Update from Yesterday

Well, my CT/PET scan is done. I don't have the results back yet, but should hopefully hear some time today. I also had a really yucky, but very necessary, barium enema test yesterday (I'll let you Google that one yourself if you really want the details of what a barium enema test entails!) which showed that everything has healed the way that it was suppose to. The only "wrinkle" was that the barium enema test was excrutiatingly painful. So for now, I am still scheduled to be at the hospital at 6am tomorrow morning for surgery at 7:30am, but my doctor said that before he begins the main surgery he is going to do a bit of exploring to see if he can figure out why I was in so much pain. Hopefully it will be crystal clear to him and he can make any necessary adjustments while I am pleasantly knocked out since I dread the thought of him reconnecting the portion of my colon that has been dormant for the past 7 months if it means having that much pain every time something needs to pass through. Anyway, this is why I am so happy to have an incredibly skilled surgeon -- I am basically turning my body over to him (yet again) tomorrow and have to trust that he can make everything okay again. I remember my friend, Michael, telling me very early on that the skill of the surgeon can make or break whether I survive this cancer or not. That's a hell of a lot of trust to place in someone! As Pete humorous stated before my last surgery, I hope that Dr Garcia-Aguilar has exactly the right amount of sleep and caffeine that he needs tomorrow morning.

As I was sitting in the various waiting rooms yesterday, the weight of everything I have gone through this past year and everything that I still have to go through definitely came crashing back. It's amazing how quickly and easily I was able to tuck all of the memories and stress of the past year into the recesses of my mind over the holidays. This is not to say that I forgot everything all-together (any good psychologist would tell you that this is not possible anyway), but I definitely found myself relaxing more and thinking excitedly about future plans. I think that it's the mind's natural way of coping -- thinking non-stop about treatment and wacky symptoms and the fear of death and all the other stuff that goes along with a cancer diagnosis is really, really hard and incredibly exhausting. And so it was wonderful for me to have this two month break to regroup and enjoy life for awhile.

By the end of the day yesterday, however, I was completely and utterly spent and on the verge of tears. I contemplated canceling my surgery a number of times and I think that Pete and my mom and dad must have given me about 10 pep talks over the course of the day to keep my spirits up. I feel better today (it's amazing what a good night sleep can do!) and decided that today is just going to be my day of relaxation and meditation. So I am off to find a yoga class and then hopefully book myself for a massage. My children are in complete heaven right now -- Betsy and John arrived yesterday and so they now have four doting grandparents to play with rather than the usual two -- and so I have nothing to do today other than prepare myself mentally for the climb ahead.