Soup and No Sharks

So have I told you all about Louis Zamperini yet? 

Andy got me a book on my Kindle for Christmas.  It's the latest book by Laura Hillenbrand and it's about this guy who was an Olympian and then he was a bombardier in WWII.   It's an incredible, incredible story and it's basically like the worst case scenario of everything that could go wrong going wrong and someone still living to tell about it that I've ever heard.  Louie gets to the end of all of this awfulness and he comes home and is really mad at God.  Which, quite frankly, I get.  But then he has this experience where his perspective shifts and he stops seeing all the wrong and awful things that happened to him and he finds himself just amazed at the miracle that he lived through it all and he lives out the rest of his life in joyful gratefulness to God.  In Louie's story there are sharks.  Real ones and lots of 'em.  And those sharks have kind of stayed with me.  I've been trying to see the 'gratefuls' and the spots of the goodness of God in this whole journey and trying to remember Louie's attitude.  Thanks to Louie's story I have adopted the mantra, "At least there weren't any sharks."

So what can I tell you about the last week?  Basically, I can say at least there weren't any sharks.  Though I gotta tell you when Dad woke me up on Friday with news that our island was under a Tsunami Warning, I wasn't sure that one might not wash up right into my backyard.  None did. 

There was however a Quasimodo like hump that showed up not on my back, but on my neck.  For those of you who saw the picture on Facebook let me tell you that the next morning that lump had more than doubled and by the time the story was over it was even bigger than that.  Seriously....  I kept joking about looking like "Elephant Woman," but the really not funny thing was it looked really, really, I'm not kidding when I say "freakishly" bad by the time this was all said and done.

So about Tuesday of last week I started having some achy and unexpected pain at my incision site.  That evening I noticed a hard lump--it almost felt like my tumor was back.  When I woke up Wednesday and the lump was bigger I made sure to go see my doctor.  He prescribed some anti-biotics to be on the safe side and recommended I come in for a follow up in 48 hours.  When I woke up the next day, the lump was even bigger so I called my doctor to see what I should do and he said to come in right away. 

I went in and heard words like, "possible abscess, possible pseudo-aneurysm (WHAT?!  Thank God it wasn't that!), and possible hematoma."  I also had an ultrasound and got to chat with my old buddy, Jim again.  Scroll down to the beginning posts to see who Jim is.  He is a very nice chap and actually did get filled in on how things 'turned out' with the freaky Carotid Paraganglioma diagnosis he'd helped to make.  My docs conferred with NIH docs and the verdict was "probably a seroma which isn't life-threatening but should probably be checked out by someone else" was made.

At the end of the day we kind of got rolled over by a freight train with travel plans to go to the NIH the NEXT DAY.  That was hugely overwhelming for several reasons and so finally Andy and Karen my coordinator at NIH--who y'all is one phenomenal lady--helped make a more sane plan to go to the University of Washington the next day instead and we backed up the travel plans and I slept better that night.  Good thing too, because I didn't get a lot of sleep the next few nights.

So Friday dawned and we called my doc to see what the best way to get seen at UW was.  And he said *sigh* "Go to the ER." 

And so we went.

And they were very nice there.  And they gave me a CT scan and took some blood and we waited.  We got there about noon.

While we waited the lump grew.  While we waited the pain got worse.  By 7 that evening as we were still waiting for the ENT docs to decide what to do to me I was crying anytime a medical professional talked to me because the pain was so bad and they were saying words like 'surgery.' 

So we waited  longer and finally the doctors came in with a plan.  I think that was around 9 o'clock and somewhere after the time that Andy snuck out and told the nurses, "Look this woman delivered two children without pain medication and she says her pain is at 6.  Can we help her here?"  Back to the plan.  The plan was NOT to put me under general anesthetic (yay!)  but to do a bedside procedure to drain the abscess, put in a drain, and get some kick-butt antibiotics.  They explained this procedure which involved making an incision at the original incision site and ironically as they explained, the incision site opened up  by itself and began to drain on it's own.  I guess in the end that clinched the decision of how to proceed.

Andy tells me that what happened next was pretty gross.  I don't know about that but I can tell you that it HURT.  They said it would be easier than the Fine Needle Aspiration I had while at NIH.  Let me tell you I was begging for that procedure instead by the time we were done.  But we got through it.    And I got some Advil for the pain and a couple hours later I felt better than I had in four days.  The lump by the way, was not entirely abscess.  A lot of it was lymphatic fluid, I believe, that kind of was my body's way of saying, "Something isn't right, Rally the troops!"  The abscess was, however, big enough.  Bigger than I expected even with the Quasimodo lump.

I was admitted, which I wasn't anticipating or wanting, but which I know was best.  I got doses of Vancomyacin and Clindamyacin via IV Friday night through Sunday noon.  I remembered how much I love UW and especially the AMAZING, PHENOMENAL, WORLD CLASS NURSING STAFF that they have.  And I had their Tomato Bisque soup (which is also world class) for every meal that it was appropriate.  UW's Tomato Bisque soup is some darned good medicine y'all. 

We had some amazing friends back home who came to our rescue and took Carolyn and Abbie.  Andy and Lainey stayed with me most of the time.  Finally this afternoon we came home.

I'm up now trying to decide whether or not I'm having an allergic reaction to the antibiotics they sent me home with.  Right now I'm landing on the side of probably not, I just had anxiety itching, but I'm sure one way or another I'll know by tomorrow.

So the best things I can tell you about the last few days is this:  1)  I have amazing friends and family.  2)  I am so blessed by the huge army of people who have prayed for me.  And finally 3)  At least there weren't any sharks and the soup was awfully good.

Let's see what this week has in store, shall we?

P.S.  Even with the harrowing nature of the last few days, I feel like a colossal whiner when I look at the devastation in Japan.  Absolutely heart-breaking.