Maybe lipo isn't so bad

My thighs don't hurt much anymore - they are still turning lovely colors but in general not painful. All in all this surgery seems more an excuse for me to have a lazy weekend than a true need to recover. I'll take it. Btw people do assure me real liposuction is actually more painful. They use a small tube and didn't take much.

Goodbye mediport

Just wanted to blog to let folks know I had my (hopefully) last surgery today. It went really well, I think. The mediport is out :) fat was filled and a nipple was built. In the end I didn't get to decide where the fat was taken from - he took from my outer thighs which feel like I was beaten up. Toying with the idea of setting up a pool over what color they will be on what day. Right now they are reddish but I'm guessing black and blue by the weekend. My legs are the only area that hurt and it really isn't bad and I have pills to take.

Tracy took me to the hospital and spent the day. There probably are easier ways to have quality time but hanging out and watching bad tv was pretty fun.

Anyway will post more when I'm willing to use my computer on my lap or i decide sitting at a table is okay. Now it's time to take percocet and Ativan and go to sleep.

Thanks for supporting me through this whole process. Sweet dreams.

I'm okay but bad things do come in threes

I spoke to my surgeon's assistant who had my radiologist report from my mri and everything looked normal. She said they look at it when it comes in and if anything was odd they definitely would call me before my appointment.

Of course prior to my kind of paranoid call I found out another person I know just had a biopsy come back positive for cancer. Yuck - cancer really does suck.

Kim

Trying hard not to freak out

Sorry I've been so lax in blogging - life got busy and I wasn't sure I had much to report. I am waiting to go to G-town for an MRI (to confirm things are still on track) and should be getting some long overdue work done, but... I found out this weekend about two cases of recurrence. My friend Elizabeth's mother's cancer has come back (again) and while trawling my friend's kid blog, I found out another person she knows just found out she has tumors from invasive breast cancer (after battling inflammatory breast cancer a few years ago). It might be good that it is new and not that the original breast cancer had metastasized but it seems patently unfair to have invasive breast cancer after you don't have breasts. (It was in her lymph nodes.)So my prayers and thoughts are with Whymom - someone I don't know but seems totally kickass and amazing and the folks in Chicago who have done this too many times already.

So I'm mainly sending out good thoughts for both of them that this time around things go as smoothly as can be hoped for each of them and counting on a clear mri.

Just hanging around waiting for the snow

I don't have much to report, but folks have commented about my lack of posting. I am doing reasonably well. I've gone for walks most days and while apparently on some non-east coast time (I don't seem able to wake up before 8:30 or 9) I seem to manage to fill my days.

Yesterday I got my hair cut, ate sushi and answered some e-mails about a contract and some other random work related stuff. While having high hopes for organizing - and after making some good progress when Ellen and Michele were here, things seem to have leveled off. Instead, I seem to be filling my time reading random things on-line, playing on-line scrabble and watching incredibly geeky things like this, or the President addressing the republican party, or this trailer. Note Len's appearance towards the end.

Yes I said it was geeky.

Otherwise, I'm planning on going back to work part-time next week and have scheduled a trip to visit my sister and her family next weekend. I have put together clothing options - yoga pants or sweat pants (though they look nice) and long sweaters, or dresses and boots. The key is avoidance of any waistbands on my scar but yes it is fairly reminiscent of the 80's. I'm resisting the urge to add leg-warmers.

I've also been spending time e-mailing with my niece - and trying to get her to use actual words instead of text speak. But now that I've brought up bad 80s fashion, maybe I need to cut her some slack.

Anyway - I'm doing okay - happy for phone calls if folks are bored and I have a goal to get rid of my waste products tomorrow. (They are still sitting in my trunk, DC lets you drop things off on Saturdays - last Saturday I didn't do it due to traffic disruptions and this week I might be put off by the snow.)

Of course I have been waiting for the snow allday and now they say it isn't coming until tomorrow - we'll see if it amounts to much.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Kim

A mile....

After feeling pretty good most days since surgery, I woke up today feeling pain, with sharp aches in my stomach and breast if i moved wrong. Perhaps I have been doing too much: walking a mile yesterday and participating in too many organizational projects may be part of the problem (others did the heavy lifting - literally - but I probably have been bending and using my stomach muscles more than I should have). Or it could be the sudden change in weather. But the sadness seems mainly related to the Massachusetts election and what it means for health care reform.

I know people are angry that things don't seem to be getting done/or too much money is being spent. And while the stereotype of Massachusetts is all elitist liberals in Boston and Cambridge, it's a diverse place with lots of blue collar workers and, unfortunately, many people out of work. This is a place that has regularly voted for Republican governors. And I can't believe a candidate for office in MA can know less about Boston sports legends than I do. Would it have killed Coakley to help that guy up or shake some hands? But weren't these people out in the streets this summer mourning Teddy Kennedy's passing in the pouring rain? This wasn't a perfect bill, but this was in part his dream.

I can't help thinking this is going to turn into yet another missed opportunity to reform health care and insure more folks. Yes, the bill isn't perfect and the process has been ugly and MA basically was going to have to pay a lot of money and get very little in return as they ALREADY had better coverage than the federal proposal. The bill was written so states that had made the most progress in insuring low-income folks were given the least cash. Yes, you did the right thing in the past so we might as well penalize you for it.

And I keep thinking about Rani, the uninsured woman who was diagnosed 4 months after me and passed away right after Christmas. Yes, she might have delayed going to the doctor anyway, or her cancer may have been aggressive and the outcome could have been the same. But I just keep coming back to the statistics and the fact that low-income people seem to die at much higher rates than higher-income people from the same diseases and lack of coverage and early treatment must play a role.

Maybe people in DC will take this as an anti-business as usual mandate and maybe there can be some actual bipartisanship or reform, but I don't think so. The republicans are gleeful and I am not sure what the dems are doing.

So, apparently the MA voters managed to do what the Haiti earthquake had not, depressed me so much that I have turned off NPR.

The best discussion of the race was on the Daily Show two days ago.

And just because it was on last night and makes me happy - you can watch the Colin Firth interview too.

Drain free and apparently ready to rock

Went to the plastic surgeon this morning and everything is continuing to look really good. They took out my 2 remaining drains and even snipped all my external non-dissolving stiches and basically sent me on my way until 5 or 6 weeks when they'll check on my progress. We'll schedule the final surgery for probably 5- or 6 weeks after that. (Things look so good that there seems like there will be minimal reshaping necessary, so he'll be building a nipple and possibly doing some lifting and - drum roll please - he'll take out my mediport.) The doc is ready for me to do most things I feel up to (with the exception of exercise). I can walk and do some stretching and range of motion arm excercises but any serious activity is still 5 or 6 weeks away.

Now a brief tribute to my mediport. While I was willing to let my lovely friend be taken out earlier, Dr. N would rather avoid another procedure and, given my low blood pressure and tempermental veins, I think they'd like to have the option to access it to get some fluid in me to begin the surgery. (Once fluid gets pumped in, they'll be able to access a vein and disconnect the mediport.) It has been my favorite thing and made this process doable - that is besides my great doctors and medical team and, of course, you guys. Having the port has made this process much easier, and I can't imagine how much tougher it all would have been if they would need to have found a vein for both blood work and chemo. Indeed in the middle of chemo it seemed like getting the little bit of blood needed for blood tests was almost impossible from my veins. For those who need treatment or might know folks who need treatment, I can't stress enough how useful it's been.

In some ways I can't believe its only been a week since surgery. I feel pretty good - although worse today due to the hospital visit. Apparently having things snipped and removed is hard work. We went for a walk earlier today and yesterday. Otherwise I seem to have spent much of the week flitting between the 3 books and 4 magazines and my computer that all seem to reside in the bed with me. BTW if anyone is going in for surgery I have to suggest getting an i-phone or blackberry--e-mailing was way easier on something that weighs so little and was easy to use while in the hospital and this week.

Otherwise, I'm mainly hanging out, listening to too much npr, and trying hard to limit how many times I donate to Partners in Health or Doctors Without Borders. I've been told the narcotics make folks free and easy with the credit cards and donating to the folks in Haiti is about as good a way to spend money as I can think of.

I can't help feeling blessed and thankful for my doctors and what I have and feel so bad that folks and a country that has been struggling for so long has to deal with this on top of everything else.

My other big news is I will start wearing pants again- the drains are out so I really don't have an excuse - and quite frankly I'm way more likely to start showing up in belly shirts - also age-inappropriate but my tummy is quite the work of art.


Special thanks to Ellen for being a great caretaker this week even if I didn't need that much tending. It was great to hang out and it seems like at least a few closets or rooms will be more orderly for the visit.

Have a good weekend, be thankful for what you have and say a prayer for those facing such hardship.

Kim

A draining experience

Things are still going pretty well. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday - my healing seems to be going pretty well. Dr. H. took out one of my three drains and I'm supposed to go back in Friday or next Tuesday to remove the other 2 drains. I am healing great and apparently am a rock star. So apparently if nothing else works out, I might be able to be a professional patient.

Getting up, getting dressed and going to the hospital wore me out for the rest of the day. I blame it on having to wear pants but it might be the fact that there was walking around. We'll see, the rest of you might be in some trouble if I decide a la Lady Gaga that pants are just overrated. Sunday was also apparently pantsless day on Muni, so apparently I really am just part of a bigger movement.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon napping and then had a lovely dinner with Ellen and Rosanne. Sleeping was okay and today's exciting agenda includes showering and washing my hair and potentially getting back to the organizing of my closet and financial records. (A Monday evening activity.) Apparently a problem (side benefit?) with having great friends come take care of me and my not doing that badly, and them having excellent organizational skills, means side projects of trying to make order of the chaos of my life. Getting the guest closet organized and putting my piles of medical records into some semblance of order will be a bonus. Apparently this might be a bonus from cancer - the clearing out of 20 years of random paper.

Otherwise - woke up to hear the news about Haiti and hope things aren't as terrible as it seems to be. A major earthquake in California is horrible, when infrastructure is shaky to begin with it just seems likely to be devastating. I just gave an additional donation to Partners In Health - a great charity that already has a sizable presence in Haiti. If you are wondering about sending me something, know I am well taken care of and would love a redirect of funds to them or another group providing support.


Yours in pantslessness
Kim

Sitting upright and willing to use an actual computer

Hi, sorry for the delay in posting though I am hoping I have spoken or been in touch with most of you via phone or e-mail. E-mailing from my i-phone seemed much more doable than actually using a computer. Thanks to Melissa for giving updates, and the folks who have come by and visited and managed to take care of my laundry and luggage and transportation needs. (Melissa, Tracy, Rosanne, Sue and Cori and Eric.) I am still amazed with how good I feel. There is some discomfort but it seems totally manageable with the assorted narcotics at my disposal.

The surgery went well and I was very pleased with how the breast looked when I woke up.

The various doctors and folks who visited said the vein and artery looked good and matched up well with the connecting vein and artery in my breast. It all looks rather lovely and well shaped. In some ways the hardest part was the inability for me to eat or drink from Wednesday night through Friday morning. The reports about my inability to talk had more to do with my mouth being incredibly dry and my lips sticking to my teeth and throat being scratchy from being intubated during surgery and wasn't related to pain. I did have incredibly low blood pressure reading Friday morning but that all resolved once food and more importantly coffee was allowed to pass through my lips.

I spent Thursday night in ICU with my own nurse for most of the evening - she came in and checked the pulse in my breast every 15 minutes, then every half hour and finally every hour. In ICU I was attached to at least 6 different sets of monitoring devices including my lovely morphine pump. Pressing a button every 8 minutes is kind of fun. I didn't get much sleep Thursday night but watched a lot of the food network in case anyone has questions.

Friday they had me attached to less things and some physical therapists came by and we walked around the hall. I also lapped the floor with Cori. Getting up seemed to be okay and I was mostly just grateful that the pain seemed totally manageable. My doctors all seemed pretty pleased with how I was doing. I ended up having a free-tram flap rather than a diep flap. This means they transplanted part of my muscle. In the DIEP Flap, they excavate the vein and artery out of th muscle and follow it to the larger connecting veins and arteries. Given my tempermental veins and arteries Dr. N decided keeping the vein and artery in the muscle and taking the small portion where they sat was the more prudent move. It meant a more stable donor site I think and let him take a larger amount of fat tissue. He said the amount of muscle taken was minimal and should not affect my ability to do crunches or pilates going forward.

In any case, the strength of the connection and pulse after surgery was great and it meant the reconnection went really well despite my getting radiation. (Something that can complicate the surgery.)

Saturday midday I was moved to a regular floor, 7Bles, which was where I recuperated after surgery number 1 (lumpectomy). I recognized a number of the nurses and they were also super helpful and nice. I had a single room and made the monumental decision to start watching the travel channel instead of the food network. I was apparently the only patient not watching the football game (Dallas, Denver maybe) which I believe made me a nurse favorite. Things were actually so slow on the floor they ended up sending my nurse home for the night. The next day I was cleared to leave by 8, took my antibiotic and had Melissa and Cori pick me up. I was home with all my meds by noon. They got me situated, stayed while I showered (yeah - being clean has some advantages) and then I just hung out at home for the afternoon/ evening.

Ellen arrived at 1 and we talked until about 2. It will be good to visit with her this week and I'm guessing I will need less tending than originally feared.


I am doing much better than I ever would have expected, in pretty good spirits, happy to have the surgery overwith and willing to officially let 2010 start. I even feel fairly lucid but you might be better judges of that.

I will try and update sporadically but will be trying to not be on the computer too much this week. (I think sitting and typing isn't totally great for me.)

I have a doctors appointment tomorrow morning and I hope I will get the drains out and will re-join the class of pants wearing people. I feel pretty good, can stand up relatively straight and not in too much pain.

Feel free to call or write.

Kim

Home again!

Hello dear readers,

Cori and I have just returned Kim to her home. (Excellent safe driving, Cori!)

Kim is doing wonderfully, and happy to be back in her place, with her fancy new chair. She also is eagerly awaiting Ellen's arrival this evening.

Kim was met by a beautiful box of chocolates from her friends at the Lincoln Institute.

Many thanks to all.

Melissa (BoSoxFox)

Saturday in Georgetown

Hello dear readers,

I am just back from visting Kim. I brought her a latte and some croissants (nice to have your hospital situated next to cute little shops, bakeries, and cafes). She is doing great! We made several (walking) laps around the floor. The doctors and nurses are encouraging her to get up and down and walk several times a day to keep things loose. So far, everyone is super pleased with her progress. Kim reports that the pain is not so bad (she has switched down to percocet). The nurses will be monitoring this closely so they can be sure to stay ahead of the pain.

The current plan is for Kim to move out of ICU later today, and then hopefully return home at some point tomorrow.

We are all so grateful for her successful completion of these steps, and hopeful that the road ahead will remain smooth. The staff in ICU are awesome, as are so many friends and colleagues who have been offering well wishes and support of all kinds.

Kim and I had a nice chat with her nurse, who has had a lot of experience with other women having this same surgery, including one of her close friends. All admire Dr. N's artistry.

Be well,
Melissa (BoSoxFox)

Friday afternoon update

Hi again,

I spoke to Kim this afternoon. She's doing quite well. She's eating normally, and has even taken a walk through the halls with a friend who just visited. Kim's visitors who have been in touch with me both report that she looks great.

Happy weekend to everyone,
Melissa (BoSoxFox)

Friday morning update

Hi everyone,

I just got off the phone with Kim. She sounds great. She has already had a visit from Dr. N and others from the surgical team. They report that everything looks great. She will be able to eat breakfast (and drink coffee!) this morning. (Last night the doctors didn't want her to eat or drink in case she needed to return to surgery, so getting the go-ahead for this is another important milestone achieved.)

Talking is still a little challenging for Kim, so she probably won't be on the phone a huge amount. She hopes to rest most of this morning, but will likely be up to a small number of visitors later today.

Be well,
Melissa (aka BoSoxFox)

Updates from surgery, part 2

Hi again everyone,

I am just back from visiting Kim in the Georgetown ICU. She looks great, and is being well cared for by an amazing team. They are monitoring her very carefully and trying their best to manage her pain and discomfort.

Tracy, Rosanne, Sue, and I were all able to swing by and chat with her for a bit. She was already asking Tracy work questions, which we tried to discourage. Tracy was able to fill us in a bit more about what the doctors said. Yay, Tracy, for being there and asking such great questions and generally staying on top of everything! Kim could leave the ICU as early as tomorrow afternoon if her progress continues to be smooth and a room becomes available.

She enjoyed seeing the wonderful recovery clothes that her Mom and Dad had sent along. They arrived just in time!

I'll post more as I learn more, but, like all of you, look forward to reading how Kim describes this latest step in her own words.

Take care and be well,
Melissa (BoSoxFox)

P.S. Kim is not allowed to eat or drink yet, so her mouth is dry and talking is not really comfortable. So it may be a few days before she will be in phone touch.

Updates from surgery

Dear Family and Friends of Kim,

This is guest blogger Melissa (aka BoSoxFox) checking in. I just received word from the fabulous Tracy that she has spoken to Dr. N, who reports that everything looks good for Kim at this point. Tracy also spoke to the nurses, who report that all is well but that Kim may not be brought to her room until after their shift change (7-7:30ish Eastern time).

I hope to report more later this afternoon/evening as I learn it from Tracy (and hopefully in person if Kim feels up to another visitor).

Keep those positive, healing wishes coming toward DC!

Best,
Melissa

Surgery Tomorrow

Hi just checking in. Thank you all for your good wishes and prayers. I am okay and while a little apprehensive will be happy when surgery is over. As you keep me in your thoughts, I hope you can also say a prayer for Rani and her family. She passed away earlier this week and was unable to get home to see her kids. It still makes me incredibly sad and angry to think about her outcome and if it could have been prevented. Be aware of your own bodies and encourage those around you to be proactive.

Kim

Welcoming 2010

Happy new year to you all and thanks again for all your support during the past year (actually 15 months). I'm trying hard not to obsess over my surgery next week but at some point I might need to just accept my nature. In my defense, even when I read everything on the web and chat groups, I do have enough rational thought left to take it all with a grain of salt.

I haven't gotten organized or done nearly all the things I had wanted to get done before surgery on Thursday but I'm letting it go. Of course I've tried getting organized in prior years and failed so I guess I should just accept that cancer isn't going to magically make me a more orderly person. I'm still hoping to get some things checked off my to do list and in a more orderly fashion.

Today, I am waiting to get a recliner/lift chair I ordered and I'm hoping it helps with my recovery and it isn't the ugliest piece of furniture I've ever seen. It has infinite positions, heat and massage and will actually dump me out of the chair if needed. Yes I might actually be 80 years old. My current thought is that if it is too ugly and I can come up with a reasonable story about why I have it, I might be able to give it to my grandmother sometime.


(Of course, she doesn't know I have breast cancer, or that my mother did or I think that I had back surgery.) I'm guessing if we decide to haul it to Brooklyn the likely story should involve my back problems. Of course I think my parents might prefer if I treated them the same way - and didn't feel a need to be out in the open with everything. I am willing to pretend that the surgery will be next month or later this month and keeping the date vague. I'm not telling them about the surgery happening until AFTER the surgery. For those of you related to me, no comments to them until next weekend. Apparently this is what siblings are for.

I am excited to have the surgery done, if nervous about it. Getting the expander out is part of the attraction as it is hard and fairly uncomfortable and I will be excited to have this main surgery behind me and start getting rid of the plastic bits currently in my body.

As for New Year's resolutions. I have a number of things I'd like to do in 2010 but I'm postponing any actions until February. Maybe I can start a trend of having New Year's resolutions start late - think about how much less crowded the gym would be if we stagger resolutions. I will just think of them as birthday resolutions. Because, unlike last year I've decided not to suspend my birthday this year.

I promise to work on my misguided notions about redefining time in February with the rest of the birthday resolutions.

Ponderings

As I've passed the year mark of being diagnosed and as I hit the anniversary of certain events, I find myself getting kind of philosophical about this whole experience. When I look back on doctor's records and think back about where I was a year earlier I think a lot about what I've been through and dealt with this year. I want to thank you all for being so supportive and great during this year. My support system has been terrific and I am totally grateful for the support I received and feel blessed to have such caring people in my life.

Partly things were brought home yesterday. First it was my work Christmas party, which last year corresponded to the day after first chemo when I felt really bad. Later, I'd figure out that 6 days in or 2 days post steroids I felt terrible due to steroid withdrawal, but this first day I just knew I was at a Xmas party saying goodbye to someone who was retiring and starting to have the worst headache and need to get home. After it happened again after chemo 2 I'd figure out what it was, but now looking back I just realize how long this year has been and how grateful I am to be where I am right now.

I also found out that someone who was diagnosed with breast cancer during the year after I was isn't likely to have as good an outcome. R, who is the ex-nanny of a friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer in the Spring. She came here from a foreign country to earn money for the family she left behind and has been doing grueling work working as a nanny. While not having health insurance, her current employer and my friend found treatment for her and have been helping her through this process. While her initial prognosis seemed promising, her cancer ended up metastisizing first to her brain and then to her spine. She is having more chemo to try and get things stabilized so she can go home to see her family and those around her are being terrific.

On the surface, even without health insurance R was able to get treatment and has a support network in place. It might seem totally random who ends up with better or worse outcomes and I am acutely aware that things can go wrong for anyone but I can't help thinking that socio-economic status and the way health care works kind of stacked the deck against R and in my favor. While in the country legally and working on the books, R doesn't earn much and sends much of her money back home to her family and kids. This meant scrimping on things for herself which included health insurance. This probably meant not getting diagnosed right away and her lack of health insurance probably meant that it took longer to figure out how to get her treatment and to figure out logistics which I'm guessing added to the probability of this worse outcome.

I realize that one can't make generalizations from specific cases and an n of 2 isn't robust but our contrasting outcomes just seems to bring home to me what the statistics show. Breast cancer, while found across all groups and income levels and a pain for anyone to deal with tends to be more deadly for poor women and women of color. And this for me makes the case for health care reform to pass, despite all the politics and crap going on right now in Congress. Basically doing something to try and close health gaps seems clear.

There are many reasons why different groups have different outcomes but our situation just seems so stark. I'm hoping R is able to get home and see her family and I am sad that her situation seems so bleak. I'm hoping we make some progress to getting others insurance.


Thanks again for all your support and I'm trying to send positive thoughts to R and her family and hope you are all well and have a happy and healthy year.

Mammograms and other musings

While I should be working on slides for an upcoming presentation, I've been getting a lot of questions about how I feel about the new mammogram recommendations. I have to admit to being somewhat ambivalent. As someone who had gotten annual mammograms since 30 and yet they managed to miss my slow-growing tumor--even when it was explicitly pointed out to the radiologist--I have some sympathy for the people behind the study. I think having a fairly useless test isn't a good use of healthcare dollars.

Mammograms are a notoriously bad technology for finding tumors in younger women. Maybe this should be the main takeaway point. Most things that look dark or light are not tumors, and masses can be missed. If this leads to more nuanced discussions, that could be good and maybe skipping some mammograms isn't such a big deal. Of course, I would like them to replace them with alternate technology. Ideally, letting women for whom they find the technology doesn't work well have mri earliers could be a good thing. My take away is that we rely on tests that may or may not save lives. Thinking about the prevalence and effectiveness of these tests is a good thing to do. Partly, I feel a little bad about my prosletizing to friends who postponed getting mammograms in the past.

Of course, I had this conversation with a friend who found a small tumor, and she is beating herself up a little bit about the fact that she skipped a year and the tumor is bigger than it might have been. It's not clear that they would have found it anyway. Getting back to me (after all, it's all about me), this seems possible given that they managed to miss mine for a number of years.

Not sure whether some of the little tumors would disappear or not metastasize, but I do find the evidence compelling that some small tumors that have been found probably wouldn't have grown into malignant tumors. We'll see how it all pans out, and it seems from the backlash that the report might not change recommendations.

So I'm less exercised than others about the rulings and find it slightly self-serving that radiologists seem to be the folks most adamant about the new recommendations being bad. (Nothing to do with the money they will lose.) I hope people will take the tests not to be magic bullets, be in touch with their own body (both literally and figuratively), and be their own advocates if they think something is wrong and figure out what the right response to their situation should be.

I keep coming back to the fact that I had a lump I was nervous about and let it go for 6 months after getting a mammogram the first time around, and did not insist on having a biopsy. As with all things, I'm trying to let go of the regrets for indecisions past. But I was pretty sure something was off but was happy to live in a state of denial for a little while which in the end has lengthened this whole process.

In other news, last week's illness ended up not being H1N1. I found out on Friday at 3pm that it wasn't flu and maybe didn't need to be under quarantine. However, it certainly must have been some virus as the tamiflu was a miracle drug. My brother's surgery also went well. He seems to be on the mend and sees better out of the eye already.

I spent Wednesday having some other standard doctor's appointments (I needed pre-surgery cardio-clearance). My heart seems fine, though I need an echo, and I had my gyno exam. On the plus side, the new cervical cancer rules make me feel less bad that I went about 2years without a pap smear. Somehow, earlier this year I couldn't add other routine appointments back into my life, as I had hit my doctors' appointment wall. The upside of going to a women's health center was that I was able to get the H1N1 dead vaccine (the flu shot not nasal spray) because the women's center had it in stock for pregnant women and they were willing to give it to me. Apparently, being high risk all on my own was enough to qualify and to report back to the health deparment.

So I am hopeful I will be swine flu free as I recover from surgery. (Yes, my nightmare scenario was coughing and sneezing after abdominal surgery.) Now I need to stop focusing on my health and go back to the craziness which is the states' fiscal health. CA has a $20 billion gap developing already.

Oh joy. Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving and stay healthy even with the hordes of travelling folks.

So much for staying busy

Pretty sure what I have isn't a cold. Somehow the constant fever and the fact that I am cold for the first time in months means I probably have some sort of flu. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, have begun canceling travel plans (no Seattle, pretty sure no Denver) but hopefully it will run its course and then I can go on about my business.

Apparently dancing around a bar is hazardous to my health. One of my partners in crime (CrazeeforSushi) is also sick - and yes did request the nickname though I decided on the gangsta spelling for Crazee. Hopefully other folks in my vicinity won't get sick but on the positive side if it is H1N1 getting it and recovering would be a very good thing before surgery in January.