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Oct. 1st, 2015 08:21 pmWe had our biweekly game session last night. Mostly, we all tried to hammer out character ideas. I'm still wishy washy on the subject. I settled on something mainly to settle. The group was shaking out with no scholarly or scientific types, so I'm thinking to head in that direction.
Scott will be going in to work on Saturday from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. and on Sunday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. That means he doesn't get a day to sleep in at all this week. It also means I have to write up a shopping list tomorrow so that he can take it with him and do the shopping on his way home after work.
I woke this morning with a migraine. I took both Amerge and Ativan on top of the painkillers for the pain in my breast. Scott's mother arrived a bit before 10:00. I wasn't expecting her until closer to 10:30. If she'd been five minutes later, I'd have been properly dressed. As it was, when she called me from the driveway, I had to ask her to wait just a few minutes. The big delay was that I had no clean shirts upstairs. All of them were in the basement. I had socks and pants up here, but the shirt seemed fairly important.
We had a lot of fun trying to figure out exactly where we were supposed to go. The map told us where the building should be, but there weren't any signs, and the map was very vague about where we were supposed to park except that it was near the building. We pulled into what we thought must be the right lot, and every single parking place said it required a permit. They hadn't given me any such thing, so I assumed we were in the wrong place and called the office. They told me that we should park, come get a permit, and take it back to the car.
At the front desk, they gave me one of those vibrating notification thingies that restaurants use. Scott's mother and I say for quite a while and waited. Eventually, they took us back and showed us a short movie about radiation therapy. It wasn't really very informative. Well, Scott's mother thought it was, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
They took pictures of my breasts and had me sign something saying that I declined a pregnancy test. (And explaining that there's no chance I could be pregnant because there has been no sex since the negative pregnancy test before the surgery was kind of embarrassing with Scott's mother there.) Nobody was willing to address my questions about pain levels, so I guess I will have to call the surgical nurses again tomorrow. They did tell me to put Neosporin on my biopsy wound twice a day but not on a day when I have radiation unless I wait until after the treatment.
Then they took me back to a procedure room and sent Scott's mother back to the waiting room. The table in the procedure room wasn't flat. The top half angled upward. There was a ridge near the bottom of the angled bit that I had to sit on and then lie back. They put something under my knees with the intention that my back be flat, but that didn't entirely work. They actually had the head and arm rests in about the right place. It didn't take more than a few minutes for the whole thing to get very uncomfortable.
Then someone came in and drew all over my torso with different colored sharpies. I'm sure there was a point to it, but no one actually explained it to me beyond it being necessary. Then they had me get up and put my left breast into a clear plastic cup sort of thing that was open at the top. They fastened a strap around me to hold that in place and got me lying down again. Then they scanned me.
My heart is too close to my chest wall for comfort, so they asked me how long I could hold my breath. They stopped me at 35 seconds because they should, at the outside, need 25 seconds. Unfortunately, the next bit did not work at all well-- They gave me glasses with a graphics display and set me up so that they could track my breathing. The idea was for me to finish exhaling at a specific point on the graphics display, and I flat out couldn't do it. I have no idea why. I started inhaling above the point where they wanted me to finish exhaling, but I always ended up way lower on the exhale than I was supposed to. When I stopped where they wanted me to, I couldn't inhale properly. Eventually, I'd get to where I was almost panic breathing. They gave up on that and assured me that there are other things they can do. I really don't know. I can perfectly well inhale and hold my breath on command, but apparently that won't work.
Then there was some fuss about my chin being too close to my chest. The only way I could get it far enough away to satisfy them was to arch my neck, and I can't hold that without something under my neck. They didn't want to do that. I'm not sure there was an actual solution.
They gave me five pin prick tattoos. Two of those mark exactly how the plastic cup is supposed to sit. I think the other three are meant to line up so that they can be sure I'm in exactly the right place each time.
When I was finally done, they went into a side room and drew the shade so that I could get dressed without them watching. That made no sense to me at all given that they'd been poking and prodding my bare torso for an hour and a half. It just seemed kind of... I don't know... artificial, maybe? Silly? Is it some sort of social code that we're all supposed to pretend that I wasn't naked from the waist up in front of them?
They said it would take seven to ten working days to formulate a plan and get back to me to schedule. Sadly, I think that means starting actual treatment the week of the 19th which means finishing the week of Thanksgiving. I will keep my fingers crossed that we can start sooner, but who knows? Seven working days is a week from next Monday.
After I checked out, Scott's mother and I went to Brighton. We had lunch at a Greek restaurant sort of place (really, a diner). Then we went to a specialty bra shop in Brighton. They measured me and concluded that they could special order me a front closure sports bra that fit but that it would cost at least $75 for a single bra. They could get me one, two cup sizes too small, for $45. For either, I'd have to wait at least a week and come back to pick the stupid thing up. They didn't even have any over the head sports bras in my size.
The person who was helping me suggested that I try wearing a t-shirt under the compression top as she thinks the top is the only way I'm going to be able to get compression. She did think that the bra I was wearing was an excellent fit and really ought to be adequate. She said that the supposed 46DDD that is too tight must not actually be a DDD because I'm a 44 not a 46, so the tightness has to be from the cups not fitting right. Of course, she measured my band size but not my cup size, so who knows? She did manage to pull a rear closure, regular bra off the rack and have it fit me perfectly, though.
Traffic was getting pretty awful by the time we got back to Ann Arbor. I tried to talk Scott's mother into staying for dinner and waiting for the traffic to clear, but she said she was too tired and just wanted to get home. Scott thinks she may have been thinking that she shouldn't leave her husband alone for dinner.
I talked to my sister for a while yesterday. She has talked to our mother when our step-father wasn't around. Mom is by no means convinced that the doctors are as sure as our step-father thinks that the tumor isn't malignant. Apparently, it's still too tiny for them to remove it, and I'm sure that, if it's too tiny to remove, it's too tiny to biopsy. Mom believes that the doctors will want to remove it as soon as it's big enough for them to do it safely.
Scott will be going in to work on Saturday from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. and on Sunday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. That means he doesn't get a day to sleep in at all this week. It also means I have to write up a shopping list tomorrow so that he can take it with him and do the shopping on his way home after work.
I woke this morning with a migraine. I took both Amerge and Ativan on top of the painkillers for the pain in my breast. Scott's mother arrived a bit before 10:00. I wasn't expecting her until closer to 10:30. If she'd been five minutes later, I'd have been properly dressed. As it was, when she called me from the driveway, I had to ask her to wait just a few minutes. The big delay was that I had no clean shirts upstairs. All of them were in the basement. I had socks and pants up here, but the shirt seemed fairly important.
We had a lot of fun trying to figure out exactly where we were supposed to go. The map told us where the building should be, but there weren't any signs, and the map was very vague about where we were supposed to park except that it was near the building. We pulled into what we thought must be the right lot, and every single parking place said it required a permit. They hadn't given me any such thing, so I assumed we were in the wrong place and called the office. They told me that we should park, come get a permit, and take it back to the car.
At the front desk, they gave me one of those vibrating notification thingies that restaurants use. Scott's mother and I say for quite a while and waited. Eventually, they took us back and showed us a short movie about radiation therapy. It wasn't really very informative. Well, Scott's mother thought it was, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
They took pictures of my breasts and had me sign something saying that I declined a pregnancy test. (And explaining that there's no chance I could be pregnant because there has been no sex since the negative pregnancy test before the surgery was kind of embarrassing with Scott's mother there.) Nobody was willing to address my questions about pain levels, so I guess I will have to call the surgical nurses again tomorrow. They did tell me to put Neosporin on my biopsy wound twice a day but not on a day when I have radiation unless I wait until after the treatment.
Then they took me back to a procedure room and sent Scott's mother back to the waiting room. The table in the procedure room wasn't flat. The top half angled upward. There was a ridge near the bottom of the angled bit that I had to sit on and then lie back. They put something under my knees with the intention that my back be flat, but that didn't entirely work. They actually had the head and arm rests in about the right place. It didn't take more than a few minutes for the whole thing to get very uncomfortable.
Then someone came in and drew all over my torso with different colored sharpies. I'm sure there was a point to it, but no one actually explained it to me beyond it being necessary. Then they had me get up and put my left breast into a clear plastic cup sort of thing that was open at the top. They fastened a strap around me to hold that in place and got me lying down again. Then they scanned me.
My heart is too close to my chest wall for comfort, so they asked me how long I could hold my breath. They stopped me at 35 seconds because they should, at the outside, need 25 seconds. Unfortunately, the next bit did not work at all well-- They gave me glasses with a graphics display and set me up so that they could track my breathing. The idea was for me to finish exhaling at a specific point on the graphics display, and I flat out couldn't do it. I have no idea why. I started inhaling above the point where they wanted me to finish exhaling, but I always ended up way lower on the exhale than I was supposed to. When I stopped where they wanted me to, I couldn't inhale properly. Eventually, I'd get to where I was almost panic breathing. They gave up on that and assured me that there are other things they can do. I really don't know. I can perfectly well inhale and hold my breath on command, but apparently that won't work.
Then there was some fuss about my chin being too close to my chest. The only way I could get it far enough away to satisfy them was to arch my neck, and I can't hold that without something under my neck. They didn't want to do that. I'm not sure there was an actual solution.
They gave me five pin prick tattoos. Two of those mark exactly how the plastic cup is supposed to sit. I think the other three are meant to line up so that they can be sure I'm in exactly the right place each time.
When I was finally done, they went into a side room and drew the shade so that I could get dressed without them watching. That made no sense to me at all given that they'd been poking and prodding my bare torso for an hour and a half. It just seemed kind of... I don't know... artificial, maybe? Silly? Is it some sort of social code that we're all supposed to pretend that I wasn't naked from the waist up in front of them?
They said it would take seven to ten working days to formulate a plan and get back to me to schedule. Sadly, I think that means starting actual treatment the week of the 19th which means finishing the week of Thanksgiving. I will keep my fingers crossed that we can start sooner, but who knows? Seven working days is a week from next Monday.
After I checked out, Scott's mother and I went to Brighton. We had lunch at a Greek restaurant sort of place (really, a diner). Then we went to a specialty bra shop in Brighton. They measured me and concluded that they could special order me a front closure sports bra that fit but that it would cost at least $75 for a single bra. They could get me one, two cup sizes too small, for $45. For either, I'd have to wait at least a week and come back to pick the stupid thing up. They didn't even have any over the head sports bras in my size.
The person who was helping me suggested that I try wearing a t-shirt under the compression top as she thinks the top is the only way I'm going to be able to get compression. She did think that the bra I was wearing was an excellent fit and really ought to be adequate. She said that the supposed 46DDD that is too tight must not actually be a DDD because I'm a 44 not a 46, so the tightness has to be from the cups not fitting right. Of course, she measured my band size but not my cup size, so who knows? She did manage to pull a rear closure, regular bra off the rack and have it fit me perfectly, though.
Traffic was getting pretty awful by the time we got back to Ann Arbor. I tried to talk Scott's mother into staying for dinner and waiting for the traffic to clear, but she said she was too tired and just wanted to get home. Scott thinks she may have been thinking that she shouldn't leave her husband alone for dinner.
I talked to my sister for a while yesterday. She has talked to our mother when our step-father wasn't around. Mom is by no means convinced that the doctors are as sure as our step-father thinks that the tumor isn't malignant. Apparently, it's still too tiny for them to remove it, and I'm sure that, if it's too tiny to remove, it's too tiny to biopsy. Mom believes that the doctors will want to remove it as soon as it's big enough for them to do it safely.
