Material things

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and I feel like my stuff is smothering me. I'm ok to get rid of things, I have a couple of bags of stuff ready for the thrift. I want to get my closet back. Right now it holds shoes I probably won't wear; books I've read; and boxes of memories. 

I know it will be futile to go through those boxes (like the Old Milwaukee Light box) because I already know I won't be able to get rid of anything in there. I can get rid of shoes and books but there is a pink bird house type thing in that box (I can see it thru the opening) that contains fuzzy chickens from past Easters and other memories of a time when I was so innocent. On the other side of the shelf are paintings my grandmother made. And a large coloring book that helped me learn about Colonial women like Molly Pitcher. Maybe it's ok to save these memory triggers??

Cancer sucks

I'm becoming angrier at cancer. Not because I have it but because people I love have it. I'm about to lose another aunt to it. She was in remission but it came back fast. I want to punch it in the face. I want to punch something! All of the millions of dollars supposedly spend on cancer research and they can't come up with a cure???
Anyone who doesn't have cancer is so very lucky. I may seem like I whine and complain a lot but I know I am fortunate to be feeling good right now.

Need a superhero name

It's just something I was thinking about today. What would you call someone who goes around helping old men who have fallen and old women who don't know how to use the self checkouts at the store? ;-)

PS appointment/onco appointment/Faslodex horror

On the 22nd I saw my plastic surgeon. She's reluctant to go forward with lat flap surgery because of the recurrence. Very disappointing! She said she's concerned about my health and wants me to heal from the last surgery. She said if she gets OK from my oncologist and breast surgeon she'll do it. I see her again in 3 months.
Same day at oncologist: waiting for appointment when a woman came up and informed me that I can apply for a grant too cover the Faslodex. She showed me that it costs over $3000 per dose and my cost would be almost $400 per dose. I've had 3 loading doses and now I'll be on a once a month schedule. Whew! Had a meltdown over that! Now I'm waiting to hear if I qualify for the grant. There's no fear like the fear of not being able to pay for a drug that could potentially save your life.
Oncologist never has answers to my questions. He said it's OK for me to go ahead with reconstruction if that's what I want.
I'm very happy that my WBC, hemoglobin, and platelets are in normal range! Red blood cells are still slightly low.

Merry Christmas!

Had a good Christmas with the family. Happy today and feeling good!
Last night heard/felt my neighbor hit the corner of his garage with the bumper of his car. After trying to figure out what the noise was I noticed the light still on in his garage. I checked and he had fallen and was trying to pull himself up using the tailgate. I'm so glad I heard it and he didn't lay there all night. He's in his 70s and is having a difficult time since this is the first Christmas without his partner of 50 years.

Seroma seroma

Last week I had 120mls (~40oz.) drained from the seroma that developed at my surgical site. Then it developed again so I went back in and I now have another drain. I'm not quite convinced the PA really knew what she was doing since she didn't put a dressing over the drain tube site. Sutured it in and that was it. Wouldn't be so concerned if I hadn't had to go thru FOUR MONTHS OF ANTIBIOTICS for an infection!

Speaking of removing my own drain...

This is an interesting story!!

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rogozov.html

of the Week.

Leonid Rogozov "I did not sleep at all last night.  It hurts like the devil!  A snowstorm whipping through my soul, wailing like a hundred jackals.  Still no obvious symptoms that perforation is imminent, but an oppressive feeling of foreboding hangs over me... This is it... I have to think through the only possible way out:  to operate on myself... It’s almost impossible... but I can’t just fold my arms and give up." Self-surgery is one of the most hardcore things a human being can attempt.  Throughout history there are several ultra-bonkers cases of hardcore, moderately-insane individuals going under their own knife-wielding hands – a couple years ago this woman in rural Mexico gave herself a c-section with a kitchen knife while using hard liquor as an anesthesia.  In 1999, a woman named Jerri Nielsen biopsied her own breast cancer while ice-bound in Antarctica, with her only access to medical professionals being through videoconferencing equipment.  This group of psychotic hippie nutjobs used to get blitzed on LSD in the 60s and drill holes in their heads with power tools as a path to spiritual enlightenment, and this Italian neurosurgeon once finished a brain operation while suffering from a heart attack – which isn't exactly self-surgery, but still needs to be included among any list of hardcore surgical operations. Despite all of these incredibly gonzo attempts at curing disease by taking a scalpel to your own abdomen, by far the most often-requested self-surgery incident I receive emails for is the super-intense case of Leonid Rogozov – the twenty-seven year old Soviet surgeon who, in 1961, removed his own appendix in the middle of an Antarctic hellhole surrounded by a bunch of guys whose only experience with medicine was when their physicians told them to turn their heads and cough.  Since I generally like to do fan service any time it doesn't compromise my own principles of badassitude, I will now attempt to humbly present the first documented case of a successful auto-operation of this caliber performed under these impossible working conditions. Antarctica is fucking cold.  I'm not sure if you know this or not, but it's true.  I wouldn't bullshit you on this.  Why the hell you would ever want to go there is something I may possibly never understand, but that doesn't mean that I can't have a healthy respect for those psychopathic adventurers who get out there and explored the uncharted glacier-covered wastelands of nothingness – it takes serious nuts to get out there and survive in the world's harshest climates with only penguins and bloodthirsty Orcas to keep you company, and that's something that Leonid Rogozov had plenty of. Rogozov was in the midst of a pretty promising career as a surgeon, and had just finished working on a dissertation aimed at designing a new method for operating on esophageal cancer, but a few weeks before he was supposed to get in front of the board and defend his dissertation he decided, "fuck it, I'm going to peace out of here, join the sixth Soviet Antarctic expedition, and drive giant tractors around in wind chills of negative one hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit."  So he did.  He ditched school, joined the South Pole expedition, and was one of just twelve men who departed Leningrad in 1960 to set up a polar base in the middle of fucking ass-nowhere.  Doing triple-duty as the expedition's doctor, assistant meteorologist, and heavy-vehicle operator, Rogozov spent thirty-six days at sea, withstood hella-bitter Antarctic temperatures so nut-bustingly cold that it would turn most guys' dicks into those liquid nitrogen bananas scientists like to use to hammer nails into boards, and helped build the Russian base at Novolazraveskaya Station. It's tough to look like a badass when you're chillin' with penguins. Here's a satellite image of Novolazarevskaya Station.  The astute cartographer will notice that there is absolutely goddamned nothing around this consonant-heavy installation except for glacial snow, freezing cold water, and unbearable soul-crushing misery.  It's a brutal climate designed by the gods to crush the life out of the weaker species of earth, and this dude was out there in the middle of nowhere just jumping snowmobiles through flaming hoops and stitching up workers who busted their arms falling off construction towers.  Well this was great fun and all, until the night of 29 April 1961, when Rogozov started barfing all over the place, ran a temperature, and started having searing pain coursing through his abdomen.  Rogozov, being a surgeon, of course managed to diagnose himself with acute appendicitis.  That was the easy part.  The hard part was that intense winds, freezing temperatures, and the afore-mentioned misery of the Antarctic cold season prevented him having any hope of evacuation, and he was stuck in a recently-constructed work facility with no hospital equipment, no medical personnel, and an agonizingly-painful infected internal organ that was going to kill him if he didn't get it removed in the next twenty-four hours. Uh, fuck. While most people would have simply died slow, excruciating deaths like chumps, Leonid Rogozov decided that he was going to will himself to live.  With all the odds stacked against him, this guy decided he was going to get in there and yank the damn thing out himself – no matter how ridiculous a prospect that may have been.  Sure, appendectomies are some of the easiest surgical procedures you can perform, but it's significantly less simple when you're in a makeshift operating room, working blind and upside-down while running a fever and suffering from extreme nausea, and being assisted by a bunch of uneducated manual laborers.  Rogozov didn't give a shit.  He ordered his men to get the medical room as sterile as possible, and then, assisted by a weatherman, a mechanic, and the base manager (who was there as back-up just in case either of the other two assistants got nauseous and passed out – never mind the fact that Rogozov was out there on his own), Rogozov laid down on the operating table, took his favorite scalpel, and sliced a five-inch incision across his own lower abdomen. For the next hour and forty-five minutes, the super-sick, dying Leonid Rogozov operated on his own badly-infected appendix.  Unable to see down into his own gaping wound, Rogozov had to work by feel alone, without gloves, and sometimes using just a mirror that was being held above him by one of his assistants (Rogozov later said that this was less helpful than you might think, because everything in the mirror is backwards and it was really screwing with him).  Suffering badly from stress and illness and overall suckitude, Rogozov had to take breaks every five or ten minutes to vomit, collect his energy, or wait for the room to stop spinning, but this guy was so insanely badass that he just kept plowing through the procedure, doing whatever he needed to do to survive. Now my first-hand experience with surgical procedures is minimal at best (you'd have a better chance of explaining to me how fuckin' magnets work), so the closest thing I can equate this to would be tattooing yourself by writing in cursive, upside-down, with your eyes closed while dying of malaria.  And if you spelled something wrong you died in a matter of seconds.  So, like, no pressure or anything. "I didn’t permit myself to think about anything other than the task at hand. It was necessary to steel myself, steel myself firmly and grit my teeth." Somehow, despite every single possible factor stacked up against him, Rogozov yanked the misbehaving organ out of his exposed breadbox.  Just before he passed out, he remembered specifically noticing that the appendix was so badly infected that it would have ruptured within the next couple of hours, putting him in a situation he certainly would not have survived. Amazingly, two weeks after this crazy juryrigged operation Rogozov was back in action, working as the base doctor for the rest of the trip.  Dude didn't even get evacuated back home once the weather cleared up – he stayed in Antarctica for a full year, returned home with the rest of his team, finally defended his dissertation, received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor award from the Soviet government, and lived the rest of his life as a Professor of General Surgery in St. Petersburg.  Insane. "When Rogozov had made the incision and was manipulating his own innards as he removed the appendix, his intestine gurgled, which was highly unpleasant for us;  it made one want to turn away, flee, not look—but I kept my head and stayed.  Artemev and Teplinsky also held their places, although it later turned out they had both gone quite dizzy and were close to fainting... Rogozov himself was calm and focused on his work, but sweat was running down his face and he frequently asked Teplinsky to wipe his forehead... The operation ended at 4 am local time.  By the end, Rogozov was very pale and obviously tired, but he finished everything off."  Links: BMJ Case Report English Russia Wikipedia Sources: Rubin, Jeff.  Antarctica.  Lonely Planet, 2005. Wise, Jeff.  Extreme Fear  Macmillan, 2009. Main The Complete List About the Author Miscellaneous Articles RSS

Short drain

I was allowed to remove this drain myself. She used absorbable sutures and taped it in well. It actually fell out as I was attempting to replace the tegaderm dressing. Oops. I did have to cut a suture that was poking me after the drain came out. Awkward holding a mirror to my side to see where I was going with the suture scissor. ;-)

Path report

Surgeon called last Thurs with my pathology results. She said she removed a 5mm area that was cancerous. Didn't get clean margins because that's hard to do in the armpit area. She also removed 2 lymph nodes that weren't cancerous. So I think I have 0 lymph nodes in that area now.

I have questions for her during the follow up appt. Did that cancer just "pop" up in that area or did it start in a lymph node that was previously removed?

My right arm has blown up with lymphedema. That's a frustrating disappointment.

I've been playing phone tag with someone from the oncology financial office. I'm worried my Medicare/Medicaid won't cover the new injectable drug (Faslodex) because I've heard it's expensive. I'll be in a panic until I talk to her.

Incision and drain site incision

Get that friend of yours who knows a guy to make me some "special brownies."

http://www.purpleclover.com/health/5623-how-deal-me-having-breast-cancer/