6/20/15

Met with my Oncologist yesterday. It sounds like all is well as of right now. I’m going to get another 4 weeks of healing in and then off to chemo. I’ll get another 6 treatments, on alternating weeks, starting July 17th.

I assume that somewhere during that 12 week period I may undergo the liver embolization procedure (where they block off blood supply to part of your liver to stimulate growth on one side and stop providing nutrition to the other tumored side).  Well see though. I guess each person heals at a different rate.  My body should be in rapid healing mode, since I don’t put anything bad into it anymore. I miss you alcohol… you make my jokes funny and other peoples jokes funny… Ugh… I don’t miss the dispatcher at Laclede Cab… That lady needs a spanking.

Hmm… What else??? I wore pants and a belt for the first time a few days ago… I carried my own laundry up the stairs the other day… SIDEBAR–JT was so sweet to carry my laundry down the stairs for me a week or two ago… Sadly, as she pranced down my basement stairs, confidently, she crumbled at the bottom of the stairs, I guess missing the last step… Luckily she wasn’t injured. If she had been, there’s a tarp down there… I could have covered her up and masked the smell for awhile since there is no front tenant currently.

Other than that… Nothing else exciting. I guess I’ll just be around… Watch for a really pale, thin upper body, elderly person walking the streets near Fairview….  That’s me… Racing around the neighborhood like a two toed sloth. Pandas are over… Sloths are in…

A little speed bump has occurred in the road to recovery.  Over the weekend Jill was having a lot of pain in her left side…which was a perfect opportunity for her to sport this shirt.

However, as it turns out she wasn’t fine.  She had two follow-up appointments yesterday with Doctor Hawkins (liver surgeon) and Doctor Wise (colon surgeon). She was still having a lot of pain so they scheduled a CT scan for this morning.

The scan showed something they believed was an abscess on the left lobe of her liver where they did the resections.  This is not uncommon after liver surgery but certainly not ideal…of course it can be fatal if left untreated…and as we all know….

Next step…getting admitted to the 16th floor again.  It was like a high school reunion with the nursing staff…I think they expected a circus to follow Jill in…or at least one fully dressed mascot.

We met a new nurse who was quickly nicknamed “Bloodbath” after she collapsed two of Jill’s veins and then proceeded to shoot blood all over her pillow.  We told her it would be hard to write a blog entry explaining Jill bled to death getting an IV.
Oddly her bloodwork shows her white blood cell count is fine and there is no fever just pain. They have started her on a strong dose of antibiotics…it is basically the abscess that’s not an abscess.  Nothing is easy or black and white.  The plan is to keep her overnight and reassess to make sure they don’t want to drain the spot they’re seeing on the scan.  They said it could just be fluid where they did a tumor resection during surgery.  Who knows?

She had an “incident” in the Doctor’s office yesterday.  I somehow managed to break the footstool on the exam table trying to put it up.  It was a precarious position to be in since Jill was propped up on the table.  If  anyone would have walked in it would have looked very similar to an OBGYN exam.  Little did I know …Jill was holding in a large amount of gas….like the size I picture elephants having after eating a field of broccoli.

Well…needless to say, before I was able to fix the footstool it was released.  I firmly believe if I would have had this wind turbine hat on that I could have powered my house for at least 3 years.

Looking back, we pictured it looking like a model with a large wind fan blowing her hair back.  Unfortunately Jill laughed so hard it caused enough pain that she cried a little baby panda tear.

The appointment did establish Jill’s new them song…”She’s Like the Wind” (Patrick Swayze).

I think they must have known about her gas because they made her put on these sweet pants when she got to the room today.   They blew up within 2 minutes.

We will keep everyone posted.  Hopefully she will be released in the morning…and we’re just as hopeful more gas won’t be released.

So I’ve had a lot of time on my hands being off work and all…I’ve found myself watching a lot of TMZ and reading People Magazine articles which is unusual for me.  I must admit that I’ve been very intrigued by all of media around the Bruce Jenner transition to Caitlyn.

I began to wonder this week what I would look like if I transitioned…don’t fret Panther Dan and P. Kitty…I’m not transitioning into the son you’ve always wanted…but seriously…this is what I would look like on a bad day.

And maybe on a good day…

Being a guy would have it’s benefits…especially this week since I found out I was pregnant!  Oops…it’s actually not a baby it’s just a little cancer on an ovary (not to be confused with ovarian cancer-NOT AT ALL THE SAME). It had just spread there too!!!! YAY!!!

Just when we thought two cancer locations were a crowd, I’m having a threesome!  My colon and liver are not happy since the ovaries have already been ripped from my body…now they can’t play together.

Oh well, I’ve got to give a shout out to Dr. Gray-Swain (OBGYN see link) and Dr. Andrea Hagemann (OBGYN Oncologist surgeon) for catching that one and doing a full hysterectomy during my surgery.  At the follow up appointment today Dr. Hagemann confirmed the pathology report from surgery that the right ovary had metastatic cancer.  Good that we caught it. It was very small, but present. I had already read the pathology report the day before online, so we wanted to thank Dr. Hagemann for all of her great work.

Poor Dr. Hagemann though, she will never be the same. 

For some reason, a stop was made in the gift shop at the Center for Advanced Medicine before my appointment…it was there, that the decision was made that we should buy some of THESE to hide under the sheet to surprise Dr. Hagemann when she went in for a closer look of my lady parts.

This movie should tell you the whole story…

I (JILL), have got to interject here. This video… Ugh!

I would just like to point out that there was an epic failure by the cameraman in this video!!! Little miss perfect really blew it!! Big mistake, HUGE!!!

Dr Hagemanns reaction was awesome, by the way. First a look of terror and extreme confusion, stepping back away from the table, as there was sound and no visual yet.  When I flipped up the sheet a little, laughing, she came forward, curious, but still cautious. As she looked under the sheet and saw the, now resting, teeth, her head snapped back with her mouth agape in a silent smile of shock.  I was laughing, Angela too. I pointed at Angela and said “she made me do it!”, Dr Hagemann whipped her head around to angela, now laughing pretty hysterically also.

She informed us that it was a “first”, which we were pretty proud of. She also told us we had just made her day. Not many patients can claim that.

Shes so amazing!!

I’ve been trying to decide how to tell everyone this great news…we thought birth announcements would be nice.  Of course we actually got a picture of my uterus to include on the announcement!

My ovary was born to rock for sure…stay tuned for my next adventure.

Bonjour!

just a quick update. Not much to report. I have sinned 1000673 times since my last confession… I mean blog entry.

My mom left this morning to head on back to the great country of Canada. She is expected to play goal in game 3 of the World Cup pool play. She managed to stay in great shape the last two weeks, by cleaning up my entire back yard. It was quite a transformation to say the least.  I will decline a Bruce Jenner joke here, since I too have recently been going through some “changes”.  Pot-Caitlyn…

Apparently, since Paulette left I am now entrusted with my own upkeep, care and well being. I will be fine, don’t worry. Or fake it, til you make it, or something… Fake it, while you’re naked? We’ll just see how things go.

Ive been feeling much better obviously, since I did a fake poke dance today for a friends 30th bday, on their party bus. It seemed equivalent to going for a walk, as I’m instructed to do multiple daily. Walks that is….

Anywho, this week I don’t have much slated. Couple of doctors visits and I guess rest.  My “extreme fatigue”, as they had warned, seems to come and go. It’s weird and wonderful to still be losing weight, but it’s not healthy at this time, so hopefully I can start putting on some pounds rather than losing them.  Do not be fooled, I have not been hitting the gym… Or dieting…

One more quick update, as of now, I’m obviously not able to work. So I’m off for June. I should find out next week from my appointments when chemo will start again. They had said six weeks post surgery, so likely late June or early July. The plan last time I heard was to do a couple of or a few rounds of chemo and then try for another procedure leading up to another surgery. I believe single rounds of chemo consist of four treatments, so each round takes about two months. Well see though. It would be nice to have the summer just with chemo, as there are a few of us signed up or Pedal the Cause St. Louis in September (little 15 mile ride this year-hopefully longer next year).

Cheers.

heerio

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of viewing Jill’s new zipper…this is the pre-staple removal picture…yes that’s pure fear in Beans’ eyes as the doctor approached with a pair of pliers to rip out the 35+ staples which were holding her together for the past 14 days.  I quite like this picture because the weird angle makes her look super distorted with tiny little arms and hands.

Fortunately, it wasn’t as painful as she was anticipating…it was all going very well until she pretended to faint as an excuse to pass gas…apparently flatulence is not as frowned upon by the care givers in the hospital if they believe you are unconscious when it happens.  I’m not 100% sure the physician’s assistant fell for her act though since she put on her mask immediately after the incident.

Within minutes all the staples were out and Jill is now left with this beauty…ahhhh the stories we will be able to create with this scar for all those future trips to the beach.  I’m leaning towards a story that involves Jill carrying a stone baby around for the past 20 years like that lady did in Brazil.

She is experiencing some weird and unpredicted side effects…presumably from the chemo or possibly from the fact that she is missing numerous organs now and her body doesn’t know what to do with the extra space.  Her feet have started growing about 1/2 size per day!  She’s wearing a size 20 now…weird.  Thankfully Nordstroms supplies shoes for NBA players so we took a trip out there.  I think her dreams of becoming a ballerina are now officially over. 

She’s also having trouble reading small print since her surgery…thankfully since we’re all over 40 we have plenty of readers laying around.  I must admit…it is fairly creepy seeing her sit in her leather recliner with readers flipping through the pages of Penthouse for hours and hours upon end.  We’re pretty sure her eyes are actually ok…she just forgets to open them most of the time and starts yelling that she can’t see…oxycodone you must go away soon.For the most part she’s doing great…back up to 5,000+ steps daily…that’s almost as many naps as she takes a day!

Thanks for all of the prayers and support…please keep them coming!

Well today is the day my staples come out. Hopefully we are on the down slope. This roller coaster lately has been some bullshit. Seriously.

Good news, my chest pain feels a little better today. Everything actually feels a little better today. I do need to trim my nails though.

Thanks to everyone for all of the words of encouragement and well wishes, it’s about time they paid off, geez. Apparently I maybe overdid it last week, singing ” I will walk 10,000 steps and I will walk 10,000 more…” Just to end up in the hospital…. That sucked.

They tried to kill me with that damn CT contrast dye. I’ve had that shit injected into me at least seven times before, but this time…. Oh this time was the one… I looked like Violet in Charlie and the chocolate factory.  Angela looked at me and exclaimed, ” Violet’s turning violet!!!”

My face was purple like an Oompa Loompa. Thank God I had the Captain back there with me barking orders. On Dumbass, on Dipshit, hey Dillhole, hey Moron! Quit calling other doctors and make your own decision.

If a patient comes in with a cut on their finger, I don’t think it’s necessary to call their primary care physician to see if the correct approach is a bandaid.

We have a female patient in the ER, it appears she has started  her Period… She has a history of cancer… We should call her oncologist.

Okay neither of those things happened, but basically, it’s not far off.

Another shout out to the nurses!! As they seemed to know more about what was going on again, as usual.

Anywho, I digress. Today I get my staples out. I’ll see if the webmaster can include some photos for me. Since last time I tried to update the blog I deleted everything. Oops. 😉

stay tuned. Not much to report. Things are good today… So far…

fingers crossed.

J