A Step Back

When the Lump was removed it was sent to the lab for analysis. The results came back confirming what the surgeon felt from touch. It was 95% dead. 


I saw him on the 26th of October. He removed the dressing which was letting off an odor that even the dog avoided.  He (the dog), has been very attentive, sleeping by my side, checking up on me and being generally very companionable. But while that dressing stank he took to the other room.


On seeing the surgeon who, as far as I am concerned still owns my leg until it gets healed, removed the dressing.  Underneath was a 250mm scar 80% of which was nicely healed, however 20%,  about 50mm was a gnarly, granulated gash of rotting skin.  Hence the stink. I wasn't feeling that flash either.  The photograph is below, placed out of view since it's not a pretty sight. Scroll down if you must, it's there.  I am resting and taking penicillin every 6 hours, letting nature do its work. I see the Doc again on Monday the 31st October when, I hope, he will declare good progress and I will not have to go back to hospital. 


This blog will come to an end soon.  The story of the Lump is nearly over.  With this set back, small and not unexpected, I feel an increased resolve to  get through it.  Right now, it is something of an ordeal. I can manage about two hours of sleep and then I have to find ways to distract myself from the discomfort.  I'm watching the iconic series 'Roots' which is captivating.   


























A little lower-you will smell it about now........

Rehab-Go Go Go

I did not know the condition of my flesh following  radiation would delay healing and  rehabilitation.  See the image to the right showing blistery, sore, dry and mottled skin; that's how it is all the way through.  What the picture shows is the place where the radiation exited after being targeted on the front side of the thigh. 

Now in my fourth week since the final night of surgery I am completely dependent on crutches. I cannot allow any weight on the wounded leg since it simply cannot take it.  The muscles are not responding as a response to healing. They have switched of for the time it takes for everything to knit together.  When I was first out of hospital the leg was a weight I nursed and carried short distances within the house.  Now I can simulate walking by placing one foot in front of the other however my heel will not touch the ground first because the muscles are not in service.  Each day a small improvement is noticeable. I wriggle a little more or move my hips and bend the limb up a little and down. My general endurance is slightly better.  I can go for a 100 meter walk and require a solid 30 to 40 minute rest to recover.

And it hurts.  Not an unbearable discomfort but a dull ache that ranges from 4 to 7 on the hurtometer depending on the measure of activity.  Anything over 5  requires a response. Recently I have found resting with the ache gives relief.  Sleeping is quality time for the forces at work.

A surge of activity,
An army of volunteers,
A mass of work,
While I nod off in the sun, in the window seat.
Flat out and crutches, the good leg heavy lifting for the wounded one.
A dream illustrated an exquisite piece of work, worth waiting for.

Nothing short of the absolute best.

The Aftermath-Sunday 2nd of October

This morning, the day after the second round of surgery I was out of the woods.  The pain was not present and I found myself pressing the morphine button out of habit rather than a response to pain.  I was glad to let it go and stopped around lunchtime.

I had many visitors this day, family and friends bringing goodwill, chocolates, flowers, children and their love and support.  I became very tired by the end of the day and started to fray. At last I slept only to wake at around midnight to a frightening display of hallucinations induced by the morphine.

On my back and unable to move other than to wriggle to a more upright position the moon outside my window was crescent shaped and half way across the sky.  The Fitzroy Gardens bathed in moon light and the city lights were a comfort. It was a beautiful sight. As I rolled my head away from the view and closed my eyes an intense world revealed itself.  An interior view of existence which described my return from an emotional experience during which I had successfully survived the bloody removal of a 'thing' that had held on violently to the fabric of my thigh.  The sense was that it had not gone willingly.  The wound felt like a battle ground soaked in dark red blood, my body felt gutted and with the recollection of the event tears welled in relief, grief and exhaustion. I felt bonded to the surgeon in blood and tears as though together we had fought bravely.  My sons and their mother appeared, in my hallucination, lined up and pressing into my awareness like a singers in music video, brand new, amplified, with natty clothes and accessories, happy and explosive in their egos.  My family and friends all pressed into this one small space which was also an entire landscape illuminated by the visceral reflection of light bouncing from the walls of my wound.  Everything was oiled, moist and smeared in blood so that a vast range of reds provided contrast and depth.  A great deal of activity was crammed into the vision, peoples from new lands, past times and the future on a road to somewhere going about their business with little regard to me, surviving, dying, arguing, walking from one horizon to another.  I saw the ground was a swamp of perished humans their buttocks rolling into the landscape making history and a road for the mass of living humans making their way through life.  I opened my eyes shocked at what I was witnessing.  I felt emotionally raw and overwhelmed by the range and breadth of human experience. I felt disengaged with the oily morass of humanity and frightened by its suffering.  I lay my eyes back behind my lids, allowed my right hand to touch the place where my heart beats  and from within a voice, "just be grateful" and I was so deeply grateful for being part of it.

I started to understand my re-engagement with life and all its living things, lump-free, would be through the eyes of those I meet and love with gratitude, knowing each and everyone has their story just as I felt my own so emotionally.  First and foremost was my partner, Jo who I knew had been present burning the midnight oil, waiting for my return from the fields of blood.

As the night started to give way to dawn I closed my eyes once again and saw a wide river of viscous, silted fluid flowing over a small dam draining a vast tract of flooded land.  The peaceful flow of the floodwater soothed my heart and I slept for a while until day break.

The Grand Final-Saturday 1st October

In the morning the hospital routine started around my bed and with them came another bout of pain. The routine involves getting blood tests, cleaning the room , cleaning the patient, giving medication, delivering breakfast, offering tea, morning papers, the noise of people waking, new people arriving, cleaners orderlies and with the stress came the pain. Every movement created a pump action throb that yelled.  I entreated myself to find a new attitude, one where panic would not roost.  With that entreaty came a long flash in my peripheral vision, sharp and welcome for I knew it was relief. Another 10 mills of analgesic. Analgesic from the Greek;  an ('without') and algos ('pain').

The surgeon turned up with his son in his Saturday best and explained the wound was bleeding on the inside. A bleeder;  he would be back later that day to go in again, undo his dressing, snip away the stitches and find the place of the bleed and the source of my pain.

Jo, my partner stayed with me all day and into the night. We watched Geelong beat Collingwood, a fair win and an honorable loss.  I nodded my way through the four quarters pressing the green button whenever it would let me. We tried to read to each other, we hung out, she stayed with me as my attention span reduced to seconds and when it was time to be wheeled up to the operating theatre, not so gay this time, she stood vigil in room 216 until my return.

The morphine makes you dry but you can't drink or eat because the risk of food returning to the bronchial tube during surgery is life threatening.  Moments before being taken up that now sombre rd she kissed me on my parched lips with life giving passion.  In my darkest hour she moistened my spirit with a life giving nectar and I went in thinking "it's good to be alive".

Pain-Friday 30th September

In a haze I woke on Friday morning and tried a few stretches in my hospital bed. Like a train the pain arrived, grinding mercilessly pushing at my boundaries and taking me into new territory.  "From one to ten how would you rate the pain ?" asked the nursing staff.  Trying to be nice, not wanting to offend, it was of the scale.  One is provided with a machine that duly pumps a millilitre of morphine into the bloodstream once the glowing green button is pressed at the bedside.  The machine allows a mill of morphine every 5 minutes and it couldn't keep up. My thigh had expanded so that the skin was tight as a drum. I was given an intravenous injection and the pain hung in the background persistent but not shrieking in my ear.  Now I was simply exhausted.  The surgeon, I was told would see me in the morning.

Excision-Thursday 29th September

When the surgeon gazed into my thigh and visualised where his scalpel would trace a line toward the Lump he made a few marks on the leg and signed the canvas with an initial.

The arrow marks the spot.

The same morning I has asked the anesthetist if she could take some photographs of the occasion as the surgeon had said he would be too busy. She took the camera I provided and said, "are you sure? "

I was gaily wheeled up the two floors to the operating theatre. A place with big windows and views of the Dandenongs. A place inhabited by strong intense people who say little and look into you with great intimacy.  "Are you allergic to anything ? "  I am asked in many different ways. I get a white hat indicating I do not (that I know of). A red hat would indicate I do.  We joked about hats as I was wheeled into the the surgeons office. A place with music playing and various people getting equipment ready. The anesthetist played with my wrist and that was the last I knew of anything until I found myself in the Room 216 downstairs that afternoon.

The Lump where it has been living

The muscle where it lies with the cavity filled by wadding.

The excised lump with a margin of healthy tissue to ensure everything is removed.

The cavity left behind. 

The drain which would stay in for the next few days to allow for excess fluids to flow away from the wound.

The Arrival-Wednesday 29 September

The day I turned up at the Epworth, did the paperwork and bedded down in my room with a view over Fitzroy  Gardens to the west. The place where I would be confined and cared for by the nursing staff for the next 10 days.  The next day, in the morning the surgeon would visit, I was prepared for surgery and wheeled up a couple of floors to the surgeons theatre, a place of intense physical and mental activity.