Monday, September 6, 2021

Monday Medical Update

If you know me in real life then you're probably caught up on this already, but back in July Beautiful Wife found out she had breast cancer. On Friday, we went through with a full double mastectomy, complete with cosmetic replacement. Which is... not insignificant surgery. And things can definitely go wrong. And with 2021 being, y'know, What It Is... both of us were honestly kind of terrified even as we agreed that this was definitely the best way to deal with it. 

And if I'm being really honest, I should have left the 'kind of' out of that last sentence. 

I'm not going to describe the ordeal, except to say: 

gif of woman saying she's only slept nine hours in the past four days so she's right on the edge of a nervous breakdown

Fortunately, the surgery seems to have gone every bit as well as that sort of significant bodily trauma possibly could. Beautiful Wife was... worn down as she came out of post-op recovery, and spent most of Friday night sleeping in the hospital room (and being awakened roughly once an hour to be examined by the nurses). By Saturday we'd gotten her some chicken broth and a lot of water, by noon on Saturday she'd been able to get out of bed and go to the bathroom (which she did quite a lot; we were putting plenty of water and a bit of gatorade into her). At lunch she was finally able to order solid food, and by the end of the day she had gotten up and shuffled around the ward twice, supervised but unassisted. 

I write this having gone back home on Saturday night to resume parenting the boys, who have been with their mother-in-law; with any luck, we'll be able to bring Beautiful Wife home tomorrow. If you're reading this, then that hasn't changed; I'll only update if something goes wrong or we have to bring her home later. 

The recuperation phase is going to take a while, but fortunately we have some very good friends; we've got meals covered for at least the next two weeks, and probably three, even if I don't so much as touch the stove. (Thanks, guys!) And it will be at least a week before we get the tests back to confirm that the cancer hadn't gotten into the lymph nodes, which (if you know nothing about medicine or biology) "would be bad" in a very Ghostbusters sense of the phrase. 

scene from Ghostbusters in which Venkman explains what Bad is

But at the moment, it looks like everything has gone just about as well as it possibly could. 

So naturally the washing machine broke down. 

Seriously, fuck 2021, y'all.

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