2018 started weird for Izzy

My poor daughter, with her brain surgery ended up with 21 fucking staples holding her head together after the surgery.  She's been home with an IV, and will be taking antibiotics by IV till mid march. She sees a CLSC nurse daily who changes her bag.

Now she has Shingles, because having brain surgery wasn't stressful enough!!!! Boy am I happy that I got vaccinated against shingles in December.... at the same time I got my tetanus and diphteria shot.

So they sent me a photo

Of the back of Izzy's head. She had 21 staples. Count them. 21!  Her scar looks about 6 inches long. Crazy!

When we do things we don't do it half ass! And hopefully this is the last of the surgery. I mean in 2016 Sam had surgery to remove a Cyst in her breast, that left a 6 1/2 cm hole that had to heal from the inside and took I think nearly 3 months. Then there's my skin cancer surgery in 2017, and now Izzy with two brain assesses.

So it's normal.

This is how my head looks today. I still have a bump on the scalp end of the scar, and numbness on the top of my head. Since it's now 6 weeks from the surgery, I decided to call the dermatologist at du Marché. The one who did the biopsy and ask if I could be seen this week.

As it turns out, he was working only till noon today and then he's on vacation. I let his assistant know about how I still have a bump, and I still have numbness at the top of my head and I wanted to make sure this is normal. I said the scar was beautifully healed, but the bump and numbness and pain was of concern.

 She said she'd leave a message for the doctor and hoped he'd see it before he quit at noon. Well 30 minutes later she called back to say that due to the location of my surgery, the bump and head numbness is normal. There has been a nerve that was affected. I can massage the bump when I'm not doing anything and it's bugging me, it should help and that the doctor would like to see me in a followup in December.

Last stitch finally gone.

So this morning we removed the last stitch. Finally. Now hopefully the numbness on the top.of the head will disperse. ..

Still got one fucking stitch

For some reason the top two melting stitches have been giving me a hard time. Maybe it's because they are on my scalp rather than my forehead. The presence of hair might have hampered my body's ability to spot foreign substances Yesterday morning Terry cut the last top stitch saying it was the only left. This morning I realized that the one before that is still there intact. WHAT THE FUCK!!! All the other stitches are long gone. Highly unimpressed.

Slowly healing scar

Don't know if the sutures are dissolving normally or not.

The sutures slowly melting

This is how it looks today

Here's wishing things will become easier for my daughter

My eldest has had a busy 2016. For starters, she has been pregnant, then her husband got transferred from Halifax to Ottawa, and of course the move was just a month after the birth of the baby.

The birth was not particularly easy, and the baby was big. And of course then comes the fun of breastfeeding your first baby. While I managed to figure it out, I do distinctly remember that the first month of breast feeding was no picnic. Between the giant hickey I got the first time I ever fed her, and the sores and engorgement I had to navigate through, it took a while to master breastfeeding. Thankfully, usually you navigate through problems with child #1 and after subsequent children are easy to breastfeed. Hell I remember saying to my therapist that most women go through breastfeeding hell the first month with their first born, and if they manage to navigate through it then it's smooth sailing for future children.

While I was bugged about my tiny breasts and that I'd never be able to breastfeed anyone it was never an issue. So in my mind, my daughters who have bigger mammaries were going to have no problems breastfeeding. As it turns out each size might have their own challenges.  My daughter spent the first few weeks afraid she was going to smother her baby while feeding her. I could see it in her eyes. And Madeleine like most babies had to learn to breastfeed and from what I was told had a 'tongue-tie" which made it harder for her to feed. This seems to have disappeared recently as she grew

My daughter started also complaining about feeling a lump. She did all things recommended for that and did not get relief and finally consulted a doctor.  As it turns out it wasn't engorged, but she ended up with an ABSCESS, in her right breast that was 6 cm DEEP and 4 1/2 cm wide. LIKE WHAT THE FUCK??

I've had an abscess in my thigh in my bikini area that started as a boil after shaving. By the time I saw a doctor I needed to have a drain put in it for a week and had to wear skirts until it healed and I still have a scar there.  Here it was probably an ingrown hair that got infected. What the fuck gets infected INSIDE a breast??? Apparently this happens to 3% of women.

She had to have emergency surgery on Saturday, and spent more then 24 hours at the hospital.  She currently has a deep wound in her breast that was measured to be 6 1/2 cm deep.  It has to remain open so it can drain and heal properly so she has to go every other day to see a nurse, recently a deep wound specialist, so that it heals properly and that the oozing crap draining out of her incision does not pour over the baby. That tends to make moms feel very uncomfortable.

More surgery

From her wall post on Facebook, it seems my daughter's surgery went well and she is home, recovering with pain killers. Apparently they put screws in her knee and I made a stupid comment on her wall because I couldn't help myself.  [That and laughter is the best medicine]

Last night I drove my friend all the way to the Montreal Heart Institute where she is having her ablation done this morning.  She was happy I accompanied her into the Hospital for the check-in process as the person at the information desk didn't speak anything but French. The woman who checked her in didn't seem to speak much English either. She was friendly and pleasant enough despite feeling a little under pressure, because it was the first time she was filling out admission papers for an "out of province" patient. However they knew she was coming because when we arrived at the admissions desk, she asked if she was the patient from New Brunswick. I found that highly re-assuring. It meant in my mind they were expecting her and ready for her.

We stayed with my friends during the first 2 hours while they poked and prodded her. There were pre-surgery blood tests. They also put a heart monitor on, one that permits the patient to walk around on her own. We left at 8:30 because I was exhausted and I still had to drive home. I felt bad leaving her there alone, I'm sure she would have liked if her husband, son and I stayed until  they kicked us out, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to drive home, I felt I was crashing.

As I understood it, she's not the first patient they are operating on this morning, but the second patient. So they will take her sometime between 9 and 10 this morning. Thankfully I was so tired I actually slept last night, for the first time in close to a week.

My baby is having surgery.

So my youngest daughter went into the Hospital at 7am this morning. They will be fixing her ACL. She's hoping that she gets an epidural so she can be awake during the procedure. It's going to take 1 and a half hours, personally for a surgery that long, I'd want to be asleep. But I get it. When my kids were born, I had told their dad, that if they needed to do a C-section on me I did not want to be asleep and miss my babies being born.

Here's hoping that everything goes the best possible for her today. And her leg is the best it can be after this surgery heals!

Luna is a bitch!

At least that's what one of my buddies in the ADHD group says. Many of us believe he's probably right. I always have problem sleeping on nights where the moon is full. But I have problems sleeping. Gee, like a lot of other people with ADHD. 

And on nights like tonight I HATE myself. I was so tired around 8:30 last night that I lay down on my couch while watching "Corner Gas". Well I was out like a light till about midnight. You think I've been able to sleep since?  I cannot allow myself to sleep before 1 or 2 AM because otherwise I don't sleep till morning. The fact that I slept almost 4 hours means my brain isnt tired anymore. It wants to paaaaaaaartay the rest of the night. 

What's keeping me up, well.. Next Monday, my youngest daughter is having knee surgery to repair a broken ACL. That's some important ligament in the knee.  While they are fixing the ACL, they will also look to see if they can do something for her meniscus. She was supposed to have the surgery a month ago but it was delayed.  

Next Monday night I drop off my friend at the Heart Institute in Montreal. She's having an ablation done Tuesday, in hopes that it resolves the problem where her hearts beats incredibly fast. This is a problem she's was born with, and hopefully this time they will be able to fix her heart so it no longer does this. It's not healthy for your heart to be at 115 bps when at complete rest and go up to 150 bps when getting up just to use the facilities.  Which is where her heart was at for 5 days 2 weeks ago, before it was reset.  Also not something one wants to have done to their person too often. Have heart stopped and have it paddled back to function.

I'm crossing my fingers and toes, and praying that everything will go the best for both.  Thankfully, my 5 releases that were supposed to happen next week have been pushed off a week, so I can at least manage my stress a little better.

My friend is recoving well from his surgery

About a week ago I blogged that I was keeping a friend in my prayers that day.  I talked to his wife the night of the surgery, and she said it had gone really well. That they were able to take out the gall bladder stone through his belly button, avoiding more invasive surgery. 

I talked to my friend last night and he was telling me that he feels like he never had surgery and he feels so much better. That the pain he was worried about on the other side, might amount to nothing and they will wait and see. And of course the best news is that it was just a gall bladder stone, no cancer or anything else.

Prayers for a friend in Surgery

A friend of mine, that I've known since childhood, is undergoing surgery to remove a large stone from his gall bladder.  He was really worried about the surgery, when I talked to him earlier in the week. I know this surgery has been in the works for the past 5 months, it took them that long to schedule.  He's also worried that he has pain on the other side and wonders if it's related to the current problem, that is trying to avoid pain in his gall bladder, he is now causing himself pain on the other side.

He'll be in my thoughts this morning so that the surgery goes as best as possible and he recovers well from it.