RAW EDGES

First, the acknowledgements: K—thanks for the wine. B—thanks for the journal. C—thanks for the New Yorker clip. S&M (ooh!)—thanks for the plant. Harper-Collins—thank you for the Milosz. T—thanks for sharing your boo-boos, making mine feel smaller and easier to heal. A—thanks for calling to check. Sis—thanks for your watchful waiting. Bros—thanks for keeping J sane. Mom—thanks for being there. Dad—thanks for letting me be a surgeon. J—thanks for letting me be a poet, and loving me anyway. G&C—thanks for letting me be the best mother I can be, even when I’m horrible to you.

Everyone, thank you for the flowers and cards, for the posts to my blog, for reading my blogs at all, for your thoughts and prayers, for helping A in the OR, for offering to help in any and all ways. All of you have been instrumental in my continued recovery.

L—the nurse from Dr. Abu-Rustum’s office called last night, bless her heart. She seemed a little more concerned this time about my malaise, although by last night I was, indeed, feeling much better. She asked about my temp. I told her I took it, only because G was trying to fake out of school sick and I had the thermometer out to check his temp, and mine was actually normal – 98.6F on the nose. Additionally, the wound had dried up, no further drainage, and the wound edges, although still red, are just kind of pouting, granulating, perhaps not perfectly apposed, perhaps hypertrophying and forming a keloid, as L suggests. Regardless of this cosmetic issue, the depths of the wound feel fine. A little “Healing ridge” around it, not too tender, except when I sneeze, no further pain with urination, in fact, not much pain at all. OK a little wave of excruciation just before a BM in the morning, which have been showing up just fine each morning since I stopped taking Percocet!

There’s another raw edge, no doubt, that I don’t have access to as yet, and won’t for another month (J’s counting, I think). The top of the vaginal “cuff” that gets sewn or stapled shut as they amputate the uterus, may bleed, from what Dr. Abu-Rustum said. He said it may get worse as I become more active, and may even resemble a period, but then should go away as the weeks go by. So far, a little spotting, but nothing unusual.

But speaking of periods, there’s one more raw edge, all that rough, friable endometriosis that’s splattered throughout my pelvis and on my ovaries. I do believe that this tissue is trying to go through the same cyclical changes in a way that my uterus used to, responding to hormones still being produced by my ovaries. So the promises that after a hysterectomy at least I wouldn’t have to worry about having my period are largely false. Since my ovaries have been preserved, good for another 10-15 years and 100,000 miles of hormones, I’ll most likely still get many of the worst parts of my period – mood swings, PMS, water-retention, bloating, abdominal, pelvic and back pains, everything but the bleeding.

So yes, I’m feeling much better, these last couple of days, but forgive me when I get back to work next week, if I seem a little “edgy.”