Banana Bread

Me pretending like I am baking!

I am baking! Ok, it is totally possible to bake bread, in a bread maker, using mostly only your left hand. I had some bananas that wanted to be made into banana nut bread (they told me). Great… now fruit is talking to me…and you thought cancer was the worst of my problems!

My poor body, you would think it has been through enough already.

They forget to tell you that there is a significant difference between staying two days at the hospital with a “magic button” vs. being sent home 30  minutes after waking up from surgery with a few percocets. Obviously the surgeries were different, but the amount of work the surgeon was in there doing on my right breast was still pretty intense. The opened up the whole thing and pulled everything out, cleaned up excess fluid I had built up, drained the expander, cut the tissue on each side of the 4 inch incision and stitched it back together. Ouch?

This makes it slightly funny that I was thoroughly confused on Wednesday on why I hurt so much (I seriously was asking Mike how I could possibly be in so much pain, I thought they had taken away all of those nerve endings in the last surgery). I was shocked that I couldn’t type, get out of a chair or any of those actions that go with a functional right side of your body. I just thought I would magically feel like a million bucks (maybe they should have given me a few more pain meds.. j/k) I really did get around better after my first surgery, but I am starting to be able to move around more and today is the first time I have really been back on a computer.

On top of surgery I had been in for my AC chemo infusion less than 4 days before. I am not sure if I even had chemo side effects this week with everything else going on. I do wish I was able to walk on the elliptical (sans arms) everyday like I was before (4 days in bed is really going to cut back those nice walking muscles and stamina I had built up). Exercise does genuinely help with being tired from chemo, and it does genuinely help with your emotional well being, so losing exercise has made me more of a ball of emotional WWWWWAHHHHHHH!!!!

Guess what I picked?

My friend Mel and I went to a nice dinner last night (I tried to not look too hard at the dollar signs next to the food for a night), which did get me out of the house and made me feel less like a total recluse. Mike and several of our friends were off celebrating Mike’s brother’s wedding in Wendover (I really wanted him to get out of the house also), and I needed to treat myself to something special because I was a little sad to be missing out on yet another event because of something breast cancer related, whether it be surgery or chemo (plus we will pretend like lobster and steak are really helpful for healing from surgery, REALLY HELPFUL).

With all of the bed rest and time spent “healing” lately I sometimes really wish there was a huge pause button so that I could put the world on pause while I deal with this whole breast cancer thing. Instead it feels like everything and everyone around me is on fast forward while I walk in slow motion. I get frustrated that I am behind at work and behind at life. I want to go do everything everyone else is doing, but I can’t, and it is frustrating. I have to remind myself (ok, it is usually Mike reminding me), that I am not superwoman and I can’t do everything I want to right now. I am supposed to focus on getting better and taking care of myself rather than the world around me. I don’t think I have come to accept that though… maybe by the time I accept it it won’t matter because I will be done with everything and all better (insert evil cackle)! In the meantime, I am making banana bread..

Author: Mandi

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