Yesterday, I put on a dress and thought, “Hey, I look pretty good.” I looked symmetrical, for one and it’s been awhile since I could say that. I did not connect the dots of facts in my brain that would have told me, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be symmetrical. One of your boobs is supposed to be smaller than the other. Don’t you remember complaining about that in your blog?”

Fortunately, I have a surgeon who noticed today when I was in for my post-op appointment. I was swollen with fluid, a combination of blood and serous fluid. The fluid was under my skin, surrounding the tissue expander that was inserted last week. I learned that this is a concern as is the ischemic tissue (skin that isn’t getting enough blood flow). As you may recall, I had this issue with the mastectomy, but this was much less than before and hey, they kept telling me how good everything looked after the mastectomy. Apparently, this was not supposed to happen again with the last surgery. In fact, Dr. Welk uttered the words I so did not want to hear, “I’ve never seen this before.” My skin is not happy. My doctor is not happy. I am not happy.

This is not a life threatening situation but it does mean there’s a slim chance that I could lose a sizable portion of skin, need surgery to have it removed, and have to start the whole process over again with another tissue expander surgery. Dr. Welk says that it will probably be fine and I am scheduled to see him again on Tuesday of next week. When I talked to my friend, Jennie she offered to come to the appointment with me. I said, “Oh that’s okay, John will want to come.” Then she reminded me that John is going to be in Hungary next week. Good thing her brain is able to connect the dots for me and she is such a good friend to offer to go with me. She has some good experience helping out friends in medical settings, having helped at the birth of at least two babies. So I am relieved to not have to go alone.

To be honest, I was pretty sad and overwhelmed about this earlier today. I know in the larger scheme of things that things look good for me. But it’s been a long haul since May. I also need to lay off the cancer reading for awhile. I know it was part of my plan to do a lot of  cancer reading to get in touch with my grief but I think I’ve had enough for now. It’s like in my practice when moms start feeling really guilty, I tell them, “You have the rest of your life as a parent to feel guilty. Don’t use it up all now. Save some for later.” This usually gets a big laugh of relief. So I’m going to save some grief for later.

Lastly, I am relieved to have figured out a solution to my professional attire challenge for next week. Dr. Welk doesn’t want me to put extra pressure on my tissue so I need to go around bra-less until at least Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, it is not yet sweater season. Fortunately, I have a chemise that can be used as full slip, given to me by my friend, Cheryl that I can wear under my dresses. Phew! Visible googly eyed effect crisis averted!

My hubby’s been getting the short end of the stick lately when it comes to my blog. While it is true that he sometimes lacks consistency in carrying out the hum drum, monotonous, but important daily tasks, he is the king of the big project. For my first birthday we celebrated after we started dating, he made me a full sized quilt. Did he know how to sew? No, but he figured it out. He appliqued the sun on the top and the moon on the bottom. In the middle, he wrote “I love you” in appliqued letters. It was and is pretty awesome. My mom still brings up the fact that he made that quilt from time to time, sometimes as a random celebration of John and other times as a much needed reminder to me that my husband is awesome and loving. See, now I’m starting to regret telling you blog readers out there about this. I will never be able to complain about him again!

John was not perhaps as hands on following my surgeries last week as I would have liked. We were both surprised at how painful they were. I think John expected me to be She-RA again. But I was an anxious, weepy woman for a couple of days. Although John was off work from Wednesday to Friday of last week, he was pretty busy on Thursday and Friday, working on a big project. I’ve already mentioned that he is building a deck. Part of his frenzy in getting it done is that he wants it to be a gift for me, a peaceful respite next year away from cancer. So John is pretty awesome and the deck is going to be cool.

Now for something fun. Here’s a photo from an earlier stage of the deck construction. Your job is to provide a caption for this picture!

What is this man doing?

I’ve got a busy day today. It’s actually what used to be a normally scheduled day but I will bill more hours today than I did for either of the two weeks since I returned to work. This was not the plan but as you may recall, I had major cancellations during those weeks.

I am happy to report that despite my busy day, I started it off with 20 minutes of meditation, a glass of green tea, a 30 minute long walk around the neighborhood, and a fruit/nut bar that I made that contains 2 tablespoons of flax seed meal. I realized that just by scheduling myself so that my first patient is not until 9:30, allows me a lot of time to get self care stuff done without having to get up at the crack of dawn. I am much more of a morning person, too so this plan works better for me than waiting until after dinner time. By then, my natural inclination is to sit on my butt.

I did some testing this morning with a cutie pie of a 6 year-old. I haven’t done any testing for about 7 weeks and it was fun. I’m home now for lunch and perhaps a short nap before heading back to the office at 3pm to see a couple of kids for therapy. Tomorrow I have a lighter day and then I’m off for the rest of the week.

As you know, I am trying to establish new exercise and mindfulness habits. Today, I did the daily mindfulness practices for the week, a body scan (basically paying attention to each part of your body while doing relaxation breathing) and a “mindful meal.” During the meal, I tried to experience all of the flavor, texture, smells, etc of the food as I was eating it instead of just gulping everything down while I am fiddling with my smart phone or with my computer. (I don’t do this at family meals, just lunch.)

When my 9:30 testing case cancelled at the last minute, instead of driving straight home, I thought “I was going to take a walk around my office after I was done with this testing. If I go home now (testing takes a couple of hours and I didn’t have anyone scheduled until the afternoon), I know I’m bound to go inside and start working instead of going for a walk. I’m going on the walk now.” So I walked over to Red Cup Espresso. Gina and Samir made me a delicious latte, which I carried with me while I took a walk for an hour and a half. By the time I got back to my office, I felt great.

I drove home and started some cooking. I am also trying to prepare healthy meals ahead for freezing as part of my new eating habits. When it’s John’s turn to cook, he usually gets take-out. I’m trying to avoid that kind of food. It’s either fattening or unsatisfying or both. He has been working at top speed on building a deck so he is not going to be cooking frequently again any time soon. I also wanted to put away some food for my friend, Brian who had major surgery for sarcoma on the 13th. He will be coming home from the hospital soon.

When the mail arrived I noticed that there was an envelope from our insurance. We get a lot of these as you can imagine. I opened up the envelope and it was the Explanation of Benefits for my $28K hospital bill (please save rants about hospitals overcharging people for other venues) for my mastectomy. They said that they were paying $0 because the hospital had not obtained a pre-authorization. Aaaaaah! I took a deep breath and then went through John’s stack of mail because I know I had seen a pre-authorization for the mastectomy. I got the pre-authorization letter, a pen, and the Explanation of Benefits form. I let my fingers do the walking and called my insurance. The customer service representative was quite nice. (I do a lot of talking with insurance companies for my job. This is not always the case.) I asked her why the claims were denied even though I had a pre-authorization letter. As it turns out, insurance had already been in contact with Swedish Hospital about this. Apparently, they had a question about one of the charges and when that happens, it holds up the entire claim! As she noted that this inquiry had been made a couple of weeks ago, it would have been nice had they written something about this in their notes instead of just writing that the whole thing wasn’t covered. Phew!

Good thing I’m good at breathing!