Daisy on top of couch back

leg elevated, watching GMA (gasp!).  The house is still quiet but I am awake.

Yesterday was a LONG day. We left the house about 8:30am and got home around 8 (I think).

We started with a blood draw at our doctor’s office (yearly physical stuff), and then headed to U of M Nuclear Medicine where they injected a lovely (and oh em gee, freaking painful – like a 100 stinging bees + the fire of a thousand suns) blue dye around my original mole site so that it could travel to the sentinel lymph node(s) that needed to be removed and checked for cancer cells. I had to lay in the this lovely machine

imaging machine

other end of imaging machine

which was actually really cool and probably cost forty eight gazillion dollars.  Each scan took 5 minutes and luckily I only had to have 4 taken.  Then we were printed out copies to take over to surgery.  The appointment was supposed to last 2-3 hours.  We were done in an hour. My surgery? Scheduled for 3:15 (had to be there by 1:45.  So, we had some time to waste.

Mike wanted to eat after fasting all night and morning and I didn’t blame him (totally jealous, but didn’t blame him!).  He pondered and thought and thought some more and then ended up exactly where I knew he would: Zingerman’s (jackass). I started to stay in the car, but that was a bit boring, so I went inside to join him. He had this to eat:

mike's lunch

I inhaled as much of the fabulous scents that I could without eating.  Pretty sure that ranks pretty high on the list of things that suck: going to Zingerman’s and NOT eating. 

We still had hours to waste, so we went to the bookstore.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I had nearly unlimited time without the boys to wander a bookstore.  I was a little confused at where to start without having to head to the children’s book section!!  Plus, I use my Kindle all the time now, so buying actual books seemed a little strange! Of course, there is something to be said for holding a book in my hands; plus they aren’t all available on Kindle. So I picked out some books while Mike borrowed WiFi from the store and did some homework.

We still ended up arriving at the surgery center early.  I was starving and BORED. Mike played on his computer, I played games on my iphone and we chatted.

Mike waiting

And when they still hadn’t called me back by 3:00, I went up to the desk to make sure they hadn’t forgotten about me.  They came out about 10 minutes later, explaining that the doctor was behind.  I was hooked up to my IV, monitors and had electrodes stuck to me. I met the nurses, the anesthesiologists, and the resident assisting. Finally, well over an hour later, they wheeled me into the operating room.  The last thing I remember was them putting the mask over my face – I didn’t even need to count backward! heh.

About 2 hours later, they finished removing surrounding skin and cells and ended up taking 2 nodes out instead of just one, since the dye lit that one up as well.  They’ll have the results in about 5-7 days; I’ll have my stitches out in 10-14.  I can’t drive for a week and I have to use crutches to get around since they don’t want any pressure on my leg for the first few days.

I’ve plopped myself on the couch and Mike has been amazing about getting me everything I need as soon as I ask for it. He’s my hero, yo.

My pain isn’t too bad, but I am totally afraid that once all the good hospital drugs are out of my system that I will be hurting.  I remember feeling pretty damn good the first day after each of my c-sections, over doing it and then hurting like hell.  This time I’m not only NOT overdoing it, I’m not doing anything!!

Thanks for all of your comments, tweets, good thoughts and prayers – I really appreciate it!  If you’ll just keep fingers crossed that the nodes check out all clean, I would appreciate that, too!