I'm baaaack...

Though I'll warn you, right here and now, my meds are having some serious effects on my small motor skills. Also, my sentence structure capabilities are greatly diminished. (Read: I cannot type, spell, or grammar. Forgive me, for I know not what I do.)

If you were here, maybe you'd be lucky enough to see me fall asleep mid-sentence, or maybe wipe some drool out of the corner of my mouth.

I'm kidding.

Actually, I am not. It's a sad, sad state of being when a 36 yr old cancer patient can't keep her eyes open or her mouth shut, but there it is.

I, for one, am just grateful for pain meds that allow me to stay in a state of semi-consciousness for most of the day. As most of you know, the surgery was last Tuesday (the 22nd - nine months, to the day, from my last surgery). The incision is only 10 inches long this time, from my ribcage just past my bellybutton. It's still a nasty old incision, staples and all, but those'll come out tomorrow and then I'll be back on track for growing a healthy pink scar down my belly. Ooh-la-la.

Surgery went well. When the surgeons went in, they found that the tumor was not, in fact, on my kidney. It was in my retroperitineal tissue (same site as the tumor of 2010), and was free-floating near my kidney. When it was removed, it was about the size of a baseball (and Mich and the Walton girls have been hoping to make a baseball fan out of me - guess again). When the first scan was done at the end of January, it was measuring at just larger than a dime - kind of an oval sized dime, but dime-sized, nonetheless - and when it came out, not 8 weeks later, it was the size of a baseball. No kidding, liposarcomas are fast growing tumors! (I hate them.)

There are things that are better this time around, there are things that are worse. It's nice to have some kind of expectation of how long pain will last, or what I can or cannot do. At the same time, it is hard, because I know exactly what will hurt, how badly, and for how long. I am very aware of what I can and cannot do.

My life. It is a dichotomy. A surgically created dichotomy.

The good news? My right eye only twitches a few times a day now (versus the almost constant full face twitching I had going on while in the hospital), and I can have all the M&M's I want (I was on a very strict "no M&M's' diet while under the care of the nurses at the hospital - they were little to no fun). So, I'm home. I sleep a lot. When I'm not sleeping, I'm either eating M&M's or Wheat Thins, hobbling about my apartment or pushing my old lady walker around the parking lot. Life is good. Without pain meds every four hours, life is very, very painful, but still... life is good.

My post-op follow-up with the surgeon is tomorrow. He'll take out my staples, press on my stomach and side and make me want to cry and then will most likely tell me everything's normal. I don't have answers yet as far as "what's next?". I don't yet know about the possibility of chemo, or other treatment options. I'll have that appointment with that doctor, most likely next week. I'll keep you posted.

For now, I nap a lot. I mean, a lot. And I eat cheese sauce on toast with corn, because my mommy's here and she knows what food always makes a sick kid feel better. So, I'm back. Still too tired to really talk (esp on the phone - I don't have strong enough air control yet, phone convos wipe me out), but I'm back in my own little corner of the world, taking up residence in my maroon recliner, watching the most recent episode of Castle on hulu. Life is good. Even if it's not totally "normal", it's still good.