John comes home today. I've missed him. I need so many things from the store and just can't go. I hate it!! I think I will make an attempt to stop at Target on the way home today. They have the motorized wheelchairs and hopefully, I can get around in that. I used to could crab walk myself around the store, but now the back and forth of my knees is just too painful.
The surgery is 3 weeks from today. I have spent several hours on YouTube looking at knee replacement surgery and listening to people who have had it done telling their stories. Most are good, but there are some bad ones in there too. That scares me a bit, but I guess I'm only human.
I remember back in 1994 when I first found the lump in my breast. The internet was quite different then. In fact, I'm not even sure it could be called the internet. We had Prodigy and there were a bunch of Bulletin Boards and I would go in and chat every single day. I found one BB that was called BCBuddies (breast cancer buddies). I posed the question about finding the lump in my breast and trying to tell myself it was nothing. So many people on the board said "oh you have to get it checked out, you never know what it might be." I convinced my self it was nothing because I had found a lump several months earlier and it turned out to be nothing. So, since we were in the process of moving from Georgia to Virginia, I decided to put that lump on the back burner and wait until we got moved to go to the doctor and check it out. It was in June that I found the lump and we got moved and settled in and it was August before I saw a doctor about it. Thankfully, once I had a mammogram things went very swiftly and by the grace of God it was not an aggressive tumor. It was cancer and I had a double mastectomy in August 1994. The cancer was only in one breast, but my mother had breast cancer and I wanted the most aggressive treatment I could get. I have not regretted that decision!! Jenny was 12 and Jeff was 15 at the time. I didn't want to die. I was so scared. I cannot tell you the panic I felt.
I went through chemo and lost all my hair. And to this day, I never say I'm cured or that I beat it. I just thank God for every day that I have and pray that I continue to be cancer free.
judy, your blog continues to be great reading. i didn't know you had had cancer. seems like half the people i now have had it in some form or another. my dad died of a brain tumor at age 39 and my wife had lymphoma when she was only 27. she did the whole chemo and radiation thing and thankfully is very healthy today. i had a melanoma too but i caught it early so they just cut it out and i didn;t need any other treatment.
ReplyDeletei'm sure you'll do great with your new knees. keep up the blogging!
Thanks Rollerfink, I appreciate your comments. I guess we are lucky to still be "kicking". My mom died of breast cancer. It's all so scary.
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