to see if things were healing themselves. 1st chest xrey at 10:00....left lung is colapsed to about 50%....second xray at 12:00....same thing....they tell me that they are going to need to insert a chest tube, which will be uncomfortable, and that i will need to be admitted to the hospital for at least 48 hours for the lung to fully expand, yadda yadda. they kick bret out of the room, inject me with the twilight drugs again, i pass out...next thing i know is that i am waking up with a big tube sticking out of my left side. they then move me to my room....207. here is an example of a chest tube:

while i was in the hospital, i had to pee in a bedpan....couldn't be detached from the suction device that was trying to help my lung become full again. the nurses were nice....but that doesn't make up for having to pee in a pink plastic container. i almost threw up the first evening...i don't think my body liked the in and out of anesthesia thing...but starting the next morning, i was eating normally again. i had another chest xray the following day, mid-morning...and dr. banks came in and told me that it looked good...the lung was back full force. they would keep me hooked up overnight, turn the suction machine off at 6 am the next morning, take another xray, and if it looked good, they would pull the tube and send me home.

can i tell you how great it felt to NOT be hooked up to all those tubes?!?!? i started with an iv, added the oxygen up my nose, and then the tube in my chest....once they began to get rid of them, i felt so FREE!!!!

all went well....after three pain meds to find the right one for me (oxycodone was the winner), they yanked the tube out (literally), let me get dressed, gave me my release orders and sent us on our way...all before lunch.

so now, i am sitting here, working from home. i have slowed down on the oxycodone, have taken my anticoagulant 2 days in a row (small veins plus portacath equals higher potential for bloodclots)...i have tests that i am supposed to take tomorrow and thursday, and then follow-up with my oncologist on friday. here we are....the quick countdown to the start of my chemotherapy...once it starts, it is 8 sessions until it is over...hopefully they will fly by without incident...and i will start to rebuild my strength...i wonder if my hair will grow back curly or not?