Do I want to write?
Dec. 4th, 2021 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maeve66I don't know.
My laparascopic total hysterectomy was scheduled for 12/1 and then rescheduled because the surgeon wanted me to get a CT Scan and then a fucking PET scan after the CT scan and couldn't she have fucking scheduled those before, with the MRI, like a trifecta? But no, because Kaiser doesn't like to spend money on tests that MIGHT not be necessary.
So I had to gear back down from mentally prepping for a surgery that already might not work, Trendelenburg position and anesthesia and all.
And then the CT Scan showed "plump lymph nodes" (great). And then the PET scan, which was supposed to happen Wednesday this past week, was cancelled on the morning it was supposed to happen -- I got a phone call at 8:30 saying the machine had broken down. I had to call all over the Bay Area to different Kaisers, begging to be put on waiting lists. Amazingly, Kaiser Santa Clara, an hour and a half away, called yesterday morning with a cancellation and my sister left her job as a principal and drove me there.
It was weird, the PET scan. And the PET scan confirmed the suspicious nature of at least one of the lymph nodes (though on the plus side, I don't have any OTHER cancers, not breast cancer or colon cancer or pancreatic cancer or thyroid cancer, etc.)
So now I am frantically still finishing my lesson plans for the next two weeks (I didn't change the window of time off I asked for, because there were other procedures that would have made it hard to teach anyway, and the recovery probably still won't go beyond Winter Break...) and having to learn all about the very likely course of internal and external radiation treatments I will be facing, after surgery, whether it works or not.
And then today, the husband of my best friend in the world Alistair posted an update (I haven't even written about this because it's just Too Fucking Much) to Alistair's medical situation. He and Geof had really bad flus maybe two months ago? And were in hospital, where either Covid was diagnosed or they GOT Covid, in England. This part isn't clear to me. Geof recovered. Yes, they were both vaccinated. Alistair is a Labour councillor in the city they live in. Anyway, Alistair developed a series of infections and side effects, the worst of which was in the pericardium. He was in a coma, with a lot of damage to kidneys, some brain bleeds, etc. They gave him a tracheotomy. He was finally coming out of sedation, very slowly, and being retrained to sit up and nod or shake his head, etc. And now the doctors have found that his aortic valve is so damaged that he will die, for sure, if they don't do an operation to replace it. But the blood thinners he has to be on and various other complications mean that he has a 50% chance of dying during surgery or recovery. He'll be having that surgery about the same time as I'll be having mine. My surgery is scheduled for 12/8.
This year has sucked. I cannot remember a worse year in my life.
My laparascopic total hysterectomy was scheduled for 12/1 and then rescheduled because the surgeon wanted me to get a CT Scan and then a fucking PET scan after the CT scan and couldn't she have fucking scheduled those before, with the MRI, like a trifecta? But no, because Kaiser doesn't like to spend money on tests that MIGHT not be necessary.
So I had to gear back down from mentally prepping for a surgery that already might not work, Trendelenburg position and anesthesia and all.
And then the CT Scan showed "plump lymph nodes" (great). And then the PET scan, which was supposed to happen Wednesday this past week, was cancelled on the morning it was supposed to happen -- I got a phone call at 8:30 saying the machine had broken down. I had to call all over the Bay Area to different Kaisers, begging to be put on waiting lists. Amazingly, Kaiser Santa Clara, an hour and a half away, called yesterday morning with a cancellation and my sister left her job as a principal and drove me there.
It was weird, the PET scan. And the PET scan confirmed the suspicious nature of at least one of the lymph nodes (though on the plus side, I don't have any OTHER cancers, not breast cancer or colon cancer or pancreatic cancer or thyroid cancer, etc.)
So now I am frantically still finishing my lesson plans for the next two weeks (I didn't change the window of time off I asked for, because there were other procedures that would have made it hard to teach anyway, and the recovery probably still won't go beyond Winter Break...) and having to learn all about the very likely course of internal and external radiation treatments I will be facing, after surgery, whether it works or not.
And then today, the husband of my best friend in the world Alistair posted an update (I haven't even written about this because it's just Too Fucking Much) to Alistair's medical situation. He and Geof had really bad flus maybe two months ago? And were in hospital, where either Covid was diagnosed or they GOT Covid, in England. This part isn't clear to me. Geof recovered. Yes, they were both vaccinated. Alistair is a Labour councillor in the city they live in. Anyway, Alistair developed a series of infections and side effects, the worst of which was in the pericardium. He was in a coma, with a lot of damage to kidneys, some brain bleeds, etc. They gave him a tracheotomy. He was finally coming out of sedation, very slowly, and being retrained to sit up and nod or shake his head, etc. And now the doctors have found that his aortic valve is so damaged that he will die, for sure, if they don't do an operation to replace it. But the blood thinners he has to be on and various other complications mean that he has a 50% chance of dying during surgery or recovery. He'll be having that surgery about the same time as I'll be having mine. My surgery is scheduled for 12/8.
This year has sucked. I cannot remember a worse year in my life.