2nd Surgery Done!

Yay - the 2nd surgery has come and gone. Thank goodness. It was NOT as "pleasant" an experience as the 1st one if you can call it pleasant! I had a bit of a negative reaction to the anesthetic. If I ever have to go for another surgery at Abby Hospital I'm going to ask for the same anesthetist as the 1st surgery back in June! I went in feeling rather wonderfully calm, not the norm for me to say the least. I chalk it up to my prayers and those of my friends and family. Going under was rather strange, as always. I just hate drugs. Coming out of it, I distinctly recall the anesthetist pulling something out of my mouth and saying, "Okay, it's time to wake up now! You're all done!" and then I promptly kept sleeping. Next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery. Then on to the ward again and eventually home. I was very anxious and had a pounding heart rate, normal but pounding. I just detest that feeling of not being in control, not being able to calm oneself down. Every time I closed my eyes to sleep and nearly drifted off some other patient would be talking or a nurse would be doing something and hence I woke up again.

It must have been about 9 pm by the time I felt that the anesthetic was starting to run through my system. I slept rather restlessly Thursday evening, having to pee every hour it seemed and I was in a lot of pain so I took several T-3's over a period of about 12-16 hours. Yesterday I weaned myself onto ibuprofen and today nothing so far. It's much better today. I feel great today, in fact. Had a good sleep despite the warm temps in the house.

So glad that's over. A friend of mine on Facebook posted a link to an article about how bad mammograms are for women and that there are "better" ways of detecting tumors. In fact, if only one would do breast self examinations correctly, one would find all sorts of tumors that mammograms themselves don't even detect. Good grief! Seriously?! Come on! I wrote back saying how thankful I am that I went for my annual mammos because were it not for that I would have never felt the tumor in my breast which turned out to be cancerous. I am so thankful - praise God! I believe that God gives man the ability to understand our bodies, the science of what's going on in our cells. Many of these types of people make a 180 turn when they discover themselves to have a cancerous tumor of some type. How amazingly fast they turn their opinions right around in order to live!

My friend also said the one mammogram she'd had years ago was "invasive". I fail to see how that is invasive - no one's putting a hole into your body to insert something or take something out, as I have had now had done. That's "invasive" and even then, in my case, it was necessary!

The small risk involved in the radiation emitted by mammograms is so minor when compared to the positive outcomes of their accuracy in detecting tumors or cysts that need to be treated. You could carry it so far as to say, fine, I won't have an annual pap smear either! In fact, don't x-ray my teeth which for all we know may be rotting below the gum level but hey - I'd rather live with the pain and hey, you can SEE, can't you, that the tooth is rotting, so simply go ahead and extract the part that's rotten and fix me up. And while you're at it, don't even bother giving me any type of freezing because, heaven forbid, you should put any kind of poison into my "perfect" body!

Argh!

You can see that I get pretty upset when people talk this way about medicine. I am no druggie either. In fact I really detest taking pills of any kind. I have NEVER NOT taken antibiotics when prescribed. They are necessary to fight serious and potentially life-threatening infections. However I do not believe in popping a pill to give myself good health if it is not necessary. We all know the basic things to do to keep our bodies healthy: good diet, exercise, rest, low stress, sunshine and water. Unfortunately we live in a world full of toxins that we have no control over. There is much that we CAN do to avoid them: no smoking, little or no alcohol, don't overdo the sun exposure, eat organic if possible. But really ... no mammograms because it could squish your blood vessels which could burst and cause cancer cells to start growing and spread throughout your body?! Really!!!!

That being said, it's so nice to have a few days to spend at home, enjoying my own house and yard. The sun is shining, how can I complain? Oh, I suppose the heat, yeah, the humidity, that's it!

Anyway, happy times. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts.