So now what?

Surgery was Friday. I had been crying Thursday night because I was worked up and scared, so my eyes were quick to tear. The surgeon instantly noticed and I admitted I was scared. "You don't need to be scared," he said in the least reassuring but most confident way. I knew that it was routine to him and needed to be, but it's hard to submit yourself to that kind of stuff. Just to go from person to patient is kind of a journey.

When I woke up (and truly, that's what anesthesia is like - I fell asleep, then I woke up), I could tell I had been crying more. I dread to consider what I must have seemed like to them. I had a big bandage on my neck, which Richard exclaimed was "really small!". I had a nice corner room at the hospital, right over the ambulance bay. One nurse made me walk around the floor once. The other brought me graham crackers and peanut butter to take with my pain killers. I watched a lot of crappy TV, paced around in my room. Ordered some not-bad-for-the-hospital food and ate it. Waited and waited and waited for the surgeon's partner to stop by and discharge me, and then he even offered to keep me another day. I went home.

But since I've been home, I read a whole book (a first for quite a while!), pieced together most of my afghan, laid out some jewelry, deadheaded the garden. I've talked to the office a couple of times, listened to a mix CD that Tom and Becky made for me, and watched some more crappy TV (those darn Housewives!). I'm probably not really ready to go back to work, but I'm looking bored in the eye and saying, NOT ON MY VACATION, buddy.

The scar is, so far, pretty small. Today you can kind of see the yellow bruise around my clavicle. There are 3 little steri strips holding the wound. My hands tingle when they perceive a calcium deficiency, which is frequently. Sometimes I feel like my heart might be racing, but I think that's pain.

It is exciting from the larger perspective to consider that they took out the cancer. It's gone.