Cleared for duty

Last Wednesday, Sept. 9, I had my PET/CT scan and have been awaiting the results.  Well, today I was finally informed that everything looked great and now as of next week I can go back to work.  I have to say I am a bit apprehensive since it has been so long but it will be good to have a paycheck no matter how small it may be.  I am not going be working more that 24 hr. per week for sure at first anyway.  And of course I have other obligations filling my schedule already so we'll see how it goes.  I got sore just trying to do a little yard work yesterday.  I hope I can at least handle an 8 hr. shift.

Post-op Check-up

On Friday, Sept. 4, I had my 2 week check-up.  As I said before I was concerned about getting the drain out but the doctor was more concerned about infection than he was about drainage so the drain came out and I am already feeling the area filling up with fluid.  Dr. Clohisy didn't seem concerned about the fluid accumulating and made it sound like I will just live with it.  Hopefully over time it will reabsorb somewhat but when I asked him about it he just made it sound like it would just stay there.  So I guess we'll wait and see.  But otherwise, the incision looks good but he wants the sutures to stay in for another 2 weeks to make sure the skin heals since he used the same incision for the second surgery.  There were no more cancer cells found in the surrounding bone so it looks like I'm cancer free for now!  One unfortunate thing was that they have what they call a "staging schedule" and they have you scheduled for a PET scan every 4 months.  Well, since I had my first PET scan on May 5 my next one should be Sept. 5.  Well, if anyone would have realized this we could have very conveniently "killed 2 birds with one stone" and had both on Friday but since he didn't realize it I now have to go back to Minneapolis this Wednesday again.  It sounds like I may be able to have the next ones in Fargo.  I sure hope so, that driving gets old after awhile (and expensive).  As far as going back to work, he said to wait at least until the sutures come out and then it's up to me how I am feeling.  So I'll just play it by ear and maybe try and work some shorter shifts at first and see how it goes, if they let me.  So hopefully this will be the end of my cancer journey.  I know there will be scans periodically for a few years but I won't be spending my time worrying about what the results might be.  I'll just deal with it again if it ever decides to rear its ugly head.

Will the drain come out?

I was feeling so good last week I think I might have overdone it because this week I have been having more pain in my back than before.  And my drain started draining more fluid.  So I am thinking, is it draining more because I am not letting the tissue heal, or is this normal?  Am I having more pain because I have been too active?  It's hard not to want to do your normal routine when you feel pretty good.  There were 4 nights where I had very poor sleep.  I would get to sleep but then wake up at 2 a,m, and not be able to get back to sleep and nothing really was on my mind.  So on Monday I resorted to oxycodone to sleep but it does such weird things to me I'm not sure I really sleep that well so I've just decided to go with Tylenol and it's been pretty helpful.  I have started sleeping much better again but still seem to need naps in the afternoon which I didn't do last week.  I almost feel like I'm going backwards but I try to give my body whatever it feels it needs.  They say your body heals while you sleep so maybe my body is just really working on healing this week.
I go to Minneapolis tomorrow for my post-op check up and really would like to get the drain out but since it's been draining about 100 ml per day I would like to leave it in until it quits draining anything. I can't believe I'm saying that because I really don't like the drain but I know last time after they took it out I could tell that the cavity was filling up with fluid and it got really puffy looking but then I had surgery and they drained it all out.  But now I won't be having surgery again so I would hate for it to fill up again and just have to wait for all that fluid to reabsorb in my body.  We'll see what Dr. Clohisy thinks tomorrow.