It has been 9 or 10 days since my surgery and I feel lost. There is still pain from the damn drain, that just keeps draining. They tell me that I have to have drain less than 30 cc’s a day to get it out, and mine is like an open faucet. I was given another round of antibiotics today, and those seem to make me tired. My ears are screw-y too.
And, like a toothache, I focus on the pain and discomfort, and can’t seem to get very far beyond it. I feel like I can’t get anywhere else until the drain comes out. I’m hoping by Friday, but I bet it’s going to be Monday.
My dreams last night were permeated by running away from wild boars with these two hooked horns coming up from their noses. They were ravaging my right side. (I was laying on the drain side, but it hurts even when I’m not laying on it.)
The one thing that seems to help some is my simple yoga stretches. Moving through and with the pain.
My life is on hold. I don’t accomplish much. Even though I’m out of sorts, I have a feeling something is changing in me. I want to write more, focus, get organized but I am really out of control and just hanging on. I am not serene or calm.
Some fundamental perceptions seem to be changing. Like about prayer. Like about helplessness. Maybe only in helplessness does prayer make any sense. Some women in NY State sent me a prayer shawl that they had knitted. I don’t know these women and they don’t know me, but they heard about my breast cancer and they “prayed” for me as they knitted the shawl. My gosh. I can’t explain how much this touches me, and I am embarrassed at how arrogantly I’ve pooh-poohed prayer in the past.
My body looks weird, very weird. I think it looks like those wild boars have had their way with me. There is the mastectomy scar, and then there is the swelling under and around it, puffs of ballooning skin, like my body is trying to fill up what was taken away. It all red and black. I want to get on with the healing, but I feel like I can’t get anywhere as long as the drains are in, continually irritating everything.
I don’t mind looking weird anymore, I just don’t want to hurt.
