The January Blaaaahhhhsss

I'm looking out my office window at a foggy dreary day, but on the other hand I am in my office and I am still alive so that's good!! Went to the Huntsman Cancer Institute on the 9th of January and had a major excavation on my back and my right arm pit. It was a strange day. They had me on an IV for awhile but my feet were killing me that day so I kept getting up and walking around, but the IV would go backwards every time I walked and the tube would fill with blood.

So this guy comes in the room with 2 syringes and says he is going put them in the IV but I have to get on the bed first because when he puts them in I will be history!! I asked if there was any chance they would go straight to my feet because they really hurt but he said "No way!"

I remembered him putting them in and I was GONE!! Julie said I was awake for another 10 minutes talking a hundred miles an hour but I remembered NOTHING When I woke up I could see a clock way across the recovery room and thought "WOW! What happened to that 2 and 1/2 hours??"

I was so dehydrated from not drinking anything since the night before that I thought I would die!! I ate 3 cups of ice chips in about 5 minutes then way across the room I noticed this nurse drinking Coke from a can. I spoke loudly enough for her to hear me and said "Hey - that's not fair to drink that where I can see it!" She just smiled and put the can where I couldn't see it.

A couple of minutes later she was standing next to my bed with a cup full of ice and Coke in 1 hand and the can in the other hand. I think I drank 3 or 4 of them and 3 or 4 cranberry apple juices which I had to mix myself - they just had them separately - in the next couple of hours while I was waiting to see the Doctor.

He finally came - asked a few questions and gave us some instructions and said we could go. By then it was 1 or 2 PM and Julie was hungry and so was I so we stopped at Neil's in Draper and had fish and chips for lunch!! I was still pretty anesthetized so not too much pain, but by the time we ate and got home it was a different story.

It took us 1 and 1/2 hours from Thanksgiving Point to our house because of a wreck on the freeway that had happened at 9 AM that morning!!

By the time we went back to see the Doctor on Tuesday the 13th he had all the test results and said he got everything out of my back and the lymph node they took out of my armpit was clean so no chemo or radiation - just get healed. That drive to SLC and back was not very fun, but I survived and ended up driving myself and working a couple of hours on Thursday and Friday.

My back looked like Frankenstein with a long row of staples and these 2 big cross stiches, but I have all the staples out of my arm pit and about 1/2 of them out of my back now. I get the rest out in a week or so. Doctor Noyes said no racquetball of golf for at least 60 days from the surgery and no heavy lifting - but I am feeling pretty good.

I have this little window on my laptop that is called Google Sidebar and I can pick a city and watch the weather. So of course I set it up to see Moab and I would see sunshine and 7 degrees because of the inversion so I changed it to Tucson and it would be 75-80 and sunshine and that was even more depressing!! So I added Blanding, Las Vegas and Orem and I rotate between those 5 depending on my mood!!

Guess I will give it a rest for now - OH - Jer and Sarah had a baby boy on Monday named Peter David - mother and son are both doing OK.

Love to All - J.B.