If you need to have part of your liver removed, you are warned at your pre-op appointment that you’ll be unusually tired. You will probably disregard this warning. You will also be reminded that you can’t lift any weight over 10 pounds, that you can’t drive, that your diet will be soft and bland for a few weeks.
You’ll get bored of the tedium quickly. You’ll want to do more than walk slowly on a treadmill. But when they tell you that you’ll be tired, they – as is the case with every single experience in healthcare – will undersell the impact. In fact, you’ll be so bone-deep tired that you’ll collapse onto your recliner – and by collapse I mean slowly sit because of the nagging ache just below and to the right of your breast bone – and settle into a not-sleeping stupor for 15 minutes after you’ve taken your very short walk.
It’s a weird tiredness because only occasionally does it lead to sleep. Mostly, it just means you don’t have the energy to do the normal stuff humans do. Standing takes longer because of those inconvenient stitches and glue spots all over your abdomen. Once you’re upright, you might really want to savor that time but you’ll need to rest very, very soon, which will annoy you because it means you have to sit in that damned recliner again. Dammit.
The good news is that all of this is excruciatingly normal. If this is your experience, it’s likely that your surgeon is very happy with you. I saw mine yesterday and she’s so happy she only wants to see me one more time, at the very end of my healing process so she can poke once more at what will, by then, be scars instead of glued robot arm holes and a long stitched-up incision.
What’s been the worst part of this experience? Coughing. The first week or so, coughing felt a little like my organs were trying to leave my body through those robot arm holes. Thankfully, everything is still where it is supposed to be (other than that one lobe of my liver, haha) and coughing, sneezing, standing, sitting are mostly easy tasks again.
I’m sitting in that battered recliner now, looking out at the sun reflected off a neighbor’s window pane. It’s like a spotlight on my face and warm in a way that is both physical and emotional. A dear friend to me, Nikki, told me once that she found tremendous joy in looking out her window. She’s been on my mind more than usual. Her advice to me sits like her presence on my shoulder and not just because she lived with more grace than anyone I’ve ever met.
The story is all good news. Although the biopsy came back positive for cancer, the margins (edges) of the removed lobe were clear. I’m technically cancer-free and to ensure that there’s nothing tiny lingering to cause trouble later, I’ll be doing 8 rounds of chemo (pills) starting in the next week and listening fully to Nikki’s advice. (Get up. Go for walks. Find joy in every day.)
If you want to vicariously participate, you should follow the blog. I’ll keep telling my story as it progresses. Next week, I’ll have a CT of my chest, an echocardiogram, and some blood work. Then, I’ll begin taking pills twice a day – lots of pills. Lots and lots of pills.
No worries, my friends. I’ve already told my kids that I’m planning to live so long that I spend all of their inheritance.
Much love.
