Week One is history. A sweaty, sizzling heat wave rolled into the Bay Area and settled on top of my swaddled arm for the duration. My, this has been challenging. Doable in a time-consuming, claustrophobic sort of way.I booked the crack-o-dawn appointments in physical therapy mostly because I'd get in and out before the kids needed to be picked up at school. This means I'm driving to the hospital at 6:45 am, getting unwrapped and measured, and in the shower before the lymphatic massage (sounds better than it is) and rewrapping. The shower is the best part of the experience. No bandage, no arm or finger constriction. You know how much you love that first hot shower after a camping trip? Well, this is better.
The bandaging has something of a steep learning curve, at least for the memory-impaired. Consider that there are two rolls of gauze-like webbing to wrap the fingers and wrist; an arm net; a ribbed pad over the back of the hand for added compression; a fuzzy cotton wrap like quilt batting from palm to armpit; and a series of three ace bandage-like bandages for the hand, wrist and arm. All require different techniques, directions, start and end points, tension. As you'd guess, the result is massive bulk of the scary medical kind. During a heat wave it is tough to disguise the bandaging; I went with the casual, business-as-usual approach. A few people, including the kids' friends, asked questions. Mostly I settled on an easy, "Oh, just some swelling. The bandages help it go away." Those who wanted more learned it was lymphedema and a few excessively curious moms at a t-ball game discovered that Danny's mom had breast cancer.
I've noticed that every time something new and visible related to cancer happens to me, the kids regress. Arguing increases, meltdowns occur over little things, anger erupts in hot spurts. It's happened enough that I've come to expect it. If the good that has come from this disease is a Cancer Perk then these horrible family side-effects shall be christened Cancer Crap. It does no good to hide the disease from anyone; those who love you will always feel its power. I hate the Cancer Crap but my kids will learn how to wade through it and leave it behind. That, I think, will one day be a Cancer Perk.
Hedgie is Back!
The heat wave gave me permission to return to my short, short hair style, the one I had when my hair was growing in after chemo. I was one of the few women post-treatment who liked their first hair. The growing-it-long-again hair drove me nuts. Well, Hedgie is edgie once again. Wash, gel and go.
Goldfish Emergency, What Else?
On top of everything else, Pooh and Tigger, my dear Comets (handed off to us four years ago at a church festival by their rightful teenage guardians) became terribly ill following a medication and tank treatment. Good thing we have multiple tanks and healthy fish; juggled the big goldies around until I could set up a safe tank for them. It was touch and go but at this point it looks like they have recovered. I still need to re-establish the original tank for them but at least I don't have to do so at a frantic pace with a bandaged hand further encased in a plastic glove on the hottest day of the YEAR! (I really think Pooh and Tigger are living metaphors for something else... haven't worked it out entirely yet.)
