Over-sharing...

If you ask any of my friends (my close ones, anyway) they will tell you that I have a tendency to over-share. This is known as TMI (too much information) in my mother's parlance. I don't know why I have this particular foible, but I am not in denial about this. I truly don't have much of a filter. Maybe it comes from a childhood with too many secrets, or an exceptionally gregarious family. Maybe it is simply because I have, according to my dear friend Ryan, a "Billboard Personality"...he describes it like a giant picture of my face and appropriate jazz hands with huge block letters that just say "HI! I'M HANNAH!!!"

All those things are true. But if is this a good or a bad thing, honestly I can't tell. The reason I decided to write this post is because I am having an internal struggle over what and how much to share on this blog about my medical issues. It's a sensitive subject for most people, but I have always been pretty open about my situation. However - it's one thing to be chatting up your girlfriends after church or at a dinner party and reveal some painful details about your personal situation and something all-together different to lay it all out in black & white.

So I'll start slowly and see where we end up.

Most of you know that I had cancer. Some of you might even know what kind I had or (vaguely) what parts of my body were affected. A very few of you have even heard some of the grisly details of precisely how damaged I became through the disease process. Sadly, there are even some of you who have personally witnessed  and helped me care for my wounds. 

But I would venture to say that no one actually understands what cancer has really done to me. In my body, in my mind, my spirit, my emotions...cancer has simply run amok. (Yah, that's really how you spell that. I checked. Weird, huh?) So I guess in my attempt to process what has happened and continues to happen to me I will tend to over-share.

Oh well. If you're easily offended, I guess just don't read the blog.

The impetus for this entry was a reaction to an appointment I had with my Gyn-Onc today. (That's an abbreviation for Gynecologic Oncologist.) His name is Dr. Harrison and while he did not do my actual surgery, he has been in charge of my after-care for the past 5 years. He and his nurse Cathy have been with me through thick and thin and they have helped me to manage my pain and my long-term care with utmost compassion and dedication. In other words...they're awesome!

Well at this appointment, which was supposed to be just my regular 6-month follow-up, I actually broke down and tearfully explained my frustration with the current state of my anatomy. I have had a huge resurgence of pain and swelling in the past few months and I have been fighting daily to manage it. I understand that the lymphedema will be a chronic condition I will have to control for the rest of my life, but the pain and dysfunction was really getting to me.

One of the reasons I elected to have bariatric surgery was in the hope that losing weight would decrease the lymphedema and also help bring the pain under better control. Well, I'm only about 20 pounds from my goal weight and I am not seeing the changes I was hoping for (and frankly, expecting.) The goal was to get enough weight off to safely have reconstructive surgery on the tissues that were damaged by radiation and surgery. But honestly, in my heart of hearts, I hoped that just losing the weight would resolve things enough that I wouldn't need the surgery.

Now I know that is not the case.

So, this is what I am facing.

A Radical Vulvectomy and Abdominoplasty with Gracilis Myocutaneous Flaps.

It looks like this:

Click here if you're interested in the medical details...

I'm not really sure how to feel about that.

If you've never had surgery, especially major elective surgery, you probably are having a hard time relating to this conundrum. Before I had my first surgery I always thought...what's the big deal? Why are they nervous? They knock you out, give you the good drugs...you even get a few days all to yourself to vege out while you recover. No biggie!

WRONG!!!

Surgery is a big deal. It's scary to be unconscious and under the control of total strangers. It's scary to have parts of your body manipulated, removed, discarded, never to be seen again. It's REALLY scary to think that you won't heal properly or in time or that you'll have a complication like some horrible infection or tissue necrosis or something. It is absolutely mortifying to think that you might not make it back home to take care of your baby and your husband.

Most of all, it is terrifying to think that you might go through all that and then have the surgery not work at all. To think that you might still have the pain and dysfunction anyway.

So that's why I felt compelled to write about it.  I'm scared. I have to consider and plan for this reconstruction and my weeks of recovery and I'm kinda pissed that I even need it in the first place.

Come on, God! I thought I was supposed to be healed already! What happened to Your promise? When will my healing really be complete? I don't want to be impatient or even seem ungrateful, but I am seriously OVER this!!! 

I think it's time to bust out my old treatment mantra...Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. (Mark 9:24)

I know that He is with me through all of this. I'm just tired. And scared. And I feel alone dealing with all this. No one my age should have to handle this much crap. It's just not right. 

But as I said before...God is good. All the time. His provision is ALWAYS sufficient. His timing is mysterious and His ways are not our ways. But we got through this before (more than once!) so I know we can do it again.

Grace & Peace,

-Hannah