- I Think I Can Do This (That's The Way It Is)

This week has been a lot more difficult than last week. I don't remember anyone telling me the anesthetic wears off after a week or two, but this week, I've been able to experience that firsthand.

I've been in a lot of discomfort, particularly in the area of the right underarm. That's where my doctor went digging for the sentinel node and the one lymph node that he removed, and it's very sore.

Yesterday, my hero / hostess / chauffeur / Julia-Child-clone friend, Anne, drove me to the hospital to get my drains removed. If you don't know what drains are, I'm faced with the difficult choice of either telling you here in detail what they are - and hoping you don't faint if you're queasy - or just hopping over their description and hoping you can imagine what I mean when I say 'drains'.

Enh, what the heck . . . basically, there were two plastic tubes coming from the inside of my chest to the outside, and the tubes lead to small portable plastic bottles I wore for the week following the surgery. They filled up with blood that was still draining from the surgery site and needed to be emptied every few hours. I certainly won't miss those babies. (Are you still conscious? If not, come back later. If so, keep reading . . .)

So yesterday, my nurse Kim decided to remove everything: the drains, bandages and half the clips (translation: staples . . . remember the good old days when they sewed us back up so we had 'stitches'? Well, clips replace those . . .) Owwwwwww. Painful! I felt sorry for her as I sniffled, snuffled and sobbed through most of the procedure. The drain removal at the lymph node site was the worst - there's no other way to remove it but to pull it out, and although Kim did a wonderful job, it was still very painful.

The main thing I was experiencing throughout the hour-long ordeal was that I felt as though my body was being assaulted . . . that's the only word that comes to my mind. Not assaulted deliberately by medical staff, of course: my doctor and nurse are wonderful, but assaulted by pain. As we try to protect ourselves from physical pain, that effort of self-protection is in itself very stressful, and I felt as though it was a type of trauma; my body was so tense and on guard the whole time.

And in the midst of all these procedures - bandage removal (uncomfortable but bearable), drainage removal (awful on the right side, not so bad on the left), and clips removal along the incision lines (pinched a little but certainly tolerable) - I looked down and saw my body for the first time since the surgery with no bandages; no cover ups; no pristeen little white camisole hiding the inevitable new me. This is the me I'll see looking back at me in the mirror for the remainder of my life, and I had been wondering just how I would handle it.

Oddly enough, that sight was the least painful part of yesterday. It wasn't pretty. It's not yet healed up, of course. But it wasn't all that bad.

It sure beats having cancer. It beats living in a country where this kind of cancer removal isn't available, or affordable, and where people die from something that could have easily been removed from their bodies.

It beats launching myself into a whole new life (as I had originally planned to do a few months ago), starting to feel really unwell somewhere in a foreign country, and finding out months or even years down the line that the cancer had been sitting around in my body doing awful things to amuse itself.

It beats limping back to Montreal, going through a battery of tests, visiting a physician who would have broken the news that I was in advanced stages, or whatever, and not being around to enjoy life to its fullest.

So in retrospect, it wasn't really all that bad. And I think I can do this.



The Way It Is
I can read your mind and I know your story
I see what you're going through
It's an uphill climb, and I'm feeling sorry
But I know it will come to you

Don't surrender cause you can win
In this thing called love

When you want it the most, there's no easy way out
When you're ready to go and your heart's left in doubt
Don't give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that's the way it is

When you question me for a simple answer
I don't know what to say, no
But it's plain to see, if we stick together
You're gonna find a way, yeah

So don't surrender cause you can win
In this thing called love

When you want it the most there's no easy way out
When you're ready to go and your heart's left in doubt
Don't give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that's the way it is

When life is empty with no tomorrow
And loneliness starts to call
Baby, don't worry, forget your sorrow
Cause loves gonna conquer it all

When you want it the most, there's no easy way out
When you're ready to go and your heart's left in doubt
Don't give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that's the way it is

When you want it the most there's no easy way out
When you're ready to go and your heart's left in doubt
Don't give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that's the way it is

That's the way it is
That's the way it is, babe
Don't give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that's the way it is