Well I made it out alive ya'll! Happy World Pancreatic Cancer Day 2023! Last time I wrote, I was getting ready for surgery and here we are on the flip side, 3 weeks out of probably the roughest surgery I have had on this lovely cancer journey thus far! And probably the worst hospital experience..... Sorry KU.
This time of year is always a little rough on me, as every single one of my diagnoses have occurred in October or November. And each year I am more grateful than the year before, but it still provides a little gut punch as each anniversary date passes, along with the influx of pinktober celebrations in your face 24/7. Sometimes it becomes just a little too overwhelming. As I have always said, I am so grateful for all of the breast cancer awareness, but sure do wish the other cancers would get even 1/4 of the attention that pinktober receives.
Anyways, enough of my mini soapbox speech LOL. And time for an update and a little comic relief for all of you who enjoy a great unintentional drugged out story. At the time it was terrifying, but now I can laugh about it, kind of.
I checked into KU Med on Tuesday the 24th of October, changed into the ugly freakin' gown and then started the pre-op parade of doctors, anesthesiologist, interns, surgeons, etc. Then the one guy comes back in to put the epidural line into my spine. Gaaaahhh, this is just no fun at all. I'm pretty sure my back is still hurting where the line was inserted and stayed for 3 days. But I will not complain too much as this was the lifesaver from what I'm sure would have been massive pain without it those first few days. They took me back for surgery then and that's pretty much all I remember until I woke up in recovery, happily drugged out of my mind LOL. I kind of remember my son telling me they were leaving to head back home, but not really. In fact I don't really remember much about the next two days, thanks to my little friend in my back.
Day 3 arrives and it's time to "ween me off" the epidural concoction. Now let me tell ya'll, I have had enough surgeries and been in the hospital enough times over the last 6 years that I know exactly what I can take and what works on my pain. In my epidural was a pain med call dilauded. This is the pain medicine that helped me through (by process of elimination and trial and error) all of my prior surgeries. When they pulled the epidural line, I was told they would not give me the dilauded via IV and the only drugs available to me was morphine or fentanyl. HUH? I can't have dilauded but I can have fentanyl? No thanks I told them. And I also informed them that morphine makes me break out in massive hives. I freakin' know my body right? Well these little nurses didn't think so and went ahead with the fentanyl. And here we go.... my adventure begins.... I start to hear some of my family's voices in the hall. I begged the nurses to let me see them and I couldn't understand why they would not let them in my room. Just a reminder, I was in Kansas and did not have anyone there with me, but apparently I thought they had come to surprise me.... The nurses kept telling me there was no one there and I didn't believe them. It was making me crazy! Then for fun let's add some dogs and cats that were floating through the walls, tons of them, just coming at me. It was insane. I think after the animal parade, I finally fell asleep for a bit. When I woke up I thought I was in an escape room game and freaked out and jumped out of my bed (which has an alarm) and ran straight for the door. Remember now I had a fresh new 12 inch gash across the whole left side of my abdomen. The nurses were coming at me and I told them they were holding me against my will and I was leaving, as my naked booty flashed in and out of the lovely gown. They tried to get me back to my bed and I refused and instead I dialed 911 and told the cops I was being held against my will in an abandoned building and I hoped they could ping my phone and find me. Guess what happened then..... 6 coppers showed up at the nurses station. I think at that time I kind of snapped out of it for a bit and had a crying mental breakdown. At some point after this I finally must have went back to sleep.... The next day I was informed I wasn't going to be getting any more pain meds at all of any kind because of the little incident.... which, by the way, was still happening, as I was still hearing my family's voices through the wall. So now I'm in a hallucinating state and in massive pain from no pain meds and I finally just told them I wanted to go home and for them to figure out how to get me released. I was released the next day and my sister came to pick me up. On the way home I proceeded to grab the steering wheel several times attempting to get my sister's popcorn (there was no popcorn). I also stomped the floorboard like a crazy person trying to find my package from our shopping trip (no shopping trip). And continually yelled into the back of the Suburban at my sister's boys to quit hiding from me and that I knew they were in the car (they were not). My poor sister.... neither one of us see very well in the dark driving and it was raining like crazy to boot.... I'm not sure how the heck she didn't punch me out LOL! I am also not sure how ANYONE enjoys fentanyl. I am 1,000 percent positive that I will walk out of any institution that ever tries to give that shit to me again! The craziest part was I "knew" what I was doing but I couldn't stop myself. Like an out of body experience. I understand teaching hospitals have to exist for people to learn but at some point they have to also realize that some people know their bodies and know exactly what they can handle, etc. and they need to listen to the patient. So my public service announcement for today is just say NO to fentanyl! LOL
I got home and settled in and started the healing process and awaited the pathology reports and game plans for proceeding. Thank goodness since I have gotten home things have been pretty uneventful. Although the pain is pretty wicked at times. In the past week I have been back to Kansas to see my surgeon, to my oncologist here in Columbia and a telecall with my oncologist in Kansas. Overall they are all happy with the results and recovery from the surgery. As most of you know, they took the tail of my pancreas which had the original evil tumor in it. They also removed my spleen and one adrenal gland, as during surgery it appeared to have been invaded with the tumor as well as the spleen. The pathology shows that they got clear margins on the pancreas and the spleen nor the adrenal gland did not have any cancer present. They also took 25 lymph nodes and unfortunately 8 of them were positive for cancer. Mixed results but definitely not terrible. The one really good news portion of the results is that my tumor marker went down a lot! That definitely gives me a glimmer of hope that this risk that I took may have been worth it!
It looks like my game plan going forward will be to start a new chemo session the first week in December. I see my oncologist again in 2 weeks to get all of the details of the next steps in my fight against this monster!
I want to thank everyone who has brought meals, worked in my yard, called, texted, visited, donated to my Venmo, and most of all for all of the prayers! I know that they are working and I ask that you continue to send them my way as I head into the next chapter of this journey!
