Health

I went in for surgery on May 22, exactly two months ago, so I thought I’d check in and see where I’m at. Also, I like lists!

• Starting about a week ago, I could sneeze and not feel it in my surgery area. This is a notable improvement.
• It took about a month before my sleep returned to normal.
• My three incisions continue to heal, but are still pretty visible. I am expecting scars in at least two of the three. Then I start scar therapy! Also, the puffiness is all gone now and when I rub my hand over the area, it feels mostly normal. Don’t get all pervy, I don’t do this a lot.
• But when I do do it, I also note that there is still numbness in the immediate area above the surgery shenanigans. Whether this means it’s permanent or not remains unknown, but I’m leaning more toward yes, it probably is.
• The hair on the left side of my chest has still not fully grown back yet. Meanwhile, if I don’t shave my face for two days, it looks like I’m growing a beard. Why is hair so weird?
• My return to running was complicated this week by some extremely summer temperatures, climbing up to around 33-34°C. Even the mornings have been too warm, especially after not having the past six weeks to acclimate to the warmer weather. Friday is supposed to reach 29°C, which seems almost cool in comparison. I may try a run then.
• Everything else is pretty much back to normal.
• But I am always kind of aware of the surgery area or SA or some other clever name I’ll eventually come up with to describe where the surgical team spent two hours yoinking a tumour from my chest. It doesn’t bother me, but I now see a dividing line in my life: before surgery, and after.

And now, a cat.

So, am I fully recovered? No.

• I still have visible scars where the two incisions were made
• I still have visible marks where the chest tube was inserted
• Both of the above will continue to heal, but there is a chance some of the scarring will be permanent and I will invent bear/shark-wrestling stories to explain them as needed
• The surgery area still has a bit of numbness and definitely still feels like a place where surgery happened, though it’s in no way painful or anything like that. I think the “full recovery” on this may take further weeks or even a few more months.

But I have recovered enough that I am pretty much back to living what passes for a normal life again, with normal sleep (finally) and all the rest. I will stop the daily entries on my post-surgery experience and only mention it when it seems relevant.

With that said, enjoy one more cat.

The bad (but not really that bad) news is I went a bit overboard on the steps today, walking so much before my run that I turned my 5K into a 2.5K (see previous running post for details) after slogging along for 16 minutes. The good news is that despite all the steps, I’m not totally exhausted or anything. During the run it was muggy, and I was slow. At one point I felt a bit of a stitch coming on, but it retreated, and I was fine.

I think I mentioned this before, but as I hit the six-week mark, I’m not feeling in any way restricted in what I can do now, but it does feel like it will be weeks yet or perhaps even months until the surgery carve-out in my chest feels normal(ish) again.

One more day before my daily post-surgery reports turn intermittent!

Here is the Six Million Dollar Man running. Today, six million dollars would buy you a bionic fingernail.

Holy cats, look at the fur. It was the ’70s, baby.

This is not to imply that I do not normally bathe, or that I’m one of those people who believe you only need to wash your armpits and groin and the rest of your body can just naturally accumulate…stuff. It just means that I was told after surgery to avoid taking a bath for a while, since it could cause problems with the sutures/incisions due to all the soaking in water and such.

But as the title says, it’s been 39 days now, and it was time after a run and walk around the lake today to have a bath. It felt very nice to just sit back and soak for some time in the tub (full of bubbles because I am pushing the idea that bubble baths are great, because they are, in fact, great). I look forward to more of these simple pleasures in life.

Here is a cat having a bath, of sorts.

Nothing!

I now wear the surgery like an old coat, familiar and a bit lumpy. I don’t think about it much, though occasionally I get a reminder, like a sudden twinge in one of the incision areas–the VCI¹Video Camera Incision is still sensitive if I poke it. This is a good reason to not poke it.

But generally, things are just things.

No cat, it’s late and I sleep.

I ran, as mentioned in the previous post, and the good news is the surgery didn’t seem to have any effect. After 42 days off, I was slow, but that’s because I took 42 days off.

I also had a respectable sleep last night.

These things please me.

Here is a cat looking pleased.

The plan is to write daily posts until I reach the six-week mark (the end of the “full recovery” window), or 42 days, which will be six days hence. After that, I’m going to just chime in whenever I feel something has changed/shifted or revealed itself as an alien.

As for my current thoughts, sleep is still very uneven, per my Forerunner watch, but it may be wrong, so I take what it says with the proverbial grain of salt.

Here is a cat snoozing.

Changed the colour scheme of this blog, that is, back to a warmer, softer look for summer. No AI was used, I handcrafted each colour using a time-honoured artisanal process. OK, I actually just selected a few colours I’d used before. I suspect I’ll do another major revamp of the site before the summer is over.

Meanwhile, my 4-6 week “full recovery” window maxes out at 42 days, so I have exactly one week to go. I can now say I am confident that I will not have recovered from all nerve damage/numbness in the next seven days, which is a bit of a bummer, but I can sneeze without hurting myself, so I’ll take what I can get.

Maybe I should look up artisanal ways of stimulating nerve endings back to life.

Here is a graceful cat:

(post surgery)

I did not run.

This was the first day after a batch of very warm days (around 30°C) when the temperature was relatively mild, only getting up to about 20 degrees. It was cloudy, too, making it an ideal day to try a short run to test the, uh, running waters.

But I balked. I got up early after a fairly poor sleep, and did some things in the morning, then just kind of faded for the rest of the day.

I don’t think it’s related to the surgery, at least not physically. The weather looks showery tomorrow and I like running in the rain about as much as a house cat likes taking a bath, so it seems unlikely I’ll resume jogging tomorrow. But…maybe.

Here is a cat running: