I’m sick of being sick. It’s not just the cancer. My back problem makes the cancer seem merely inconvenient. The protruding disk is so big it’s almost completely blocking my spinal cavity, and it’s pinching the nerves in there. Bottom line? Severe nerve pain in my left leg, especially when I walk.

So I don’t walk. I lie on my couch, eating painkillers and anti-nausea drugs and anti-inflammatories. I sleep when I can. I read. I think. But mostly I just lie around, waiting.

Waiting for what? Well. This is the crazy part. I’m waiting to either get on a waiting list or to become permanently disabled as a result of waiting too long.

My doctor’s been trying to get me an appointment with either an orthopedic surgeon or a neurosurgeon, but she’s being told that here in Ottawa, orthopedic surgeons have two-year waiting lists. I’m not even on a waiting list yet.

My doctor says my situation is urgent but it’s not yet an emergency. I will be escalated to emergency status when I lose bowel or bladder control, or when I lose the ability to voluntarily lift my toes toward my knee (foot drop, it’s called, and it’s not as innocuous as it sounds).

It’s insane.

I’m going to end up addicted to narcotics because of this. The painkillers don’t eliminate the pain, they just dull it as long as I’m lying down. Walking is still excruciating. The painkillers are addictive, so I have to choose between addiction and constant severe pain. What kind of choice is that?

I’m probably going to lose my house. My severance package will not stretch to cover two years of unemployment, and I won’t qualify for welfare or disability as long as I have a house. I can work, but I can’t commute to and from a job. (I’m looking for work I can do from my couch.)

And then there’s the rest of my body. It’s just not healthy to spend two years lying down. My muscles are atrophying. I was never a triathlete or anything like that, but I’m not cut out for this slug-like existence either. Walking has been my primary form of transportation and exercise all my life. I do my best thinking when I’m walking. I love walking. I need to walk!

I also need to do something about this situation. I can’t just lie here for years, waiting for the health care system to get around to me. I don’t care if there’s a shortage of orthopedic surgeons and the population is aging and operating room time is limited. I need surgery. This is Canada. This is ridiculous.

I don’t believe in a two-tiered health care system, and I don’t believe in jumping the queue. It breaks my Canadian heart to tell you I’m willing to set aside my own values in order to get what I need right now.

If you have any suggestions about what I can do to expedite access to an orthopedic surgeon or a neurosurgeon, please let me know. Who should I be talking to? Politicians? Doctors? Health care administrators?

Last night we went over to the Museum of Civilization to be part of the studio audience for two tapings of The Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean. Mostly we wanted to see our good friend, local blogger Hella Stella, who was the special musical guest.

From what we could tell, most of the audience was there to see Hella Stella. The local blogging community was out in full force. The people beside us were there for Hella Stella too, and they weren’t even bloggers. It was a friendly crowd too, which is what you’d expect of a bunch of Hella Stella fans. And she was wonderful, singing some old favourites from her last album, and a new favourite from her next album.

Stuart McLean wasn’t what I was expecting. His voice, of course, was exactly what I was expecting since I’ve heard it on CBC Radio a thousand times. But he is far more physical and animated than I imagined, with full participation from his hands and arms and knees and hips and head. He’s not just reading those Dave Morley stories, he’s wriggling around inside them. He’s like a literary Joe Cocker.

I’ve heard Hawksley Workman’s name a whole lot of times, but I’d never actually seen him play before last night. He was Stuart McLean’s other special musical guest. He was excellent. The acoustics in that theater lent themselves beautifully to vocal magic tricks, and Hawksley Workman does some really trippy stuff with his voice. I bought a CD.

Because of my ongoing back problem, which is getting worse by the week, I haven’t been able to walk for more than a minute lately without also crying and swearing. Mostly I just lie on the couch, eating painkillers and Gravol. Yesterday was a worse-than-average day, from a pain perspective, so I was a little worried about how I was going to manage to get to the show and back.

GC had the logistics all figured out. He dropped me off on a bench outside the Museum, and then parked the car in Handicapped Parking. (As of last week, I’m an officially handicapped person for car-parking purposes.) Then he met me at the bench, walked me inside, and left me on the first bench inside the museum. He returned a short time later with a wheelchair.

It all worked out pretty well. Except that I felt funny about using a wheelchair. I felt like a fraud or something. Same thing with the handicapped parking permit. Rationally, I know I am legitimately entitled to it and I need it and I’m not abusing it…but I’m having trouble reconciling my concept of myself with that handicapped symbol.

My Mom dropped in yesterday and brought me a present – it’s a Happy Cat Chair.

Happy Cat Chair

She picks up these chairs (and tables, dressers and cradles) at garage sales, takes them home, cleans them up and paints them. Each piece is unique.

I love mine!

Happy Cat on Happy Cat Chair

I liked having my surgery at the Queensway-Carleton Hospital’s Day Surgery Unit. The staff there, for the most part, seemed friendly and competent. It’s important, when you’re in such a vulnerable position, to feel you’re in good hands.

Here are just a few of the people who made an impression.

Mary

The first person you meet when you’re directed to the Day Surgery Unit is Mary. Mary’s such a character, she’s almost a caricature of herself. She’s a displaced Maritimer, but she’s thoroughly Irish, starting with her standard greeting: “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya.” She’s bustling and efficient and outrageously cheerful and good-humoured. Everything about her smiles: her eyes, her mouth, her voice, her words. You don’t get to spend enough time with Mary. She just processes your paperwork and delivers you into the hands of either an orderly or a volunteer, who escorts you to the Day Surgery ward. But during your brief time with her, she’ll call you ‘love’ and show you pictures of her cat, Pickles, or she’ll tell you not to fret because you’re in good hands and everybody here loves the patients, or she’ll say something like “Oh, I see your surgeon is Dr. Proudlove. He’s an excellent pastry chef, did ya know that? Yes he is, and a very fine surgeon too, I’m told.”

Lisa

I mentioned Lisa before. She’s the nuclear medicine technologist who took the time to call booking and make me an MRI appointment when she found out they still hadn’t scheduled one with me. It might not sound like a big deal, but when you’re going through cancer diagnostics and imaging tests, it feels like every hour counts and you’re grateful to every person who moves an obstacle out of your way.

At 8:00 on Wednesday morning, Lisa suddenly appeared at the foot of my bed, smiling warmly like an old friend and saying “Hey, remember me? I met you the day of your bone scan.” We caught up a bit while she and GC rolled me and my bed right back to that same room where I had the bone scan. Then she took the time to explain the procedure she was about to perform – she was going to inject a radioactive isotope into my breast, which would enable my surgeon to distinguish my sentinel lymph node from my other lymph nodes. This way, the surgeon could remove only a couple of nodes which would be tested for cancer on the spot, instead of removing all of them. She told me apologetically that it was going to burn and she was right. (GC commented afterwards on how impressively sharp my fingernails were.)

I saw Lisa again later in the day as I was leaving the hospital in a wheelchair, and she came down to my eye level to talk to me. Nice touch, I like that. (Extra added bonus: I peed green for two days because of the isotope.)

Angel

She’s my surgeon. There was a big full-colour picture of her last week in the flyers that were delivered with the Saturday Citizen – she’s the poster doctor for the hospital’s current campaign. It said “Dr. Angel Arnaout is changing the face of cancer care.”

I think she’s got all the qualities you could want in a surgeon. She’s energetic, focused and driven, and probably a workaholic. She exudes self-confidence, and she maximizes every moment. There’s a precision to her: she chooses her words precisely, she doesn’t waste time, she doesn’t beat around the bush. She gets right to the heart of the matter. But she’s not cold. When the situation requires it, she will sit by your bedside, look you in the eye, and tell you gently but firmly that she’s going to fix things. And then she does. She knows how to make things happen.

In addition to all that, she’s quite exotic looking and stylish, and she shows up at the hospital for surgery at 6:30 in the morning dressed to kill, flawlessly made up and brilliantly accessorized. (And there I was, feeling like I’d accomplished a lot just by showing up at this ungodly hour and lying there in a hospital gown and shower cap.)

(Hmmm. In retrospect, maybe ‘dressed to kill’ isn’t the most appropriate term to use to describe a surgeon’s appearance. But you know what I mean, right?)

I’m home, happy, healthy, hot, hungry and high. They gave me good drugs. For awhile there I was completely pain free, and it felt heavenly. I slept too, for the first time in days. Blissful.

The tumour is gone! The doctor thinks she got it all! And the lymph node biospy was crystal clear! I’m alive! I’m going to live happily ever after!

I’m going to start with a nap.

I spent the better part of yesterday in the hospital getting poked and injected and stuff, and then around noon I started crying because I was in a lot of pain because I hadn’t any any painkillers because of the surgery. So one thing led to another and next thing I knew my surgeon was asking about my protruding disk (which she hadn’t known about because it was just diagnosed and it was done through my GP) an THEN she said she couldn’t do the surgery without first seeing the MRI report because a protruding disk can be risky with the anesthetic. It could possibly even cause a stroke. A flurry of communications between the hospital and the CCHC ensued, and the report was faxed over.

My surgeon brought it over to me and told me that my protruding disk was blocking the entire spinal cavity, and she would have to reschedule surgery until she could have a detailed consult with the anesthetist.

So I cried some more and she said comforting things and ordered a shot of morphine for the pain. A little while later she came back and told me I’d be having the surgery first thing the next morning and she would spent the afternoon with the anesthetist, getting ready. She pulled some scheduling strings. She’s kind of amazing that way.

GC took me home, where I spent the evening and night writhing in pain, taking painkillers, throwing up and crying.

This disk thing is getting worse by the day, both in terms of pain and its overall impact on my life. If I could have a choice today between surgery for it and surgery to remove the tumour, I’d opt for the back surgery. In a heartbeat.

Anyways, I’m off to the hospital now to have the tumour removed.

Thanks for all your good wishes for surgery today. I’m feeling better than yesterday and looking forward to getting the tumour out of my body.

I’ll be injected with a radioactive substance at 8:00 this morning (for the sentinel node biopsy) and surgery is scheduled for early afternoon. I’m already starving. I should be home by early evening. I’ll try to blog if I can. If not, I might give GC the keys to the blog so he can post an update.

I just heard the Ottawa police have charged that off-duty cop – the one who beat up the cabbie – with assault causing bodily harm. Yay.

It’s the last day before surgery so I had a bunch of things I wanted to do today. I wasn’t counting on a migraine. Or feeling yucky because some of my usual meds had to be discontinued in advance of surgery. Or worse-than-usual leg pain. Or throwing up. (Have I ever told you how much I hate throwing up?)

The only thing on my list that I managed to get done was a visit to the Second Career offices to introduce myself to my employment counselor. She was very nice. I cried. She gave me kleenex.

I’m waiting for the home care nurse to arrive. She’s dropping off syringes and gauze and other post-surgical necessities, in preparation for Wednesday. Remember back in the olden days when you’d stay in the hospital for a day or two after surgery? Now they send you home with drains and tubes in you and they give you and your loved ones little crash courses in post-operative nursing and they send people to your house to inject you with morphine.

What else is new? I tried to go to Propeller Dance’s show LIFT on Friday, but it was sold out. I heard later from my friend Donna that it was wonderful and moving. Next time I will buy my tickets in advance!

I met up with some bloggers for breakfast on Saturday, and we had fun. And then I saw some of them again on Saturday evening, at the Bloggers’ Wine & Cheese party at the Fringe Festival. I had a good time, even if the turnout was a little thinner than last year. I met some lovely people, including Jamine the Yoga Teacher. I also met several of the performers who are blogging on the Fringe Festival’s blog. I haven’t been to any of the plays yet, but I’m looking forward to checking some out this evening. (Have you been yet? Any recommendations?)

What else helped make this a good weekend? Finding out that the biopsy on my left breast lump came back negative, sweet juicy strawberries from the strawberry farm, breakfast with Grace and Steve, a visit to the vegetable patch, and having a dad to phone on Father’s Day.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:

Instead of a night in the hospital