The Road Home

Okay, I'd intended to write a post following Deb's check-in appointment on Monday, but things got a bit hectic with packing for travel on Tuesday, my own medical appointment late that afternoon, and various other last minutes stuff.  In other words; I didn't write anything but I don't feel too bad about it.

I also didn't write anything yesterday, but we spent most of the day traveling and without wifi, so I really don't feel bad about that at all.

Now it's Wednesday, so here I am.

Deb's soreness following her revision surgery has been improving, but it has also continued.  The nurse at Dr. Paige's office, Louise (more on her later) looked Deb over and seemed pleased, so as you can guess, air travel was allowed to get back to Knoxville.  She is still restricted from air travel for four weeks, though, in part because I won't be there to carry stuff and lift stuff and et cetera.  She will still travel some, though it will only be by car for a little while (such as a scheduled trip to Atlanta next week).

The bandages have been progressively staying cleaner as well (I won't throw too much detail out there about that) to the point that she went today (for the first time) without bandages over the two points not covered by SteriTape.  Her post-surgical bruising has improved dramatically as well.  She no longer looks like she was at a stick fight dressed as a piñata (her analogy, not mine).

We were headed out to dinner with our friends who actually live at the building we were staying in for the last half of our trip (we were in the guest suite) when a lady came in the door that looked a little familiar.  I'd just figured it out when she did a double take at me.  It was Deb's nurse, Louise, who apparently lives in that same condo building.  Deb joked that if we'd known, we could have just had her stop by the guest suite on her way home instead of us taking Uber up to their office.  Small world.

Our travel day started yesterday at around 05:00 when a car picked us up and took us to the airport in Seattle (actually just south of Seattle).  We then flew to Nashville and picked up the car we had left at the Embassy Suites there (with their knowledge and permission, of course) and drove back to Knoxville - with a stop in Cookeville along the way - where we are currently staying in a downtown hotel until we close on a house on Friday, 3/31.

So the last thing is that Deb had her first infusion this morning without the benefit of having a port, but she only has one more infusion remaining so I think that having it removed last week during the rest of the revision surgery was the best possible timing (so she doesn't have to be put under anesthesia yet again to have it removed later).

One final follow-up appointment with Dr. Paige remains, and that's in mid-July.  I hope not to have anything to report between now and then, nor anything afterward.  Nor ever again.  Cancer has really put us through the wringer this last fourteen months, as  it did eight years ago for around six or eight months.



Dear Cancer, Deb has had enough.  Go kill off some mosquitoes or something for a change. Thanks, George

No Place Like ...

Well, we aren’t at home.  Right now we don’t even have a home.  We sold our Seattle house and don’t close on our Knoxville house for just over a week.  Currently we are lodging in the guest suite at some friends’ condo building in Belltown (just north of downtown) in Seattle.  But there’s a bed (that Deb is snoozing in) and a sofa (that I am sitting on) and a few other amenities that make our stay comfortable enough for now, so even though it isn’t ‘home’, it will do for the next few days until we fly back to Knoxville.

What happened since my last post?  I’m glad you asked (at least I imagined that you might ask).  I grabbed a quick breakfast across the street after Deb went back and then went back over and wrote the previous post.  It was around 1130 or so when Dr. Paige came out to talk to me after he was done.  Mostly he went over exactly what he did with Deb’s navel since he discovered (and corrected) an umbilical hernia when he went in.  Deb will still have a navel for now.  He did some more work with it and we will see how that does over the next several months until we make it back to Seattle for another look-see by Dr. Paige.

Since I had another 30 – 45 minutes to wait for Deb to come out from under before I could see her, I went down to the bank branch located in the same building at street level (how convenient!) and moved a little bit of money around.  I then went back up and waited for Deb.

As advertised, she was ready in about 40 minutes and we headed downstairs to grab an UberX back to the Belltown suite.  I gave her some lunch and some pain-killers, and then changed her first dressings out before putting her to bed (she actually did that part herself).  I ran out quickly to get some more dressings and such at a Rite-Aid just a couple of blocks away while she rested, and since then she’s been snoozing.  That’s a good thing.

She’s a bit sore around her navel (not surprising) but the local numbing agents really haven’t worn off enough of the rest of her incision points for her to know just how much discomfort she will have in the near-term.  I’m hoping for ‘not too much’, but trying to prepare for ‘quite a bit’ if necessary.

She will go back around midday on Monday for a check-in to make sure everything is as it should be before we fly out on Tuesday.  If anything noteworthy comes up before then I’ll write a post, but otherwise I will likely elect to pay more attention to her than to the blog.  So for the weekend, no news is okay news.

The Sandman Cometh

There are a lot of things that have happened in the last few days, but I won’t go into too much detail there.  We arrived in Seattle on March 17^th and have been running about doing things and seeing people until today.  Deb did actually have a pre-surgery appointment with her doctor (Dr. Paige) yesterday, but I wasn’t there (I was in an adjacent building for a final visit with one of my doctors) so I can’t report too much about it.  Mostly they talked about what he was going to do her today.  We saw him right before they took her back a little while ago and they went over it all again anyway, so I really didn’t miss anything important as far as I can tell.  I just know that Deb is looking forward to the sedation so she can get a little extra sleep this morning.

Essentially this is a touch-up surgery from what he did for her back in September with the major reconstruction.  Nip here, tuck there, work on her navel (that’s right, her belly button is still a hot topic) and also the removal of the port.  In case I haven’t explained the port before, it is essentially a target point about the size of a quarter that they installed just below the skin back in February of 2016.  The port allowed them to place the IV needle there (since it connects to a catheter into a major vein) instead of having to find a vein in her arm each time they did chemotherapy or other drug infusions (e.g., Herceptin).  Since she only has two more infusions remaining, this seemed as good a time as any to remove the port since she’s under anesthesia anyway.

I expect to hear from Dr. Paige in about another 30 minutes or so.  He said it would likely take a couple of hours to do everything, so depending on when they actually got started that could be anywhere between 1100 or 1130 PT (add three hours if you are in the Eastern Time Zone, of course).

Meanwhile, I have been trying to write this update while also trying to talk on the phone to Comcast/Xfinity about getting new service set up in Knoxville and getting our Comcast email addresses linked to that service (and not the old Seattle service we’ve already closed out).  Not an easy process, but I’m giving it the old college try – even though I’m no longer in college.

I’ll try to post again later after Deb has been awake for a while and we get her settled back in at the suite where we are staying until next Tuesday.

Winding Up, Winding Down

Well, certainly a lot has happened in the 4+ months since my last post.  Deb has indeed found an oncologist in Knoxville and has been receiving her tri-weekly (i.e., once every three weeks) infusions of Herceptin here (I say “here” now) in the oncology center in West Knoxville.  In fact, Deb has been in Knoxville since January 2^nd and I only joined her in mid-February after our Seattle house went under contract and the movers came and took all of our stuff away.

Sadly, we don’t yet have a house in Knoxville to move it (all that stuff) into, so it is all in moving-company storage and we can’t really get to it.  We are under contract on a house, but we don’t close on it until the end of March.  In the meantime we are living in a small apartment outside of the city with only as much clothing as we were each able to carry with us when we left Seattle, plus our computers, the dog, and - most importantly – my espresso machine (at least it’s the most important thing every morning when I get up).  We have a few other things (emphasis on few) that we’ve bought at CostCo or Target, but those are small items and consist mostly of cleaning products and a new electric toothbrush.

I think the continuing upheaval of the drawn-out relocation process is having an effect on Deb’s psyche (not to mention my own, but I suppress it by getting out in the sunshine).  Still, we have something to look forward to coming up soon, and it ties into the subject of this post.

We are returning to Seattle for 10 or so days in a couple of weeks.  Deb will spend some of that time working with one of her people who has the Seattle area under their territorial purview, and then she will return to Dr. Paige for her final (we hope) encounter with a scalpel.

Dr. Paige, of course, performed her restoration surgery back in September.  This time around is a final touch-up to clean up the margins a little and probably close off Deb’s navel for good.  They tried to reconstruct it, and it looked like it would work for quite a while, but over the last couple of months it has been constricting and thus it would likely be better to close it in the operating theater rather than let it close by itself (perhaps trapping debris in there which could lead to infection).

I will be going along to hold her hand throughout the process (except when they understandably kick me out of the surgery suite), though I will also get the opportunity to go to the Seattle Sounders FC home opener – have I said “Go Sounders” before? Consider it said – and we will also try to visit as many of our Seattle friends as we can while we are there.  We will probably try to see more before rather than after the surgery since, while it’s a relatively minor surgery this time, there will still be a bit of a recovery period for Deb.  In fact, that recovery period will keep us in Seattle for a little while until Deb will be allowed to fly at all.  She’s going to be on travel restriction for over a month post-surgery, but Dr. Paige will allow her to fly back to Knoxville after a week or so only because I will be there to carry any and all luggage and she won’t have to lift anything overhead, or anywhere else for that matter.  Dr. Paige understands that I take my role of porter/pack-mule seriously and that Deb will be severely chastised should she even look like she’s considering try to pick up anything.  Anything.  Hear me Deb?  Anything.

So that’s all for now.  I will post again when we are headed to Seattle if I can, but certainly after Deb’s brief pre-surgery visit with the surgeon early in the week.

I’m really looking forward to being able to wind this blog down once and for all … and never have a reason to start it up again.