Laugh Always

Thanks Momma for inspiring this post and reminding me of a hilarious story from one of my surgeries. As much as I have cried, screamed, pouted, you name it, I have laughed MORE! Laughing, crafing (crying and laughing – my friend Jennie and I named it), whatever! – it’s what gets me through and lifts me up. Here are some fun stories of laughter.

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I was recovering from my first surgery at home in Albany. I spent most of my time in my dad’s recliner because it was THE only thing that felt comfortable. I couldn’t lay flat in a bed and would have to sleep in the chair. My family would have to help me out of bed, down the stairs, into the chair, and into my nightgowns (yes this was all I could wear for weeks and those AMAZING stretchy hospital underwear). This help also included showering me. I couldn’t bathe myself and just standing in the shower for five minutes took all the energy out of me. It was a huge task to go upstairs and clean my little tushy. Well, one day when my sister was bathing me, (thanks Allie J) I noticed how heavily she was breathing – she has allergies so tends to breathe heavy, but since she was so close to me it sounded like a rhinoceros! I said, “You are breathing like a rhinoceros.” Next thing you know we were both CRYING laughing. I was actually crafing because laughing hurt like hell with the pressure of the 32 staples down my tummy.

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After my third surgery I was back at my old apartment in Boston with my delirious mother. Delirious because she never left my side in the hospital and brought me back to life. I was relaxing – or trying to – on the couch and of course my mom was running around the apartment cleaning anything and everything she could find. My mom could find dust where dust doesn’t exist. All of a sudden I see her with the Swiffer and she slips and does a full out split. I started cracking up which then turned into grabbing the pillow for my belly and yelling at her because it hurt so much! She was rolling around on the floor laughing too.

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Panic attacks happen. They actually happen a lot on my drive home from work, which is definitely not the best time because I am DRIVING a “potential death machine” as my mom called it when I first got my permit. They happen on my way home because I have likely been holding in my emotions all day at work. So it basically starts with hyperventilating, my whole face tingles, then comes the crying, then comes the muscles getting all tight, and the anger and the flailing in my seat and the screaming. At some point during all of this I call my parents. Sometimes my mom is so upset to hear me upset that she says hold on and throws the phone at my dad. SOMEHOW he manages to make me laugh by saying the stupidest thing!! “So I saw Casey M. working in Stewart’s can you believe that. He dropped out of college.” What?!! So random of my dad to say – Casey graduated high school with my brother but was always a little bit of a question mark as to whether or not he would go to college or just end up staying in our home town. The randomness made me laugh and completely distracted me. I did my little I am still crying but also laughing and you are ridiculous laugh/grunt thing. Thanks, Datty. (My dad has many names – Little Ronald, Faja, Datty, Mr. Sir…)

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My second surgery I had this adorable redheaded Irish nurse for one of the night shifts. Her name was Mary and she was just a gem. As with every nurse, my mom (a nurse) watched her every move. Some got the evil eye, but Mary was a keeper, she got an A. It was probably somewhere around 3 a.m. when Mary came in to give me my heparin shot (blood thinner shot into my thigh that stings like a biatch). Mary tiptoed in and explained what she was doing in her little Irish whisper. My mom was sleeping on the chair to my left. Then, poof, my mom was up and at ‘em standing right next to Mary, like the sneaky guy with the foot fetish in the movie Mr. Deeds. Mary got very startled and in her Irish brogue said, “Oh, I didn’t even see ya there.”

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Surgery number two, back at the apartment again with my mom recovering and I was on the toilet – sure you wanted to know that. The reason I tell you that is because from the toilet I could see into my bedroom. (I was just peeing for the sake of this story, don’t worry. My mom would help me onto the toilet then leave me alone for a few then come back to help me off. Dignity, shmignity.) I look up and there is my 50-something mother trying to walk around in a pair of my three-inch Nine West stilettos. Okay, now let me define what trying to walk in these looked like – she could barely lift up her feet, was wearing her pajama pants that always manage to shrink and look like flood pants, and was concentrating very hard. I said, “WHAT are you doing?” We both looked up at each other and starting crying laughing.

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Those are just a few stories of laughter for now. One note I have to end with is that my dad is very attached to his recliner I mentioned – it is his buddy. Of course he didn’t think twice about giving it up for me for a month because it was all I could get comfortable in, but I know he missed that thing like a fat kid misses cake. When I was starting to feel better and was able to get comfortable in other places, I came downstairs one day and there was a piece of paper taped to the recliner that said “Eviction Notice. This chair is now being returned to the care of Ronald A. Sail.” Very funny, Datty! J

Being that it is February 11th, I have to give a Happy Birthday shout out to my one and only rhinoceros, my sweet chinchilla, my other half -- Allie Wik.

Confidence in Weakness

I’ve been wanting to write for days now and all of these ideas have been floating around in my head, but I just couldn’t put my fingers to keyboard. I had a feeling after Soul Cycle tonight with Sal I would have the urge, and what do ya know?! I think Sal is my muse. He was on a "breaking down walls" kick tonight, and realizing your own strength, which only comes with facing challenges.

I have always had a tough time being weak, I swear, since I came out of the womb. I have this thing where I feel like I need to put on a strong face for myself, and for everyone around me; but why? What I have realized is if I don’t break, fall, and even sometimes wallow, I can’t get to that strength on the other side of the wall that Sal talks about. There is SO much strength in weakness – it is actually beautiful. I am still working on accepting that and being confident about it. I will always be dealing with what I have, accepting it, fighting it, but I have to find confidence in my weakness. This (Aggressive Angiomyxoma) is what I have and who I am, like it or not! I am very good at having that attitude with other things in life, but not with my Sarcoma. If I am secure with my weakness, when I tell someone for the first time, their reaction will be so much better. It’s like when you make a big deal out of something, it naturally gets other people all worked up, right? Well, if I am confident when telling someone story, it will put them at ease, and I think, even elicit a different reaction. One of my GREATEST fears is telling my future husband (where is he?!) what I have. But heck, this is me and I need to own it. And, to be honest, I have faced much worse in life than having to tell someone what I have going on.

Tonight I want to share a little excerpt from something I wrote several months back when I thought I was going to write a book – ha! That got too daunting when I was five pages in and only on day two of the hospital stay of my first surgery. Here is a snippet, which is by no means complete and I keep editing. This is me being confident in my weakness – and all it’s glory!!

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First surgery: October 26, 2010.

My mom drove me to the hospital that morning and my dad, brother and sister planned to meet us there. I will never, EVER, forget that morning, nor will my mom. I had to be there at 5:45 a.m. because I was first case. It was dark outside and I think I was crying as my mom held my hand the whole way there. To this day I get anxiety when I drive past the exit we got off for the hospital. 

We got to Admitting and I had to get undressed, put on a cap and gown, and this weird blanket. I was on a gurney with curtains to my right and left. It was weird and looked like the TV show Mash. A nice nurse came over to put in an IV and check my vitals. I think I was crying. My blood pressure was something outrageous like 160 over 90. I generally have textbook blood pressure. I was terrified – a fear a can't even describe. My mom kept holding my clammy hand. Next, the anesthesiologist came in and introduced herself and said she was going to give me some “cocktails” to calm me down. She gave me one into my IV and I instantly said, “It’s not working. It’s not working!” So they gave me another. After some questions and paper work, the nurse anesthetist came over and said, “Are you ready?” I was not ready. I felt like I wanted to scream, cry, jump out of my skin and escape all at the same time. I looked at my mom with tears streaming down my face and she gave me a huge hug and a kiss as they started to wheel me away. The last thing I remember is bright lights and seeing Dr. Albany (his nickname) come in with a Halloween surgical cap.

I was awake. I felt like I could barely move and my mouth was dry. There was a nurse there asking me things, so I realized I must be in recovery. My belly was sore and I was in and out. I would open my eyes for a little and then closed them for a bit.

My sister, mom, and dad came in to see me. I later found out they got special permission to come see me in recovery, thank God. I was so scared. My mom was talking to the nurse. “She has not output! She has no output!” I didn't know what that meant at the time, and I was too groggy and tired to care. My sister came over and held my hand and I turned my head slowly over to her barely getting the words out, “My nurse is a bitch.” Surgery or no surgery – feisty Becky was still in there! My family kissed me goodbye and said they would see me when I got to my room. What seemed like a few minutes later, someone wheeled me to a room. I got there and no one was in there…minutes passed…I think? I managed to feel around for the call button (even though my mom hadn't Cloroxed it yet) and pressed it. Some dude came in and said, “Oh, we didn't even know you were in here.” I didn't have the energy to say anything. Finally my family came in. They were talking about how they got my room mixed up or something.

My surgery was about three hours. Dr. Albany opened me up and what he found was even worse than he anticipated. The “cyst” was, as he later stated, “the size of a baby’s head.” We told him how Dr. Dick (a jerk doctor I had in Arizona) said the pressure I was feeling was “in my head” and he challenged us by saying, “no, no it was the size of your head.” While I was open on the table they did a frozen section to see if it was metastatic cancer. It came back negative, thank God. If it was positive he would have had to remove the tumor and all of the neighboring organs, which would have been the whole enchilada – uterus, ovaries, bladder, rectum, part of my colon?

Dr. Albany was completely perplexed by the consistency of what he found. He knew when he saw it that it was not a cyst and that it was some sort of tumor. He called in the pediatric surgeon to see if he knew what it was. No luck. The whole hospital was stumped. Since the frozen section did not come back positive for cancer, his goal was to get out as much of the beast as he could, without doing any permanent damage to me. I later learned the medical term for this is attempting to have a “low morbidity rate.”

They tried for over an hour to get it out and just couldn’t get it. I was opened up vertically down my abdomen from above my belly button to way down south (it is called an exploratory laparotomy). After surgery I was asking my mom (a nurse) if they had retractors in me to really open me up and she just said to stop asking those questions. They were about to prep me for a posterior approach (in addition to the front), which would have meant they would have flipped me, taken out my tailbone temporarily, and gone in my backside, when Dr. Albany said lets try one more time. It was in that moment that I think my Pop-Pop, who had just passed away a month before, was my angel in the room. Dr. Albany tried one more time and he got it. He got out what he could and closed me up. Thirty-two staples down my abdomen.

When my family finally got to my hospital room they all sat around me and my sister put something soft on my chest. It was a stuffed monkey that she named Henry. I was never much of a stuffed animal person, but this one was special. I held onto to that monkey so tight, and it did not leave my body for the next four days. He sat perfectly on my chest and was a nice little chin pillow.

When the nurse came in, I looked at the big bandage that went vertically up my stomach and started crying, asking if I had a belly button. I was also confused about how I would pee. They explained that I had a Foley, which meant they put a catheter in me while I was out and inserted a tube that then fed to a bag where my pee went. Lovely. I later learned that when my mom was saying I had no output she was referring to a lack of pee in my bag, which is BAD after surgery because it means your kidneys are not working.

The nurses came in every so often to check my vitals and listen for a pulse in my abdomen. I cannot even describe how sensitive my tummy was to the touch of the stethoscope. Every time anything touched it, I literally went through the roof with pain even though I was on a morphine drip (which my dad was worried I thought was a toy). I was still not allowed to eat because they wanted to make sure my colon was going to wake up. All I was allowed for the first day was a stick with a little sponge on the end that my mom could wet and put in my mouth. I was going on 72 hours of nothing but liquids (because I had a colonoscopy the day before surgery). And the incentive spirometer, oh the incentive spirometer. I had to breathe into it constantly to get the anesthesia out of my lungs. I would pass out and wake up to my mom holding it to my face! (Thanks, mom for the dedication because you know I wanted to throw that damn thing across the room.)

The nurses and my mom said that the best thing I could do was to get up walking. They told me the first day would be tough, but I had to work toward it. The afternoon of the surgery I worked with my mom and the nurse just to slide my legs over to the left, and dangle them off the bed. I was exhausted just after this and I did not move my own legs, they had to do it for me. They then both grabbed me from behind on both sides of my body and slowly tried to help me stand up. I was super dizzy and nauseous from the anesthesia. I barely stood up and then started panicking because I felt so sick and they said okay, okay that is enough and helped me back into bed. The nurse said I did a great job and that just standing was really impressive for the first day. You do not realize how much you use a part of your body until you are without it. I could not even clear my throat because it hurt my abdomen so much. The nurse showed me how to put a pillow on my belly when I had to cough or sneeze. After that, my cousin and one of my best friends came to visit me and I just remember talking and falling asleep mid sentence, then waking up, and then falling asleep again.

The first night was the worst. I had a 103-degree fever, which the doctors said was normal due to high trauma of the surgery. Little did I know, that a fever was also potentially indicative of an issue with my rectum. Dr. Albany had told my parents that my rectum might not be viable after surgery and we would know within the first 24 hours. Thank God they did not tell me that until later. My rectum survived. (Wahoo, you go boy!)

My mom was there with me the whole time. She never left my side while I was in the hospital and the rest of my family came to visit every day. She slept on the chair next to me and held my hand all night through the railing. I could not move at all, barely slept, and was sweating from the fever. People come in every hour or two to wake me up for vitals, blood draws, heparin shots, and I can’t even remember what else. Then at about 5:30 a.m. the doctors came in for rounds.

About seven people marched in and lined up in front of me. Two of them were residents I had already met and the rest I had never seen before. One of the residents was reading my case out loud, like on Grey's Anatomy, as the others listened. I was thinking to myself, I am not a fucking science experiment, is this really happening? Resident number two started to talk to me and I quickly put my hand up and said, “Woah, woah, woah.” Then one by one I went down the line, “Who are you? I know you. Who are you?” They each stepped up and stated their titles. When they were all done I said, “Well I’m Becky.” I needed them to know I was no science specimen. I was a 22-year-old girl named Becky.