Have you ever wondered how you got where you are? Or, have you ever looked around you and wondered how the people around you got to where they are? Maybe because I come from a family of geographers, I'm hyper aware of my surroundings, and I've always had a keen interest in other people's stories. When I was a kid, we used to go on a lot of road trips, and I was always content to stare out the car window, watch the world go by, and make up stories about the people living in the houses we passed. I'd ask myself what it's like to live in a run-down farmhouse just a hundred feet off the interstate that thousands and thousands of cars whiz by per day. How did you get there? Have you lived there your whole life? And if so, how did your grandparents or your great grandparents get there? I used to love watching Steve Hartman's Everybody Has a Story on the CBS news, where he threw a dart at a map of the U.S., then traveled to the place where the dart landed, then randomly chose a person from the phone book (remember those?), then ran a story on that person. The stories were always interesting, and that's the whole point. Everybody Has a Story. (I just Googled this so I could be certain I wasn't making this up; for an example, see: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/everybody-has-a-story-flashbacks/).
I had my own Steve Hartman moment today.
I've been slowly acquiring the things that I'll need for my upcoming surgeries through a combination of Amazon, thrift stores, Craigslist, and begging, borrowing, and stealing. Okay, not really stealing. I had actually forgotten about Craigslist until a couple of weeks ago. When my kids were younger, I went through a phase where I bought pretty much everything off of Craigslist. Then when they got older, I sold all of said stuff on Craigslist, and I really haven't done much Craigslisting lately. But I had forgotten the awesomeness of Craigslist - that is, when you have the time to actually shop around and pick out the good deals from the bad deals ($80 for a used wheelchair when you can buy a new one for $65?!) and the flakes and the creepers from the normal people who just want to unload some junk and make a few bucks in the process.
One of the things I've been looking for is a stationary bike. Dr. Terminator said I'd need to ride a stationary bike between my arthroscopy and PAO, to get the fluid out of my hip joint. I don't have a stationary bike, and I don't belong to a gym, and I don't want to join one just for a week of stationary biking. I inquired on Facebook about borrowing one from a local friend, and apparently none of my friends have one, either - or maybe they do, and they just don't want to lend it to me. LOL. So I went onto Craigslist, where I found a bunch of fancy bikes for, like, $200+. I mean, maybe that's a good deal - I have no idea how much a stationary bike costs, but I do know that I do not want to pay hundreds of dollars for one. All I need is for my legs to be able to go round and round; I mean, hell, if worst comes to worst, I could just lie on my back and pretend bike. I remember doing a gig for an elementary school talent show where my friend and I stood on our heads and bicycled upside down to the tune of It's a Small World After All.
Among the ads for fancy pants bikes, I found one for $25 that was just perfect. $25! I immediately sent an e-mail, and to my surprise, I immediately heard back (rare in my experience). The bike was still available, I just needed to call the woman to get her address and set up a time to pick it up. I didn't respond right away because I hate calling people; for some weird reason, it has always stressed me out. Calling strangers is even worse. So I put it off.
When I checked my e-mail a few hours later, bike woman had sent me an e-mail asking me if I still wanted the bike. She said she had someone else who wanted it, but you seemed like you really wanted [it] so I am giving you first chance at it. That was pretty sweet of her. I mean, really. In my Craigslist experience, I usually just try to dump the item off to the first person who can come by. And if you're looking for a stationary bike, you can't beat $25. In fact, I'm pretty sure I can sell it for quite a bit more once I'm done with it, at which point I'll probably feel a little bad. But the point is that I was pretty sure she was going to have a lot of people interested in the bike before long. So I replied to her e-mail promptly, and just in case she needed another reason to save the bike for me, I wrote that I was getting ready to have hip surgery, and I needed an inexpensive bike for my rehab. (Advice: play the woe is me card when you need to.) She replied, It will be a perfect bike for that. I used it to rehab from heart surgery. Heart surgery. So my first thought was, well, at least I'll be able to outrun her if she's a creeper. LOL. My second thought was more paranoid: maybe this is how she lures people into her house. She probably didn't even have heart surgery. She's probably a creepy old man trying to get an aspiring fitness guru into his house so he can tie her up and keep her in the basement. I mean, that's the problem with Craigslist, there's that you never know factor. And $25 for a bike seemed too good to be true.
I called her today and was relieved that she sounded like a normal person. And I was pretty sure I heard a kid in the background, which made me feel better. I feel like people who do shady things don't usually do them with kids around. But then, when she went to give me her address, she started to say, 'It's one... wait...' then she acted funny, like she couldn't remember it - her own address. Then she paused, as if she were asking someone what her address was, and eventually said, 'It's 3672 ABC Street.' That made me a little nervous. Woman lures unsuspecting woman into creepy man's house to be held as a sex slave. Then she added quickly, almost apologetically, 'Lot 197.' Ah, a trailer park. At least trailers don't have basements. And in a trailer park, the other trailers are very close by, so it seems like an unlikely place where you could hold people against their will. I felt pretty confident that my $25 stationary bike was legit.
Bike woman's house was in a part of town I'm not familiar with, so it took me longer to get there and find the park than I had planned on. Within the park, the homes did not seem to be arranged in a logical manner, so I drove around the park past at least 200 trailers before finding hers. I was actually just about to give up and call her, not so much because I didn't think I'd eventually find her place, but just so she would know I wasn't flaking out on her (because I HATE it when flaky Craigslist people flake out on me!), but it turns out I didn't have cell reception. When I did find her place, it was obvious, because there was a stationary bike sitting out in the front yard. Sweet relief. Ha.
I went up and knocked on the door, and other than feeling certain I wasn't going to be attacked and taken hostage, I'm not sure what I was expecting. As awful as it is, we make assumptions about people based on (very, very, very) limited information, and what I knew was that I was buying a bike from a woman who had had heart surgery who lives in trailer park and didn't seem to know her own address. So I was surprised when a totally normal looking youngish woman (probably a little younger than I am) answered the door. She had on a v-neck t-shirt that revealed a scar all the way up to her trachea. There was a boy next to her, probably around my daughter's age. The surprise was obviously mutual, although at first, bike woman just focused on explaining all the features of the bike to me. But eventually, she said somewhat awkwardly, 'Hip surgery... I was expecting someone... much older.' LOL. I gave her a nervous little smile and said, 'Heart surgery... I was also expecting someone much older' (and fatter, I thought to myself, to be completely honest). She smiled knowingly, with that look of yes, I get that a lot, and replied, 'I was born that way' (whatever 'that' is). I smiled and replied, 'I was born that way, too.' And in the few seconds that followed, we exchanged looks that were something along the lines of, Ah, yes, you must get this a lot. You don't look like someone who's had heart/hip surgery. Bike woman then expressed surprise that I was alone, and went back into the house
to get her husband to come help me move the bike into my van. It turns
out I could do it by myself just fine, but I guess someone who is getting ready to have hip surgery shouldn't be fit enough to lift a bike up into her van. ;-) Eventually, she wished me luck with my surgeries, and I drove off.
I'm not really sure why this had such a profound effect on me, but I think it gets back to what I wrote about in the beginning, that Everybody Has a Story. In the few exchanges I had with bike woman, I felt some sort of instant bond, because neither one of us was what the other was expecting, and yet we totally understood. I know I don't look like someone who has severe hip problems. And I know that bike woman knows she doesn't look like someone who has had heart surgery. Just a few words and a few facial expressions between us and I knew this, and she knew this. Then the Steve Hartman in me started to wonder...
How did you get here?
How did you come to live in the god-forsaken trailer park?
Did you just move here?
Is that why you didn't know your own address?
Was it because of your heart surgery?
We all have stories. Most of them are full of the unexpected. I want to know other people's stories. But I can't, because I am not Steve Hartman, and asking things would make me the creeper I hope to avoid. So instead, I can only wonder, and make up my own stories, and wonder if other people make up stories about me. Maybe bike woman did. Maybe that's why she wanted me to have the bike.
Regardless, thank you, bike woman, for saving the bike for me. I hope your heart is okay, in every way possible. XOXO.
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Monday, May 22, 2017
I am too young for any of this.
You know, I think I was born to be a middle-aged woman. Middle age suits me well. I'm happier with myself in my 40s than I have been at any other time of my life. I've heard a similar story from other friends, so maybe it's just something to do with the age, and it's not about me. Then again, maybe it is me. Or maybe it's both. Either way, when I consider that my 40s have pretty much sucked in a lot of ways, it's shocking that I can say these have been good years. And maybe good isn't exactly the right word. It's more like... comfortable...?
I was kind of a weird kid. I was socially awkward and had a hard time making friends. With the exception of a few years, I never really had 'a group' I belonged to. I was never a rebellious teen; in fact, as a teen, I related much better to adults than to other teens. Yet, I was ridiculously naive into my mid-20s. I spent my late 20s trying to come up with something meaningful to do so that I wouldn't have to have kids yet, because, after all, what else does a married woman with no career do with herself, other than have kids? That was probably one of the hardest times of my life. At that point, most women are either fully entrenched in motherhood or fully entrenched in a career, and I had neither. In my early to mid 30s, I struggled to find that magical balance between being a decent mom and trying to work, as well as, OMG what do I want to do when I grow up? And then, in my late 30s, things got good. My daughter went off to kindergarten, and I had another baby - a baby boy. I'm not going to lie, I'm not well-suited for the baby phase. But it was easier the second time around, because despite having a baby, I was still the mother of a school-aged kid. The mother of a school-aged kid and, oh yeah, a baby. Being the mom of a school-aged kid works well for me; having a baby was secondary to that identity.
And now, both my kids are school-aged, and it's a double dose of awesome. I LOVE IT. I mean, aside from the cancer and the hips and all, I've LOVED my 40s. Some people say they were born to swim or born to teach or born to cook or born to be wild (haha), and I can say with surety that I was born to be in my 40s. When I was a kid, I longed to be older, and when I was in my 20s and 30s, I longed to go back to college, but in my 40s, I am happy to be the 42.5 years old that I am at this very moment - no younger, no older.
Weirdly enough, my cancer and my hips make me feel both older and younger than I actually am, but never my true age. In Cancerland, from a statistics point of view, I am considered Very Young to have/had cancer, but I'm also on the old side of Very Young. I've met folks online who were diagnosed with cancer in their 20s or early 30s, and from their point of view, I'm old. At least, old in the sense that I'm too old to understand the issues they are going through, like dating after a mastectomy or preserving your fertility. In the hip realm of things, for an average person, I'm Very Young to be having hip pain and hip surgery, yet considering the congenital condition I have and surgery I'm having, I'm actually Very Old. Most people who have PAO surgery are in their 20s.
I mean, whatever. The great thing about being in the middle is that you can be young when you want, old when you want, and in the middle when you want, and they're all true.
Anyway. I digress.
This past month, I've been focused on the practical side of everything more than the philosophical side. One of my major projects has been finding a pair of crutches that's suitable for long-term crutch use. For my last hip surgery, which seems like eons ago, I used a combination of underarm thrift-store crutches with pads from Crutcheze (highly recommended), and forearm crutches that my dad has from a time when he broke his ankle in Europe, where forearm crutches are the norm. (In the U.S., usually only people who are long-term crutch users use forearm crutches.) But considering how. freaking. long. I am going to be on crutches in the next year or so, that just didn't seem like it was going to cut it. So I Googled 'most comfortable crutches' and came up with two different candidates - Millenial crutches, and Mobilegs.
There are a few places in town that sell Millenial crutches, so I went to test them out. At the same time, I also inquired about wheelchair rental prices, which is another thing that has been recommended to me. (Suck up your pride and rent a wheelchair.) I explained to the woman who was helping me that I was going to be on crutches for a very long time, so I needed a very comfortable pair. (BTW, the Millenial crutches did NOT cut it for me.) I think between that and the wheelchair rental inquiry, she was very curious, but politely didn't ask too much. And it's not like I'm secretive or anything, but I tend to not share too much unless people ask too much. Eventually we did discuss the fact that I'd be having hip surgery, but left it at that. When I told her the Millenial crutches were very uncomfortable and I couldn't believe they got such great reviews, she asked me about traditional crutches. I told her I had those already. Then she asked if I would be interested in forearm crutches. I told her I had those already, too. Then she asked, 'What about... a walker?' OMG, LOL. I actually already have a walker, too. I needed one to save my back after my DIEP reconstruction, so my husband picked one up at the thrift store. But I looked her straight in the eye, and was like, 'I am too young to go out in public with a walker.' Yes, around the house is okay, but in public, no. Just no.
She looked at me very sympathetically and said, 'I understand.' Then added, 'You are too young for any of this.'
My immediate reaction was, 'Yeah lady, and you don't know the half of it,' but then I thought to myself, 'She's right. I'm too young for this.' Granted, I look younger than I am, but I suspect if I had told her that I'm actually 42 years old, she wouldn't have changed her stance. In so many ways, I AM too young for this. But... the beauty of middle age is that I've fully accepted that things are what they are. In reality, there's no such thing as too old or too young or too anything. You just are what you are, and your life is what it is. Eventually you have to accept it - whether it is kicking and screaming the whole way, or wholeheartedly embracing it. I'm working on the latter.
I was kind of a weird kid. I was socially awkward and had a hard time making friends. With the exception of a few years, I never really had 'a group' I belonged to. I was never a rebellious teen; in fact, as a teen, I related much better to adults than to other teens. Yet, I was ridiculously naive into my mid-20s. I spent my late 20s trying to come up with something meaningful to do so that I wouldn't have to have kids yet, because, after all, what else does a married woman with no career do with herself, other than have kids? That was probably one of the hardest times of my life. At that point, most women are either fully entrenched in motherhood or fully entrenched in a career, and I had neither. In my early to mid 30s, I struggled to find that magical balance between being a decent mom and trying to work, as well as, OMG what do I want to do when I grow up? And then, in my late 30s, things got good. My daughter went off to kindergarten, and I had another baby - a baby boy. I'm not going to lie, I'm not well-suited for the baby phase. But it was easier the second time around, because despite having a baby, I was still the mother of a school-aged kid. The mother of a school-aged kid and, oh yeah, a baby. Being the mom of a school-aged kid works well for me; having a baby was secondary to that identity.
And now, both my kids are school-aged, and it's a double dose of awesome. I LOVE IT. I mean, aside from the cancer and the hips and all, I've LOVED my 40s. Some people say they were born to swim or born to teach or born to cook or born to be wild (haha), and I can say with surety that I was born to be in my 40s. When I was a kid, I longed to be older, and when I was in my 20s and 30s, I longed to go back to college, but in my 40s, I am happy to be the 42.5 years old that I am at this very moment - no younger, no older.
Weirdly enough, my cancer and my hips make me feel both older and younger than I actually am, but never my true age. In Cancerland, from a statistics point of view, I am considered Very Young to have/had cancer, but I'm also on the old side of Very Young. I've met folks online who were diagnosed with cancer in their 20s or early 30s, and from their point of view, I'm old. At least, old in the sense that I'm too old to understand the issues they are going through, like dating after a mastectomy or preserving your fertility. In the hip realm of things, for an average person, I'm Very Young to be having hip pain and hip surgery, yet considering the congenital condition I have and surgery I'm having, I'm actually Very Old. Most people who have PAO surgery are in their 20s.
I mean, whatever. The great thing about being in the middle is that you can be young when you want, old when you want, and in the middle when you want, and they're all true.
Anyway. I digress.
This past month, I've been focused on the practical side of everything more than the philosophical side. One of my major projects has been finding a pair of crutches that's suitable for long-term crutch use. For my last hip surgery, which seems like eons ago, I used a combination of underarm thrift-store crutches with pads from Crutcheze (highly recommended), and forearm crutches that my dad has from a time when he broke his ankle in Europe, where forearm crutches are the norm. (In the U.S., usually only people who are long-term crutch users use forearm crutches.) But considering how. freaking. long. I am going to be on crutches in the next year or so, that just didn't seem like it was going to cut it. So I Googled 'most comfortable crutches' and came up with two different candidates - Millenial crutches, and Mobilegs.
There are a few places in town that sell Millenial crutches, so I went to test them out. At the same time, I also inquired about wheelchair rental prices, which is another thing that has been recommended to me. (Suck up your pride and rent a wheelchair.) I explained to the woman who was helping me that I was going to be on crutches for a very long time, so I needed a very comfortable pair. (BTW, the Millenial crutches did NOT cut it for me.) I think between that and the wheelchair rental inquiry, she was very curious, but politely didn't ask too much. And it's not like I'm secretive or anything, but I tend to not share too much unless people ask too much. Eventually we did discuss the fact that I'd be having hip surgery, but left it at that. When I told her the Millenial crutches were very uncomfortable and I couldn't believe they got such great reviews, she asked me about traditional crutches. I told her I had those already. Then she asked if I would be interested in forearm crutches. I told her I had those already, too. Then she asked, 'What about... a walker?' OMG, LOL. I actually already have a walker, too. I needed one to save my back after my DIEP reconstruction, so my husband picked one up at the thrift store. But I looked her straight in the eye, and was like, 'I am too young to go out in public with a walker.' Yes, around the house is okay, but in public, no. Just no.
She looked at me very sympathetically and said, 'I understand.' Then added, 'You are too young for any of this.'
My immediate reaction was, 'Yeah lady, and you don't know the half of it,' but then I thought to myself, 'She's right. I'm too young for this.' Granted, I look younger than I am, but I suspect if I had told her that I'm actually 42 years old, she wouldn't have changed her stance. In so many ways, I AM too young for this. But... the beauty of middle age is that I've fully accepted that things are what they are. In reality, there's no such thing as too old or too young or too anything. You just are what you are, and your life is what it is. Eventually you have to accept it - whether it is kicking and screaming the whole way, or wholeheartedly embracing it. I'm working on the latter.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
I want to be like the one-legged guy playing innertube water polo.
Over two years ago, I went to an orthopedist for a second opinion about my hips, and he told me I needed this horrendous surgery, in which they cut your hip bone into three pieces and then screw the pieces back together in a better configuration, on both hips. I stared at him for a while with my mouth agape, but ultimately, I didn't take the news that hard because I was sort of like, Oh yeah, right, hahahahaha, that is sooooo never happening! Yet, a little over two years later, what do you know? It is actually happening.
It is happening in pieces, starting on July 10th and July 17th. I actually have dates set now, so it's real. A few months ago, I went in for a second opinion on the second opinion, and that doctor agreed 100% with the doctor that I blew off, at which point I finally accepted that something major needed to happen. But it still didn't seem real. I used to listen to the Dr. Laura show (don't judge me, lol), and whenever anyone claimed to be 'engaged,' the first thing she would ask is, 'Do you have a ring and a date?' Otherwise, she didn't consider it to be a real engagement. There's some truth there. Although I don't have a ring, I have crutches and a shower chair, and having a date makes it real, for sure.
It would be impossible to describe the full range of emotions that I've gone through that bring me to where I am today, and I realize it sounds melodramatic to be waxing philosophical about a bunch of freaking hip surgeries (they are HIPS, get over it!), so I won't even try. I'll just say that I'm thankful to not be on tamoxifen any more, because I'm pretty sure that all of these emotional ups and downs over the past couple of months would have pushed me over some edge, whether literal or metaphorical.
On April 15th, I went up to University Hospital to have the CT scan and fancy MRIs (dGEMRIC) that Dr. Terminator wanted. They had to be done at University Hospital because Dr. Terminator is picky about how they're done and who does them and who reads them and yada yada. So this meant I spent a gorgeous Saturday either driving to or from University Hospital, or in some tiny, hot tube. (For the record, it takes over two hours to image both hips, and by the end it's really freaking hot, especially when you have a blanket over you because it starts off really freaking cold. Fun times, fun times.) Although, I have to admit, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. In the past, when I've had imaging of my hips (read here and here), they've injected the dye into my hip joint, which is quite painful, so I was nervous about having both hips done at once. However, this time, they injected the dye into my arm, then had me walk for 30 minutes to move the dye into my hip joints. So, yay, I got to avoid the painful injections and get some exercise. Does it get any better that this? LOL.
The scans were pretty uneventful, but a few days later, I was able to read the results on the patient portal, and they basically read like some kind of hip horror story. Just reading the report, and all the things that are wrong with my hips and the surrounding tissues, made my hips hurt worse. I love that the university system is really into sharing all sorts of information with the patients, but it should come with a warning like, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE HYPOCHONDRIAC TENDENCIES. Although, to be fair to myself, I guess I'm not REALLY a hypochondriac, because every time I've thought there's something wrong with me, it turns out that there really is. I'm not sure if there's an appropriate term for this.
Anyhoo, I was pretty sure after reading the report that my right hip was too far gone to do the 'cutting surgery' (as Dr. Terminator's fellow called it), and that I'd need to proceed straight to a hip replacement. That wouldn't have been so bad, except that I'd spent all this time psyching myself up to have the PAO, and trying to change mindsets was difficult. In the meantime, I joined various support groups online, because like I alluded to before, most people don't get just how traumatic this hip shit really is. (Seriously, it really is. I mean, people don't really get cancer unless they've had it, but at least they get that it's traumatic.) In one forum, I got mixed opinions about PAO versus hip replacement, with many people telling me I'd be crazy to do PAO at age 42, that my surgeon must not know what he's doing, and various other remarks that made me question pretty much everything. So I turned to a Facebook group of people who live in my state who have had the PAO, and in particular, who had the PAO with Dr. Terminator. No one had anything but great things to say about him, and some even went so far as to say that he is brilliant, and that they would trust him with their life. One of the women in the group, who did not have Dr. Terminator as her doctor, joked that this Facebook group was really a 'Dr. Terminator Fan Club.' So after that, I decided that whatever Dr. Terminator recommended at my appointment with him was what I would do. I am all for educating yourself and advocating for yourself and being aware of all of your options, but at a certain point, you have to trust that your doctor knows better than you do. The reason I sought out Dr. Terminator in the first place is because I wanted a doctor with a stellar reputation whose opinion I could trust. As far as I can tell, the PAO vs. hip replacement debate is something you can argue about until you're blue in the face, much like the 'should I do chemo or not?' debate I experienced with cancer. At a certain point, you just need to make a decision and go with it.
I saw Dr. Terminator on April 27th, and I was pretty nervous about what he might say, either way. I asked my husband to go with me to help with the questions and decisions and all that. Dr. Terminator was a bit friendlier this time, and told me that he felt he could save my hip, and that it was worth a try, in his opinion. At that point, I was really glad I vetted him, because otherwise I wouldn't have known what to think. But when several people have told you that the man is brilliant and they would trust him with their life, you feel okay putting your faith into what he's telling you. He did say that he could not promise that I wouldn't need a hip replacement down the road, but the decision I had to make was with regards to the immediate future. As he said, 'You've exhausted all conservative options. There are only two options ahead of you.' He said that a hip replacement, for me, would likely be a more complex procedure than average because of my dysplasia. So, if I did need a hip replacement eventually, even after having the PAO, the consolation prize would be that I would have a much easier time with the hip replacement. So... I decided to just go with it and not look back.
I will write more details about the appointment and the specific plan later, but for now, I want to leave with this thought. Mentally, I'm in a pretty good place right now. Obviously I'm not happy this is happening, but I'm pretty much over the woe is me part of it. (Keep in mind, I did say pretty much. I cannot guarantee that there won't be whining in the future. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that there will be. I apologize in advance.) When I told my friends I had cancer, so many of them were like YOU'VE GOT THIS! YOU'RE GOING TO KICK CANCER'S ASS! YEAH BABY! YOU GO GIRL! And that just didn't work for me. I know they meant well, but... like, how do you psyche up to try to get rid of some microscopic, rogue cells floating around in your body? It's not like you stand in front of the mirror flexing your muscles and saying, YEAH BABY, I'VE GOT THIS! HUZZAH!
These hips surgeries, on the other hand, lend themselves better to the YOU'RE GOING TO KICK SOME ASS! attitude. In this case, I'd be okay with someone telling me YOU GO GIRL! In fact, in trying to mentally gear up for this, I've had a little bit of the I'VE GOT THIS! moxie running through my head. Because I'm going to be on crutches for so. stinking. long, I can't just put my life on hold until I can walk again. I need to be able to function on crutches. I need to be strong - as in literally, physically strong (and probably emotionally, too, but we know that's not happening). So I'm getting into the best shape possible, I'm lifting weights, I'm doing everything I can ahead of time to make the rehab period easier. And because I am a goal-oriented person, it helps to have something tangible to work toward. It's fun, almost. You know, until I actually have to have the surgeries.
The other day, I was leaving the pool after coaching diving. As I was leaving, some college kids came in to play innertube water polo. One of them had one leg and was on crutches. He was obviously a long time crutch user, as he was very adept and fast on crutches, and even the slippery wetness of the pool deck - something I worry about a lot with crutches - didn't slow him down. He crutched right over to the far side of the pool deck, dropped his crutches, hopped around on one leg while passing the ball back and forth with some of his teammates, then eventually sat down and got into his innertube, at which point he looked just like everyone else. I probably wouldn't have even noticed the crutches except for the fact that he only had one leg.
And I thought to myself YEAH BABY! I'm going kick some ass. Just that guy. HE'S GOT THIS! And so do I.
It is happening in pieces, starting on July 10th and July 17th. I actually have dates set now, so it's real. A few months ago, I went in for a second opinion on the second opinion, and that doctor agreed 100% with the doctor that I blew off, at which point I finally accepted that something major needed to happen. But it still didn't seem real. I used to listen to the Dr. Laura show (don't judge me, lol), and whenever anyone claimed to be 'engaged,' the first thing she would ask is, 'Do you have a ring and a date?' Otherwise, she didn't consider it to be a real engagement. There's some truth there. Although I don't have a ring, I have crutches and a shower chair, and having a date makes it real, for sure.
It would be impossible to describe the full range of emotions that I've gone through that bring me to where I am today, and I realize it sounds melodramatic to be waxing philosophical about a bunch of freaking hip surgeries (they are HIPS, get over it!), so I won't even try. I'll just say that I'm thankful to not be on tamoxifen any more, because I'm pretty sure that all of these emotional ups and downs over the past couple of months would have pushed me over some edge, whether literal or metaphorical.
On April 15th, I went up to University Hospital to have the CT scan and fancy MRIs (dGEMRIC) that Dr. Terminator wanted. They had to be done at University Hospital because Dr. Terminator is picky about how they're done and who does them and who reads them and yada yada. So this meant I spent a gorgeous Saturday either driving to or from University Hospital, or in some tiny, hot tube. (For the record, it takes over two hours to image both hips, and by the end it's really freaking hot, especially when you have a blanket over you because it starts off really freaking cold. Fun times, fun times.) Although, I have to admit, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. In the past, when I've had imaging of my hips (read here and here), they've injected the dye into my hip joint, which is quite painful, so I was nervous about having both hips done at once. However, this time, they injected the dye into my arm, then had me walk for 30 minutes to move the dye into my hip joints. So, yay, I got to avoid the painful injections and get some exercise. Does it get any better that this? LOL.
The scans were pretty uneventful, but a few days later, I was able to read the results on the patient portal, and they basically read like some kind of hip horror story. Just reading the report, and all the things that are wrong with my hips and the surrounding tissues, made my hips hurt worse. I love that the university system is really into sharing all sorts of information with the patients, but it should come with a warning like, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE HYPOCHONDRIAC TENDENCIES. Although, to be fair to myself, I guess I'm not REALLY a hypochondriac, because every time I've thought there's something wrong with me, it turns out that there really is. I'm not sure if there's an appropriate term for this.
Anyhoo, I was pretty sure after reading the report that my right hip was too far gone to do the 'cutting surgery' (as Dr. Terminator's fellow called it), and that I'd need to proceed straight to a hip replacement. That wouldn't have been so bad, except that I'd spent all this time psyching myself up to have the PAO, and trying to change mindsets was difficult. In the meantime, I joined various support groups online, because like I alluded to before, most people don't get just how traumatic this hip shit really is. (Seriously, it really is. I mean, people don't really get cancer unless they've had it, but at least they get that it's traumatic.) In one forum, I got mixed opinions about PAO versus hip replacement, with many people telling me I'd be crazy to do PAO at age 42, that my surgeon must not know what he's doing, and various other remarks that made me question pretty much everything. So I turned to a Facebook group of people who live in my state who have had the PAO, and in particular, who had the PAO with Dr. Terminator. No one had anything but great things to say about him, and some even went so far as to say that he is brilliant, and that they would trust him with their life. One of the women in the group, who did not have Dr. Terminator as her doctor, joked that this Facebook group was really a 'Dr. Terminator Fan Club.' So after that, I decided that whatever Dr. Terminator recommended at my appointment with him was what I would do. I am all for educating yourself and advocating for yourself and being aware of all of your options, but at a certain point, you have to trust that your doctor knows better than you do. The reason I sought out Dr. Terminator in the first place is because I wanted a doctor with a stellar reputation whose opinion I could trust. As far as I can tell, the PAO vs. hip replacement debate is something you can argue about until you're blue in the face, much like the 'should I do chemo or not?' debate I experienced with cancer. At a certain point, you just need to make a decision and go with it.
I saw Dr. Terminator on April 27th, and I was pretty nervous about what he might say, either way. I asked my husband to go with me to help with the questions and decisions and all that. Dr. Terminator was a bit friendlier this time, and told me that he felt he could save my hip, and that it was worth a try, in his opinion. At that point, I was really glad I vetted him, because otherwise I wouldn't have known what to think. But when several people have told you that the man is brilliant and they would trust him with their life, you feel okay putting your faith into what he's telling you. He did say that he could not promise that I wouldn't need a hip replacement down the road, but the decision I had to make was with regards to the immediate future. As he said, 'You've exhausted all conservative options. There are only two options ahead of you.' He said that a hip replacement, for me, would likely be a more complex procedure than average because of my dysplasia. So, if I did need a hip replacement eventually, even after having the PAO, the consolation prize would be that I would have a much easier time with the hip replacement. So... I decided to just go with it and not look back.
I will write more details about the appointment and the specific plan later, but for now, I want to leave with this thought. Mentally, I'm in a pretty good place right now. Obviously I'm not happy this is happening, but I'm pretty much over the woe is me part of it. (Keep in mind, I did say pretty much. I cannot guarantee that there won't be whining in the future. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that there will be. I apologize in advance.) When I told my friends I had cancer, so many of them were like YOU'VE GOT THIS! YOU'RE GOING TO KICK CANCER'S ASS! YEAH BABY! YOU GO GIRL! And that just didn't work for me. I know they meant well, but... like, how do you psyche up to try to get rid of some microscopic, rogue cells floating around in your body? It's not like you stand in front of the mirror flexing your muscles and saying, YEAH BABY, I'VE GOT THIS! HUZZAH!
These hips surgeries, on the other hand, lend themselves better to the YOU'RE GOING TO KICK SOME ASS! attitude. In this case, I'd be okay with someone telling me YOU GO GIRL! In fact, in trying to mentally gear up for this, I've had a little bit of the I'VE GOT THIS! moxie running through my head. Because I'm going to be on crutches for so. stinking. long, I can't just put my life on hold until I can walk again. I need to be able to function on crutches. I need to be strong - as in literally, physically strong (and probably emotionally, too, but we know that's not happening). So I'm getting into the best shape possible, I'm lifting weights, I'm doing everything I can ahead of time to make the rehab period easier. And because I am a goal-oriented person, it helps to have something tangible to work toward. It's fun, almost. You know, until I actually have to have the surgeries.
The other day, I was leaving the pool after coaching diving. As I was leaving, some college kids came in to play innertube water polo. One of them had one leg and was on crutches. He was obviously a long time crutch user, as he was very adept and fast on crutches, and even the slippery wetness of the pool deck - something I worry about a lot with crutches - didn't slow him down. He crutched right over to the far side of the pool deck, dropped his crutches, hopped around on one leg while passing the ball back and forth with some of his teammates, then eventually sat down and got into his innertube, at which point he looked just like everyone else. I probably wouldn't have even noticed the crutches except for the fact that he only had one leg.
And I thought to myself YEAH BABY! I'm going kick some ass. Just that guy. HE'S GOT THIS! And so do I.
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