Opinionated Bean

I took a shower today. I know, not the greatest news in the world, but it’s an accomplishment for me. See, since my surgery of November 20, 2007 I haven’t had a shower or bath. I’ve had sponge baths - so not to worry, I’m not some stinky vile mess. I haven’t showered because of my dressing with the open wound.

My nurse Kim and I discussed yesterday how to go about achieving this long desired goal - taking a shower. I am allowed to shower 30 minutes before the nurse comes in for the dressing change. The dressing will be wet, but there will be sufficient time to change the dressing.

Those of you who shower on a regular basis and do not appreciate the delights of water droplets pelting your moist flesh - I am disappointed that you don’t revel in the delights of the water cascade. Sure you enjoy the invigorating feel of the showerhead pelting you with great force, so you get some sort of pseudo-massage. But there is nothing like feeling clean. Appreciate your showerheads.

I had a lovely day today just going from patio to patio, with tarotcub and diresquirrel. By mid-afternoon I had to call my nurse as my dressing was getting itchy and a little uncomfortable. She came over to my apartment at 5pm to do my dressing. She took some strip gauze and packed my abdominal wound (it hasn’t completely healed, btw) and realised she didn’t pack enough in, so she added more. But, she didn’t leave any dangling out so that it could be easily removed.

She tried to remove the gauze with foreceps, two types of tweezers and a pair of surgical scissors. The gauze is embedded in me, and won’t come out.

I called the Urology Resident on Call at Sunnybrook and they recommended that I get to the Urology Clinic as soon as possible tomorrow after work (my first day of work…yipeee). A Resident will be waiting for me to deal with the gauze.

Now, my nurse in a way is happy that this has happened. My previous nurse, Rhonda, had asked me to speak to my urologist about opening up the hole so that instead of packing the wound horizontally it can be packed vertically. This would require cutting into the top layers of the abdomen. Theoretically by packing the wound horizontally the healing process would speed up and the hole would actually close more quickly.

I am not really relishing the idea of enlarging the wound.

As is standard across the judeo-christian world I had Easter Lunch with the parental units yesterday. My mother, thankfully, did not cook too much food. There was actually a reasonable amount of food on the table. At first I thought this was because she’s finally taken note of all of our complaints that she cooks too much and tries to over-stuff us… and trust me when I say I do not require more stuffing, I am well padded already.

The reason for the reasonable amount of food is my father. He had one of his testes taken out in October’07 and the doctors ran tests on the removed teste and put him through a bunch of CT Scans and MRIs and found nothing. The fear was that he may have testicular cancer. They couldn’t find anything, not even lymphoma, but to be safe they decided to put him through chemo.

Once every two weeks he goes in for a chemo session. At home he has to self-inject another type of med for 7 days, then rest for 7 days, and then repeat the process. Usually, according to my brother, by the 5th day of injections he is is barely moving as he feels sick and weak. The paternal unit has lost lots of weight and is shuffling about and even falling a few times a day.

My brother asked me quietly if I thought our father is close to meeting his maker. I tried to reassure him that a positive attitude goes a long way towards improvement in health. But I’m not so sure. He’s 76 and feeling his mortality. His brother, my uncle, died at age 76 (but he did have a few strokes, a heart attack or two and diabetes) and my paternal grandfather at age 70. With the death of my uncle my father started to question his own mortality - his contemporaries are dying off and he feels quite lonely. Coupled with a wife who is driving him nuts (and who he has said in the past few years he would have divorced years ago if there hadn’t been any kids), he’s not doing well mentally.

For those who were reading my LiveJournal you’ll have a bit of a background on the state of my health.

I’m doing well, down to 3 visits a week from the homecare nurse and just waddling along. Still not working as my surgeon suggested I needed another month for recovery, though I could start looking for something in 2 weeks if my nurse agrees. I’ve already discussed the surgical dressing schedule, in case I can work but still need the dressing done. Rhonda is okay with accomodating a work schedule, but only if I heal up a bit more. So I figure 2 more weeks.

Oh, I love my stoma. It is absolutely the most beautiful thing in the world to me.