(IM) Patiently waiting for my surgery date

I know that God uses a lot of opportunities to help me learn and grow as a person, even when I'm kicking and screaming.  When I had the consultations on Tuesday, my surgeon told me that I would probably hear back in a few days but no later than a week to schedule the gastric bypass surgery.  Of course I'm antsy, just like every other person that has gone before me.  On Friday, I just couldn't stand waiting one more second.  I doubted they would be ready to schedule by then, but I just had to try.  I'm returning to work on Monday after two months of summer vacation and it would be nice to know something going back.  Unfortunately it's a bit too soon.  I was told that the surgeon is reviewing the internist and psychiatrist reports and then will turn in a slip to the scheduler, who will then be calling me.  They believe it will be by the end of the day on Monday.  If anything, I'm glad the surgeon is being thorough in reviewing the other reports instead of working on automatic and pushing things through.  At least I'll be preoccupied being back at work because, even if I get my date on Monday, I'm still going to have to wait until the actual surgery date.  That means more waiting so at least work will keep my mind busy.

My foot is healing nicely from the biopsies done on Monday.  It has been really hard not pushing myself and just walking through the pain.  Each day has brought more healing and the holes are slowly starting to close up.  I was feeling a little worried because of the cuts since I'm diabetic, but I'm taking good care of it and following doctor's orders.  I still don't know if I'm going to move forward in doing anything more with what happened with the doctor.  On one hand, his explanation seems possible and I did have two biopsy results (from the two cuts).  On the other hand, it just seems fishy.  Up to this point, this doctor has taken very good care of me with the skin cancer and he's done many biopsies on me with no problems.  I suppose the problem with all of this was not telling me what he was doing with the second cut and the poor job on bandaging up the area.  It's getting better, so that coupled with the benign results is the biggest thing right now.  After nine biopsies with the skin cancer and one other type of biopsy done, at least that word doesn't scare me any longer.  I feel like a pro now.

Two for the price of one

I had a biopsy done today and to say it was a negative experience would be an understatement.  I'm going to try to go into as many details as possible so that I can not only share with you what happened but so that I can document what happened.  I don't want to eat over this, hence this is why I'm posting all of this here.

In a previous medical appointment, my primary care physician was doing a foot exam with me and noted that there was a mole near the tip of the big toe on my left foot.  She advised that I follow up with my dermatologist since I have a history of melanoma.  

A friend offered to come with me to the dermatology appointment for moral support.  I thought that would be great since I was feeling a little nervous about this one.  Mind you, I've had quite a few biopsies before from this same doctor.  They are not pleasant, but I knew exactly what to expect.  The doctor would examine the suspicious area and then determine if a biopsy would be advised.  If so, he would call a nurse into the room to assist him.  We asked the doctor if my friend could stay and he stated that he normally had family and friends wait outside the room unless I would like her to stay.  I did tell him that I would prefer she stay, which he seemed to accept.

He had me laying on the table on my right side so that my feet were toward him.  It was incredibly awkward because my head was pointing down into a part of the bed that was lower than the rest.  I took a pillow and folded it in half to give me a little better leverage.  My friend sat on the edge of the bed close to me so that we could chat while the doctor was injecting the Lidocaine and performing the biopsy.  The doctor had plenty of room on his end to perform the proper procedures without any restrictions.  As he injected the numbing agent, I felt pain.  After a little bit, I felt an incredibly extreme amount of pain on my foot as he was cutting into my foot and removing skin.  I mean, it was pain that was beyond what I would have expected.  I anticipated a little pain because the mole was little, but nothing like that.  As my friend was trying to distract me from the pain, I had to stop talking and I inhaled deeply to fight through the discomfort.  She reminded me to breathe because I was trying to keep it all in to avoid feeling the pain.  Then I felt another pain.  It felt like he was digging deeply into me.

The doctor pronounced that he was done and that I handled it well.  They were going to put on a simple band-aid and that's when my friend really chimed in.  From her vantage point, she could see more than I could.  She asked if that one little bandage that was put on would be sufficient.  We were assured it would be.  We were given extra bandages to change the dressing at home and then informed that the visit had ended.  I requested the doctor call me with the results instead of sending them to me through the mail since I have an appointment tomorrow with the surgeon.  He left the room.  I put my flip flop back on, careful to avoid my big toe and then stepped down onto the shoe.  The next thing we knew, there was blood all over it.  I took it off and rinsed it in the sink while my friend went and got  help.  The nurse looked at my foot and there was blood all over my big toe, almost gushing.  She ran to get the doctor to show him what was going on.  

My friend was able to see that the doctor had, in fact, done two incision.  I did make the comment that I had cut the bottom of that toe the other day, but it's clear that he had definitely cut off skin in two separate areas.  The nurse was trying to stop the bleeding and, meanwhile, I didn't know quite what was going on because I couldn't see the bottom of my foot.  My friend took a picture and this is what I finally got to see.

At this stage, the nurse had cleaned up all the blood and we were waiting for more dressing to be put on it.  As you can see from the top of the toe, there is a little skin shaved off where the mole was removed (I'll call that area Section A).  But if you look in more detail at the center of my toe, the doctor had removed a crater of skin and went pretty deeply (I'll call that area Section B).  What my friend and I think happened was that the doctor had started cutting into the skin in Section B and likely realized he was cutting into the wrong area.  Then, we theorize, he went to Section A and performed the biopsy.  My friend even saw him with scissors in his hand at one point, which I don't recall he has ever done before.  We started asking him questions and he basically went into an explanation that sometimes the skin is "nicked" during procedures.  I'm sorry, that's no nick!  He did apologize, but he didn't specify for what.  He also said he was able to get a "broad" sample for further investigation.  I was eventually handed a hand-held mirror so that I could see the bottom of my foot and was utterly shocked at what I saw.  The doctor went into further explanation, utilizing some medical jargon, and then eventually left the room, apologizing as he did so.

We were then left with the nurse who explained to me that she had never worked with this doctor before and was just as upset with what happened as my friend was.  Was I upset?  Frankly, I was a little stunned and wanted to just leave.  The nurse bandaged me up with something stronger and tighter around my toe.  Before ending our time together, she reprinted my visit summary sheet and included information for me to escalate this to the next step if I so choose.  She was incredibly professional.  She was just as dumbfounded as we were as to what the doctor had just done.

As we attempted to leave, the bandage fell off after I walked a few feet.  So we went back to the exam room and a second nurse decided on a different bandaging system.  After three attempts, that one worked the best.  The doctor popped his head in the door and asked if everything was alright for probably the 10th time.  He even had the audacity to attempt to fist-bump me and my friend on one of his visits back in the room.  He probably shook my hand 4 or 5 times and even called me after I got home to see how I was doing and to see if I had any questions.

At that point, not everything had completely registered in my mind.  I had a houseful of guests with my classmates from the pre-op program visiting for a get-together.  They were all so supportive as I recounted my tale, with the help of the friend who sat by my side today.  The biggest concern with this, aside from the fact that he ripped deep skin out of my toe when he shouldn't have, is that I am a diabetic.  One of the things they teach us as diabetics is that the last thing you want is a cut on your foot because some diabetics have a hard time healing.  The lack of ability to heal, provided you are so afflicted, can possibly lead to foot amputation.  Obviously I am concerned because I am an insulin-dependent diabetic.  I don't take cuts on my foot lightly.  And I really don't take cuts on my foot that were done in error lightly at all.  

After all my guests left for the evening and I was attempting to walk on my foot without hobbling, I was met with excruciating pain and the anger finally hit me.  This doctor, whom has performed numerous other biopsies on me before, really fucked up.  I mean, he really, really fucked up.  Excuse my language, but I really can't sugar-coat this.  He made a huge mistake.  An "I'm sorry" is not good enough.  I sat down and wrote him an online message through Kaiser's system, requesting an explanation of why he did what he did.  Regardless of what he says to me, I will be escalating this and filing a formal complaint.  I don't have anything against this doctor, but what he did was absolutely wrong.  I hope everything will be okay in my situation, but what if it is not for the next person that needs a biopsy done from this doctor?  

The good news is that I'm not eating over this.  I'm choosing to take care of myself.  I have consultations with the psychiatrist, internist and surgeon tomorrow.  One of my friends has offered to take me and I graciously accepted her offer.  It will help me with not having to walk as far on my bad foot and, really, the moral support is just what I need.  Ugh, what a freaking day!

Started out with the end of the water challenge, but had cancer on my mind

This post was going to start out with how excited I am to have finished my 100-day water challenge.  Here's the post I put on my Facebook page this morning.

Back in January, I got involved in a "Drink Your Water Challenge" thanks to xxx. It was 5 days of drinking half your body weight in ounces of water every day. It was so good for me that I turned it into a 100-day water challenge, which I have now completed. Over these last several months, I have turned a hatred of drinking water into a habit. I'm not perfect every day, but it has been such a major turnaround. In this time, I have hardly had any diet soda, started exercising every day and dropped nearly 30 pounds as of today. Does it all have to do with the water challenge? All I know for sure is that it got me on my way. If you took up the challenge, too, I'd love to hear how you're doing. Now that I'm done, I'll still continue drinking my water because I've now come to love it.

I am so glad to have made this very important change in my life.  It's really helping me now as I lose weight and even more so when the time comes for my weight loss surgery.  Now something else has come up for me that I need to write about.

As I have shared on here before, I had cancer a couple of years ago.  This month marks two years, maybe three, since I was diagnosed with melanoma.  The difficult part with that type of cancer is that many people don't take it as seriously because it's "just" skin cancer.  The first thing most people would ask me when they found I had it was how much time I spent out in the sun when I was a kid.  The problem with that is that melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer and happens even when people don't spend a crazy amount of time in the sun.  Of course I felt judged, wondering if I caused this myself.  Melanoma continues to grow and, if not removed in time, it will kill you.  My surgeon was the first one to really help me understand how serious it was.  What appeared like a good-sized mole on the outside was actually embedded far into my body and required a very long and deep incision to remove it. No amount of food I could binge on would ever take that fact away.

Up to that point, I had never had a surgery where I was put under anesthesia, let alone been cut open out of necessity.  The reason I'm bringing this up now was that I was watching a movie called 50/50 tonight.  I think it came out about a year ago with Joseph Gordan-Levitt and Seth Rogan.  It's the story of two friends, the cancer diagnosis of one and walking through the journey towards health together.  It was the first time I had watched a movie about cancer since I had it.  Oh my gosh, it was such an emotional thing to watch.  They did a great job with the movie, but watching it helped me realize all that not only I went through, but also my family and friends.  My mother cried in the waiting room while I was being operated on.  My dad came in from Utah to take care of me while we waited to hear back from the surgeon to find out if it had spread or not.  I had 30 staples in my back and I was in great pain (at the bottom of this post is what my back looks like from the surgery, but I'm warning you before you scroll down just in case scars flip you out).  I had so many friends praying for my healing.

In the middle of all of this was me.

I had moments of sinking to my knees in tears.  I remember taking a shower one day before I had the operation and I just went to the corner in the shower and cried while the water continued to spray on me.  For the most part, I was numb and was going through the motions.  I did what I needed to get done.  It wasn't until I watched this movie and remembered my same moments that paralleled the character that I understood what a blessing it is that I'm still here.  Really, in retrospect, the overeating with food is just stupid.  I didn't have a situation that brought this on necessarily.  It's just that I do have those moments where I see a particular food and I want to eat it.  And for what?  Pardon my language, but I had fucking cancer.  Cancer.  The very idea of going to food to solve some problem is just asinine in comparison.  I'm not minimizing the fight we all have with it, not at all.  It's just the fears I have over not being successful with the surgery because I'm afraid that I'll still overeat is nowhere in the same ballpark as the fear of dying I had with cancer.  I don't have to fear not being successful because I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing.  In those moments of doubts, I can embrace whatever feelings are behind that and know that I can still keep moving forward.  I have such an amazing support system of family and friends, as well as all of you reading this.  I have a great therapist that helps me get to the heart of the fears and, especially, God who is always by my side holding my hand.

Wow, this was a pretty deep post.  I'm so grateful to be cancer-free as I write this.  Below is the picture of my back.  The long scar goes from the bottom of my shoulder blade all the way down to my waist.  The little circle above it was when we did another biopsy because there was a suspicion that it had spread.  I've actually had four such biopsies after having the original surgery.  Not serious my ass!  Okay, enough of my potty mouth for tonight :-)