This is a follow on from https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,211095.0.html
I'm all better now!
I've just realised that I am now approaching my 6 month post surgery scans. I found out because I got a heap of snail mails telling me to go for scans and blood tests. I called into hospital (where I worked) for a blood draw today and the nurse, who I know, greeted me with a laconic - I thought you were dead. After she struggled to put down her cup of coffee, she asked for my ID, she wanted my phone number as confirmation, I gave her 666 666 666 and told her it was my new office phone. She didn't blink. As I left she gave me a hug and a kiss; friends are like that.
I realised that I was returning to normal life by emails asking if they could help me during my recovery by assisting with my banking. Seemingly there are some wonderful cancer support sites in Nigeria and they are run as non-profit by some Prince or other. Lovely man. I sent him a picture of my tumour and asked him to marry me, I haven't heard back.
Recovery has been interesting and not the least has been the recovery of my taste buds, this coincided and may have been aided by my ability to produce saliva. I could swallow and I could taste. It was so exquisitely lovely to taste a mandarin that I thought my mouth was on fire. Such simple pleasures that we forget until we lose them.
Did someone say mucus?
I breathe through my neck. My mouth and nose have no connection at all to my lungs. I produce mucus like the Queen in Alien and if I cough or 'sneeze' there is only one exit - through the hole (stoma) in my neck
The urge to cough can occur urgently if the lungs are irritated and sadly I have little warning or control. So day to day contact can be interesting. I did have an interesting foray in the supermarket (store?), I had an uncontrollable coughing fit in the aisle where they were selling breakfast cereal. Do you recall people getting slimed in Ghost Buster's?
As my wonderful and incredibly supportive staff know, my recovery has been slow (they have had to put up with my whinging and excuses.) One aspect has been the gradual lifting of the chemo fog. You do not realise how much chemo affects you and the slow recovery from it. Over the last few weeks it has been as if a curtain has been lifted in my brain and I can think and concentrate again and that is lovely.
I am not the same person, I hope that I have grown for the better. I appreciate life. I appreciate people. I know fear but I am no longer afraid. I think that I am finally ready to rejoin the world.
Life is wonderful.
Live it and never give in.
Love
Cindy
Wow Cindy! You've given me some perspective on my own troubles. Thanks for the inspiration. Best to you and your recovery. Life is short.
Cindy,
You are pretty inspirational, pretty damn tough, but you really need to put some kind of trigger alert on that sense of humor. It is obvious you have been hanging out (Laurie) with a bad (Laurie) crowd (of one, Laurie.) Glad you are emerging from the fog and you are doing better.
Moni
One tough Cookie, glad your on the right road now Cindy.
Cindy,
So very happy you are back.
Hugs
Jen
You're a tough broad, that's for sure!
Side hugs, Devlyn :laugh:
Quote from: Cindy on July 27, 2017, 06:33:40 AM
I'm all better now!
One aspect has been the gradual lifting of the chemo fog. You do not realise how much chemo affects you and the slow recovery from it. Over the last few weeks it has been as if a curtain has been lifted in my brain and I can think and concentrate again and that is lovely.
This sounds a lot like the side effects of HRT.
Quote from: Cindy on July 27, 2017, 06:33:40 AM
I am not the same person, I hope that I have grown for the better. I appreciate life. I appreciate people. I know fear but I am no longer afraid. I think that I am finally ready to rejoin the world.
Life is wonderful.
Live it and never give in.
Love
Cindy
I can see and understand how you can feel this way. In many ways one who goes through the ravages that is cancer and emerges on the other side feels a metamorphosis within themselves. Only someone that has been there and done that can truly understand. You either fight when all your heart or you die.
Welcome to the victor's podium Cindy. Welcome back to life anew.
Hugs,
Laurie
Cindy,
Well done on your 6-month report! Your travails sound a lot like my friend Ellen's. I expect your 10-year report will be similarly filled with humor and wisdom.
Randy
Sent from my Victor 9000 using Tapatalk
Cindy!!! ... To go through all that and come out the other side with your appreciative, loving and courageous outlook is great testament to who you are!!! You have my utmost respect and hopes for all the joyful and fulfilling days yet to come dear sister!!!!
Hugs!!!
Ashley 😀❤️🌻
My six-month post surgery scans started this week so off I go to the CT place. Way to go, Lyn who was the tech who did my first scan just over a year ago was my tech. She was happy I was alive, which is an odd statement as I don't think I would care if I wasn't. Funny how I keep meeting people who remember me. I must be an awful patient.
I think they are OK and I get the feedback next week.
Oh, one day remind me to tell you about the 2 inch ant, the ceiling, gravity and the patient lying on the CT bed trying to remain still.
I'm organising our 35th Wedding Anniversary for Sunday and as Rebecca is getting mentally stronger as I get physically weaker we have bought a state of the art wheel chair. I thought my MX-5 was cool but this is cooler. The final fitting was today and she drove it to the rest room for lunch to the applauds of the carers. To see her independence after so long made my heart sing.
Now I have to practice getting it in and out of the van that we have. It is modified for a chair but this one I will have to reverse out down the ramp. Reversing a motorised chair isn't easy, it has an independent control for me to reverse it but I need practice.
The salesperson was really nice and helpful and he almost but not quite said that I was doing really well for a woman, it was on his lips and I think that he just realised what would happen if he said it and decided to have a coughing fit. I think it was my sweet smile with my fangs showing and saliva dripping from my stoma that changed his mind.
There has been one mess up, I ordered a cake and collected it today. It was supposed to be a 15cm sq cake and they have made it 20cm sq. So we have called the cake 'Marie' after Marie Antoinette, if there is not enough food at the party they can eat cake. The bakery has been lovely, they have given up on my trouble with speaking (I can talk OK but not with my hands full) and just ask me "meat pie and a long black?" any time I walk in. I just smile and nod so I've eaten more pies and drank more coffee than I ever expected in that place. I really must learn the correct sign language for 2 sugars.
The party should be fun. We married as man and wife and are now wife and wife. We were both fit, healthy, optimistic and high achievers. We are now one paralysed, one cancer thingied, high achievers and optimistic.
And in Love.
Hi Cindy,
The status sounds great so far.... I know there will be more in a week os so. I do expect to hear about the results.
Were you test driving the new chair when the sales man almost slipped up? He probable was referring to driving skills and I must agree women drive differently. By now you should have mellowed with maturity and fine taste. Didn't you mention your home was made using recycled charred barrels from Kentucky?
Let them eat cake indeed, but aren't those dimensions kind of small for feeding the masses? I mean really isn'r a 9" X 9" cake a single serving or at best enough for 4? I do hope the celebration is monumental for you two. ((HUGS) Congratulations and wishing for many more.
Black coffee is better for you than with cream and sugar. You'll get used to the taste of real coffee.
Wishing you and your wife all the best.
Hugs,
Laurie
Today was my first report on my 6 month post op CT scans. I will be having these every 6 months for the next 5 years and what we are looking for is metastasises, especially in the lung or liver.
I have three sets of specialists, radio-oncologist, chemo-oncologist and surgeons. Today was my radio-oncologist, he was the one who had slight problems with meeting a TG woman but he has warmed to me and is a great guy, very straight laced and serious. On reflection he probably sees more of his patients die than most, so his demeanour may well be needed to survive. He also tries to hide the computer screen from me so that I cannot read the reports. I move my chair so that I look over his shoulder. It irritates the doobie out of him. I love it.
My lungs and liver are both clean and healthy. I was amazed at the liver result after my pre-transition alcohol consumption. I think that I may have escaped a bullet there.
I also caught up with the nurse who looked after me during my radiotherapy, she had been transferred to another unit and I really missed her, she was lovely to me and helped a lot on some dark days. She saw me and then greeted me in the waiting room with "Cindy, you are alive!" No doubt this helped all the old codgers waiting for their zapping to feel very confident for their future :laugh:
It was fun going back into work; I work in the same hospital that I was treated at but I am on long term sick leave. I had a meeting with students, which I love. I found out that I've had two papers accepted for publication and that another author had done the corrections - lovely!!
I've also been invited to be a consultant for the gender advisory LGBTI committee for a high profile research institute in Adelaide. I was quite touched by that. It is, in my opinion, acceptance of being transgender and acceptance of transgender people by my academic peers.
On that vein, during my hospital sojourn I met three other TG people in walking down public corridors. I knew them from previous times. We stopped and had a hello. No one noticed. No one pointed fingers. I can reasonably suggest that passer-byes thought 'Oh friends catching up' if they thought anything at all.
We are more common than people think and more public than people know and please stop worrying about passing. No one notices.
I am ever so happy to read about the positive recovery prospects. You have and always will be a surviver. Keep up that positive thinking, the benifits of positive thoughts should never be underestimated.
Nice to hear all went well...you are not going to have to worry any time soon "What am I going to do next"...