Delta Upd8 in These Foolish Things

It’s been almost a week since I’ve last written and SO much and I guess so little has happened since then.

Mediport placement: On Wednesday, I had surgery to have a mediport placed under the skin in my chest. This is a device that creates a bump in my chest so that a nurse can poke a needle into it and that will deliver my chemo right into my main vein close to my heart. I was told I would be awake for this, however, when I asked Doc. D. about the stuff they call “twilight” he told me that he normally just puts the patient all the way under. So when my anesthesiologists came in (I had both a doc and a CRNA joining for this one), I asked if they could just put me under and they said sure - as long as the surgeon was OK with it. And apparently he was because the next thing I remember was waking up. It took a lot longer than we thought for me to come out of recovery, mainly because the hospital was SO freaking busy. I think there’s so much more stuff going on now that Covid is starting to slow. I could hear others in recovery talking about cancer. My dad took me home and I rested until he asked me to get up and take a walk around to make sure I was OK. We went to dinner and it was just a wonderful time. I never had to take any of the pain meds - just Tylenol, and the port area is very bruised, but apparently ready to rock and roll.

Back to Work: Was back to work the next day and man, are these days super busy. We are getting ready for a virtual trade show next week that I’ll have to miss most of, but I suppose that’s okay. I kind of got into it with one of the VPs who gave me some shit about something he gave me to review right before I left to have surgery and was supposed to be complete right when I got back. Everyone else doing this has a staff that were working on it and I didn’t, so there were some other people covering for me (thank goodness!), but I just couldn’t do it all so he picked on me.

Back to Oncology: After my big presentation on Friday morning at the office I had to head back to the oncology center and get a CT scan of my chest and abdomen and then go take a “chemo class”, which felt like the hardest part of all of this. It’s just a daunting thing to think about - especially the fact that there are so many side-effects. I mean, my surgeon says it a chemo that most people do really well with and then I go over to oncology and they are like, you’re gonna feel like this or that and the biggest side effect is neuropathy which will be cold sensitivity in my hands, feet and mouth/throat and they made it sound so scary somehow. I’m so happy that [Athena] was able to go with me again, because…HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS ALONE?! I know I didn’t absorb all of the info, and I left there just feeling outrageously overwhelmed. So much so that I cried to my brother…my own brother (!!) and told him I need his help. I am so afraid of feeling barfy and crappy so I needed to take him up on his cannabis offer.

So yesterday was Saturday and the first day of Spring (which I didn’t realize until I was almost in bed). I took the dog for a nice long walk, went to look at an apartment (not super successful), tried to straighten up a bit and then my brother came over with his goodies.

He brought a vape pen, two cartridges of Delta 8 (which is not supposed to give you the paranoid feeling of weed, but it’s supposed to control nausea and stimulate appetite), and a few Delta 8 gummies that I can try. I am not a weed girl AT ALL, but I am grateful to have these tools at the ready in case I need them. My biggest fear out of all of this is that I’m going to feel barfy and terrible and I fear that will paralyze me.

I have a lot more to say about what’s about to happen, but I am going to close now to get some other things done. Good to come back on here and write some of this out. It always makes me feel better.

And as always, I love you!
GS

Last updated March 21, 2021