A Little Tired of Being Strong

Look.

I know that I’m supposed to be made of stronger stuff…

And that I can weather situations better than most.

I can even find a perfect silver lining in the worst situations so that I can give myself the inspiration to keep on trucking.

Today?

Not so much.

I talked to a few people (who have been through it successfully and unsuccessfully) about what the IVF procedure really entails… in detail. And I found myself thinking… “Why me?” Why must I take the road less traveled just because I’m stronger.

I want to be weak. Just once, maybe. And have things come easy.

I know. I’ll be all strong again tomorrow and find the bright side of this.

But right now?

GOD it sucks to be me.

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Self Soothing

There are some places that not everyone can follow you. And there are some situations where nothing can really be said. You have to just man up and handle it all by yourself – mostly because… you don’t really know how to articulate it for someone else to understand and sympathize and offer any comfort.

Mother’s day and Father’s day are always going to be a sore spot for me. But not because I am angry about my mom and dad passing. That’s an inevitability that comes with living life. I couldn’t ever expect them to live for ever. But there’s a whirlwind of other things that swoop down over my mind when I think about them being gone. I think about the fact that I was right there when they both died. I had to watch them both fade away… I had to watch the strange things a human body does when it’s at that point. The twitching. The involuntary motion. The collapse of muscle usage. Rather than have a great image of them vibrant and living as my last mental picture. It’s terribly haunting.

Then I torture myself with the things I couldn’t perceivably control. My dad not getting to see me walk down the aisle. My children being raised without maternal grandparents and never knowing the joy of a grandpa at all… And of course there’s the lashings of “I could have done more… I could have acted quicker… I could have fought harder for their care” that come in every now and again to add the extra sting to my little self pity party.

And in an attempt to try to escape these trappings… to air out what’s on your mind and return to some semblance of normalcy – you turn to your friends… and they try to understand if they can. But you can’t get the words out effectively. Or at least… I can’t. And I’m back to square one. Not their fault. But you can only expect so much salvation. Some of it is all up to you.

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Recuperation – Week 2

Well, at the end of another week, figured I’d do a sum up because the days aren’t THAT terribly different. Being on bed-rest / orders not to use the stairs severely limits my interaction with the world and thus my varied experiences. So I’ll just truncate it all into one post.

Friday / Saturday / Sunday / Monday – Most of the experience of these days was the same. Trying to move around minimally… taking my Tylenol ES every 4 hours to keep the low grade fever at bay. Taking Tylenol PM at night to see if I could get some version of rest, but it always ended up being some kind of hallucinatory sleep from which I’d wake up drenched in sweat and with the CRAZIEST headache sitting on the crown of my head. I was limited to doing pretty much nothing as per the doctor and Earl. So there was a LOT of reclining and asking for E to do things I’d normally just get up and do. Laced through all of this were visits from family and friends a plenty; lots of phone calls and emails all of which were really comforting and reassuring. There’s such a great “community” amongst those I hold dear. I feel excited for the kind of close knit wonderfulness that my kids will benefit from. It’s really amazing.

I frustrated myself a LOT because I’m too damned independent and on occasion, Earl would find me doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing… like… bending… or lifting… or … *ahem* sweeping the floor. He was quick to put me in my place though. After enough delinquencies in my behavior, my best friend J told me that with all that’s in store coming up (getting pregnant, having babies in succession) this might be the very last long time I have to relax and I should revel in it. I’ve taken his advice and am running with it. He’s right. I don’t think after this year I’ll sleep again for 20 years. So i might as well just sit my ass down. LOL!

On Monday I insisted that my brother come by and we fete his birthday. We made him lasagna (as I know Mommy would have made for his birthday because it’s his favorite dish that she prepared on his birthday), some garlic parmesan bread and a chocolate cake. I knew this was his first birthday without her and she was such a huge part of his life still… that she might be one of the only people he’d spend his birthday with. I knew I couldn’t take all the pain away, but maybe lessen the blow.

Tuesday – We woke up bright and early for the appointment for the doctor to remove the staples. What I had realized through trial and error was that the staples were pulling both sides of the skin around the incision and holding them together to fuse. But with all the motion I insisted upon doing… i occasionally would either stretch the incision open, or force the staples to pull to hold together more causing tearing. Not a lot? but enough to be painful. When the nurse tech lifted my shirt and lowered my skirt she was like “wow… those staples are TIGHT. She took what looked like a needle nose plier and grasped the top of the upper most staple and twisted it out of me. Painful? To say the least. And that wasn’t even the most tender of staples. As she worked her way down, she entered the realm of the staples that had been torturing me most all week. And it was all I could do not to scream. Earl sat there and looked on helplessly. I couldn’t even bring myself to grasp his hand because I knew that it would be painful for him, so I just gripped the mattress of the examining chair and gritted my teeth for all 30 staples. They then cleaned the incision with betadine ointment and held it together, finally, with something called “steri strips” – little white pieces of surgical tape that they told me would “fall off on their own” and completely concealed the incision from me. It was still tender but at least there weren’t staples tugging at the skin anymore.

Wednesday / Thursday / Friday – was more of the same as the earlier part of the week. On Wednesday I pulled out the cornrows so lovingly plaited by Victoria and the result was a big bright afro

that Mr. Earl would not let me comb down because he loved the Angela Davis / Coffee / Foxy Brown-ness of it all. It was HUGE.

On Thursday Max came and hung out in the evening and then took a day from work on Friday to sit with me and her Macbook and surf and hang together. We were playing some oldie songs and reminiscing about the 70s and the 80s and the quality of music from back then. We were definitely playing the music loud. But it was still pretty early in the evening. And honestly? we don’t play music that loud at all in this house. But it didn’t matter. My downstairs neighbor came upstairs and made it sound like it was something we do all the time – make noise and make her miserable. Max had some colorful things to say regarding other things she could have been doing. But I’ll spare the public LOL!

On Saturday, The Faction planned a little get together for about 4 in the afternoon so E and I (my participation was limited) tidied up the house and I showered, washed my hair and got dressed. Folks started showing up about 4 and by 6 it was a full house, Faction and Friends. There were spirits and fast food and music and chatter. My spirits were high and I was glad to have everyone around and happy. I did a little dance or two (my mistake) and my body let me know immediately that it wasn’t ready for all of that. Unfortunately, that brought the party to an abrupt end and folks made their way out so I could lay down and I did exactly that while a watchful Earl monitored my sleep. I was really sore on the inside, but hoped it would go away in the AM. Which it did. But I truly learned my lesson. It’s only been a week. Major surgery is no joke. I really just need to take it easier than I’ve been or I may suffer consequences I’m not ready for (like more weeks just sitting around doing nothing).

Sunday was a complete day of leisure, watched movies, played video games. Spent a great deal of it on my own as the Mr. went to represent the Flearys at my chapter’s Community Charter Day Celebration. And when he got home, we ate dinner and I fell asleep. Nothing extravagant to report on.

Today I go for my post-op appointment at 3:00. There’ll be a separate post on that – with the results of everything the Doctor found and our next steps. *keeping fingers crossed*

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Reconstruction – Week 1

What a week.

I don’t even know how to articulate everything that’s happened. I’m not quite sure I remember it all. But I’ll try.

Sunday – Angels of mercy in the form of my friends came by to fete me before I had to fast. Li’l Vic came through with food and hair braiding stylees so I could manage to not have to wash my fro every day. So 6 (Vic, Lisa, Kim, Max, Joelle and I) of us got together and laughed and acted a fool while she lovingly blew out the fro and tressed it into cornrows for me. The afternoon was fun and interesting and the conversations had … will stay in my living room!!!! Nuff said.

Monday – was pretty uneventful. Had to stay home to do the “clear liquid diet” purge thingy. Which I HATE. And still do. So it was basically just running from the computer as I worked from home to the bathroom as the saline solution cleaned me out from the rooter to the tooter. The nerves really began on Monday. The anticipation of what was coming. What happened if something went drastically wrong and they had to do hysterectomy…. All the “what-ifs” came rushing in and I was quietly panicking under the guise of staying busy. I surfed the Inquisitive Geek with Fibroids site all afternoon looking for stuff to take with me to the hospital and then provided the list to Earl to be sure that I had all the most detrimental supplies at hand. Primarily Gas-X…

Tuesday – we got to the hospital right on time and they put me in a room in a purple gown with purple footies and I removed my contacts and rocked my Jimmy Choo frames (really? it’s the only Jimmy Choo anything umma own…) and I waited. Tante Sisi, David and Domi showed up to wait with me. They came and poked me a few times… fed me some pills for which the reasoning behind them now escapes me (nausea and something else), and then around 9:30 they called me in. I hugged everyone and kissed them and made my way to the OR.

IN OR – things were moving quickly but slowly all at once. It seemed that they were running behind time and Dr. Kofinas likes to be ON TIME, so they were all scrambling to get things together. About 10 different people moving around the room all stopping by to ask me questions. The anesthesiologist stayed around me the most trying to comfort me by talking to me in her Eastern European accent and while I appreciated her efforts, I wished very much that she’d just put the mask on me and knock me out already. That would have been THE most calming thing for me right then. But no. One of the assisting doctors came to me and lifted up my gown to examine my pelvis and decided she wanted to give me a bikini trim right then… so she pulled out a little electric razor and just went to shavin around. Tickled like crazy. Then she grabbed a long piece of surgical tape and dabbed it around that area, to snatch up the stray hairs I imagine. I heard them chattering amongst each other. “Which one is Dr. Kofinas” one asked. “You’ll know him when he comes in,” another reassured. It comforted me to know that he had that kind of presence. I can’t stand bland doctors. And on cue he came into the room “Hello, Hello, Hello!!! Are we READY, c’mon, c’mon we’re running behind!” his voice boomed through the room. Before speaking to anyone else he came and pinched my cheek and in his heavy Greek accent, “Hello, baby! Are you ready?” and I replied “Yes, doctor. thank you.” He makes you feel like he’s your uncle or something. It’s very nice. He smiled and walked to talk to the other doctors. He was introduced to another assisting doctor who I suppose was doing his residency and was asking him about what specialization he wanted to take up and I heard him say “OHH! So you want to be a GYN and be broke like me, huh?” and patted him hard on the shoulders. After a little more questioning about where my blood units were and counting of utensils I heard him say, alright to the anesthesiologist and the mask came over my face. I made a concerted effort to say “Good Luck everyone” before I was out completely.

IN RECOVERY – I came out of the anesthesia slowly and the regaining of my awareness was also the realization of how much pain I was in. I found myself saying “please…. please…. it hurts so much… please… help….” Folks were taking vitals of me for a few rounds before I saw my husbands familiar and smiling face. I was happy he was there but so unable to articulate anything. My mouth was cottony and my mind and mouth were disjointed. They had me on a morphine drip that had a button on it to give myself more if I wanted. I found that hard to fathom, but they did. And I clicked that little thing as often as I could. I think I was relegated to every 10 minutes or so and therefore, my body began clocking what 10 minutes was. But there was pain coming from a number of places I couldn’t understand… My abdomen… yes… that was the main source of pain… but… the first 3 fingers on my left hand…. were dead. Completely numb and tingling like they’d fallen asleep. And it took me so long to connect where I’d felt such excruciating numbness before… Carpal Tunnel? Can’t be. My line sister and my baby Tish came and sat quietly with me while I mumbled on and on about nothing. My aunt and cousin came in to check on me too… They had been waiting a long time. I went in at 9:30 and didn’t come out until 5:30 or so and I don’t believe that they let anyone come out to hang with me until 6 or so. So when they finally did get a chance to see that I was doing well, they did just that and let Earl be the one to let them know when I got a room. He sat by my bed patiently and either held my hand and looked at me sleep or was playing pac man on his cellphone. After administering 2 units of plasma to me and running 3 blood tests to make sure that my hemoglobin levels had indeed stabalized they finally moved me to a room upstairs at about 11:00 PM.

IN-ROOM – The room was a private one (hallelujah) and was nicer than some apartments that you can rent in nyc. Hard wood floors and marble in the bathroom LOL. Was VERY nice but small… but that was fine. What did I need gaping room for? I was just going to be laying there. In summation, I was there for the next three days which went fairly quickly. The nights were the hardest. Being there alone, one night being completely disconnected as AT&T was too damned impatient with there bill mongering to wait one more day, it was hard when I’d wake up in pain and know that the next pain med dose couldn’t come for another 2 hours. Biding my time in my mind was extremely difficult. I’d answer emails or check fb. Staring out the window was a downer because it was usually raining. One night, I’d reached the bottom. My stomach had bloated up to it’s fullest and gas was NOT coming out. Actually? NOTHING was coming out besides urine which was uncomfortable to pass. The pain meds were NOT taking… I was trying to find a way to cheat the system and have the Ultram (which is supposed to be Tylenol Extra EXTRA strength) and the Tylenol ES alternate so I could have less time in between them. Then the nurse came in and announced that I had a FEVER fever. Not the low grade that they were expecting and vehemently fighting off with a vengeance… but 101.6. Background – these kinds of procedures have a likely hood of a low grade fever involved because of the inflammatory nature of the tissues post-op. So you’re not actually infected – just inflamed. Normally, they would give you Motrin from the offset to PREVENT the fever from every cropping up to begin with. Unfortunately, I have negative reactions to Motrin or Ibuprofen at all. So we had to go the long route to Mordor. Over the course of the 3 days, Dr. Kofinas, Dr. Montez and Dr. Sullivan came in to regularly ask me a million questions, take close looks at the staples and assess where I was and how close I was to going home. On the day I thought I’d go home was the day I cropped up with the 101.6 fever and excessive bloating. Yet another angel, in the form of the Nurse assigned to my room during the day Vina, said, “Enough” and came in to the room and presented me with the Tylenol ES AND the Ultram, Mylicon for the gas and a suppository. Wait…. a what? A suppository. Yep. If it wasn’t going to come out on it’s own, we were going to make it do what we wanted to. I turned over and she did what she needed to do and told me to clench and wait. I’d know when it took effect. Man… after that??? My system flushed out and I felt like a new person. It’s amazing how that bloating can have you feel so down. I was light and bouncing around and ready to go home! But no… now I had to stay over night once more for them to observe.

By Friday morning, fever or no, I was fighting to go home. Earl showed up at 8:30 and tossed my bag of “going home clothing” on my bed and announced that we were going home NOW. Of course this was before paperwork was signed and vitals were checked one last time. LOL. But by 12 noon, we were driving slowly down the streets of brooklyn. A ride that normally takes 15 minutes took us about 45 to ease around potholes and let impatient drivers by. My trip up the stairs took about 10 minutes. Taking each step on its own and stopping to make sure that everything was doing fine in between.

And I’ve been here ever since. So considerably dealing with a touch of cabin fever, but visits from numerous friends and confidants have passed the time as I anxiously await Tuesday when they’ll take these staples out.

More to come… think that’s enough for now…
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