The day before surgery

I slept through the night with just straight Tylenol (no codeine). I guess I'm on the mend just in time for my next surgery!

Today, we are going up into the hills above the Shenandoah Valley to talk to people at a peach orchard about growing fruit trees on steep slopes. From both soil conservation & tax-financial perspectives, this might be something good to do on our land in TN in the future.

We were going to do this outing yesterday, but emergency dental problems intervened. Bill drove me to the store to shop for dinner-fixin's and I also bought some Jolly Rancher candies to suck on for my sore throat (from the entubation on Tuesday). And, of course, the first thing I did was rock a crown right off a tooth with that sticky candy. So the afternoon was spent looking for a dentist to glue the darn thing back on. Luckily, we found one a few blocks away who could take me right away, and now I don't have to worry about the last questions they ask when wheeling you into surgery: "Contact lenses? Loose dental work?" Oh yes, the fun never stops around here!

There are details to take care of for tomorrow too: I have to call to confirm that the carpet installers will be on the job tomorrow morning. I have to try and track down the sentinel node biopsy results. I have to call the surgical scheduler to find out when to check in for surgery tomorrow. A last shower and hair wash, oh yes!

I worry about Bill now, so much more than I worry about myself. I think that his role of supporter is much harder than my role as patient. He said last night, "You know, I'm only able to do all this just one day at a time." That's what people always say about cancer--you can only get through it by dealing with it one step, one day at a time. The big picture is just too big and too daunting all at once. I am looking at tomorrow as the culmination of almost a 2-month process from awful discovery to problem-solving treatment. I suspect that Bill sees tomorrow as the beginning of a different kind of life for us. Realistically, both are true, and yet both are false. I am at peace, even anxious to get on with tomorrow's surgery--he is still fighting the necessity of it.

All this time, I have been asking for your support for me, because I've been scared and worried and sad. Now I'm confident that I'm in exactly the right place, mentally and physically. Now I ask for support for him. He's the one who is going to need it in the days ahead.