Cancer took my lady junk

I was suddenly awakened by three nurses. They bombarded me with checking all my vitals. I didn't feel very much alive, but I'm sure that's what they were checking. As they were checking my vampire bites AKA incision areas, one of the nurses put an estrogen patch on me. She was explaining that now that I was surgically-induced menopausal, I would start having symptoms right away.

I was laughing inside my head when I said, "oh... right... menopausal at 29..." She thought I was serious and started telling me how this was necessary and yada yada yada, that's when I realized she didn't hear me laugh inside my head. I stopped her and said, "I was joking."

She took a sigh of relief and then changed her tune. She thought I was pretty lucky not having to "deal" with monthly cycles anymore. I agreed, I did feel pretty lucky about that.

However, my feeling of luck dwindled as I realized cancer took my lady junk. I felt empty inside. What made me- me, was now gone.

That's when I decided cancer was a jerk.

As these nurses were checking everything, all I wanted to do was sleep. I was a mom to a newborn and the thought of sleeping through the night had been unheard of since he was born. It was 9:00 pm, the nurses just left my room and I was starting to close my eyes for a nice, long sleep.

Then I couldn't sleep.

...

Post-Surgery

My body is shaking uncontrollably. I'm freezing cold. My throat feels on fire and cannot speak. I can't open my eyes; simply due to not having any strength. I keep shaking in hopes that a nurse will see me and give me a warm blanket. This worked, I did get the warm blanket, but I'm still cold. I keep shivering unable to get warm. I'm wondering why the nurse isn't giving me another blanket, unable to open my eyes, I can't see if anyone is paying attention to me.

Suddenly I hear a voice talking through a phone. At least this is my assumption since I can't hear the person on the other end. "She's been sleeping for over 2 hours now, she needs to go to her room. She's starting to wake up..." and she went on with some other medical gibberish that I now can't remember. All I kept thinking was that I wanted another blanket. I shivered more hoping she would see me. I was so cold.

I could tell she was near me when I finally had the strength to whisper "cold.... blanket." She proceeded by taking my temperature and telling me I was too hot and couldn't receive another blanket since I was running a fever. Dang. I continued to shiver.

I was suddenly being moved. I still couldn't open my eyes. I'm sure my perception was off, but I'm pretty sure I went through an elevator and down a couple hallways to get to my room.

I was so tired all I wanted to do was sleep. Paul was finally able to come and see me and he told me he was waiting in the family lounge for over 7 hours. Still unable to talk or really open my eyes, I kept trying to tell him my head was hurting. I'm sure I managed to get the words out somehow... and he took the pony-tail out that I had in. My hair was engrossed with iodine, it felt dirty, but I didn't care I just wanted to sleep. My head hurt so bad I couldn't get comfortable, I had to try and sleep from one side or another.

I'm not sure how long Paul stayed there, but I remember thinking I wanted him to go eat something and get some rest. After he left, all I could do was sleep.


....

Happy Juice

As I was being serenaded with TobyMac songs from my husband, my doctor walked in. The last time I saw him was at his office, he was wearing a button-down shirt, tie, and white doctor coat. This time he had his scrubs on. I couldn't help but notice how wrinkled they were. He was just coming out of a different surgery and my mind started racing on whether or not he changed scrubs and pulled these wrinkled ones out from the bottom of the stack or if he didn't change at all. I decided I needed to stop thinking about that.

He started explaining parts of the surgey, like how'd I'd be practically upside down during the procedure... ya, thank goodness I was out cold for that. After he was finished he said, just a few more minutes!

That's when the happy juice came. At least that's what I like to call it. The nurse gave me the "happy juice" through my IV and I immediately at a "high". I'm pretty sure I told her all about how I thought this was happy juice. Did she laugh at me? No, she'd probably heard it all before.

I was then rolled out of the surgery prep room to the surgery room. It was cold and gray. I was still pretty happy.. so I didn't really care. The nurses then put a mask over my mouth and I remember answering a question. I was taking small breaths, not sure why, but I felt like that's all I could do.

I remember the nurses talking to each other and looking at me, then one of them said "take a big deap breath in" and I was out cold.


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