"Tough times don't last; Tough people do."
I will be honest with you, I was unsure if I was going to be able to blog about these past 2 weeks. It's been a roller coaster of emotions and even with a good outcome, it has been hard for me to process.
Surgery is never easy. I don't care what kind of surgery it is, big or small, it is never easy. Me being what I would call a "pro" at this point, doesn't make it any easier either. If anything, each time I go under the knife only gets harder. Harder emotionally. Harder physically. Harder recovery. I mean one body can only take so much and after this last surgery, my body is definitely telling me it has had enough.
As I prepared to have some unwanted lumps and bumps removed from my abdomen along with some mesh repair, I tried my best to get myself emotionally prepared. With a history like mine and the removal of more bad lumps then good, you have a tendency to go into something like this with a little bit of fear. Surgery itself does not scare me. But the outcome does! And not knowing what the outcome will be is extremely scary!
So many thoughts begin to go through your mind. You try to not imagine the worst but there are times you have no control over it. You begin to try and prepare yourself for a bad outcome so that it doesn't hit you like a ton of bricks. You think about how you will tell your children. What it will do to your husband. How your family and friends will deal with yet another cancer. How you will have the strength to fight again. So you do your best to hide those fears and you put on that smile and hope that saying "everything will be fine" to others will not only help them believe it but will also help yourself believe it.
Recovering from surgery is no picnic. It's painful and it doesn't help when your body is rejecting everything that you are giving it to try and help the pain. But you push through and you take it day by day. You try and not be a pain in the ass to everyone around you because it is no picnic for them either. I am sure my husband would not argue with me on that one =). It's a very slow process which is not easy but I have learned( well maybe I am still learning) that if you push it too hard, it doesn't do anyone any good.
One thing that helps recovery move a little faster (at least emotionally which I think then helps physically) is getting good news. It's almost like your heart hadn't been beating for 13 days. No blood was circulating. No healing had really begun. Then your doctor begins to say abnormal and you stop breathing. You almost begin to go deaf until you hear him say "everything is clear"! Don't you think you could have started with that!! I mean seriously! =) So the breathing starts back up. The blood is flowing and your heart is definitely beating since it's going 900 miles an hour. The happy tears begin to form and for the first time in months you have a sense of relief. There is nothing better then hearing "no cancer!" It's something that is never taken for granted.
So the healing has begun. And even though it will still be a few weeks until I am physically back to normal (whatever normal is), I know now that I have the strength and hope again that I feared I had lost.
