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        My plastic surgeon said pseudomonas aeruginosa can live in bleach.  It’s that virulent.  From an evolutionary standpoint, this bugger is superior.  It eats up and spits out regular run-of-the-mill antibiotics.  When my culture results came back, my plastic surgeon said he looked up the recommended meds.  “That says IV,” he had said to himself, and then told me later at my follow-up appointment.  He realized he couldn’t just prescribe something.  I was going to need the straight-to-the-vein kind of meds to kill this creature.

        I know I’ve already talked a bit about this IV leash hanging out of my chest, connected to a pump in a bag, but I need to elaborate a bit more.  First of all, when I got up to pee in the middle of the night, I almost took my bedside lamp with me because it got tangled in my tubing.  When I stood up from my office chair (well, my tutor chair), the tubing got caught on the armrest and ricocheted, almost smacking me in my face.  When my dog went tearing through the kitchen after the cat, he clotheslined himself on it, pulling me with him.  My 16 year old daughter is mortified when I ask her friends if they want to double dutch with my tubing (she told her buddies the other night, “she literally says that to everyone”; what an embarrassment I must be for her, but boy is it fun tormenting her!).

        When I worked at the tanning salon all those years ago, there was one client who used to come in almost every day.  She would use the tanning beds, as well as the spray-on tan.  She was orange.  We discussed with her how such frequent visits weren’t healthy for her skin, and how she needed to give her skin a rest.  Plus, she was orange as hell.  It wasn’t good PR for our tanning salon.  Customers actually chose not to do the spray-on tan after seeing her, thinking that her coloring came from the booth.  She was naturally orange-tinted, but the constant tanning and spray-ons made her a very unnatural hue of orange.  But she didn’t want to stop or slow down.  She was a bad representation of the services we offered.  That’s how I feel now when I go to the plastic surgeon’s office.  I’ve lost my boob, I still have a drain, and I have an IV pump of antibiotics plugged into my chest.  I feel like I’m pretty bad PR for my doctor.

        Speaking of tubing, having all these hanging tubes is pretty dangerous in my household.  I mean, besides chairs and lamps, I also have a dog who gets very excited to see me.  Like when I come home, when I come upstairs from tutoring in the basement, when we wake up in the morning.  He jumped up on me and caught my drain, to which I screamed like I was in a horror film.  He really only pulled some of the Tegaderm up, but holy crap, that was scary.  I don’t need a canine de-draining me.

        Back to the antibiotics–they were able to start me over the weekend at the hospital which is about 40-ish minutes away.  They only see patients in the morning, so my Saturday and Sunday appointments are around 10 AM.  My weekday appointments are at a closer location–only 15-ish minutes away, and literally around the corner from my twins’ school–so they are scheduled around 2 PM. The nurses over the weekend explained to me that the pump doses me with the meds every 12 hours, so it started around 11 AM Saturday.  Then 11 AM Sunday.  But when Monday rolled around, my appointment wasn’t until 2:15 PM, so I knew I was going to run into some issues.

        “Oh you should see if you can change that schedule during the week–switch your appointments to earlier times,” the weekend nurse said.

        “Well, they made me change my follow-up appointment with my surgeon, so I’m pretty sure 2:15 PM was the only available time,” I responded.  Plus, my kiddos get out of school at 3:15 PM, so I’d prefer to keep the 2 PM times.  That way once I’m finished, I can just swing through and scoop them.  I don’t add that part when speaking to the weekend nurse, as it just seems like I don’t want to be inconvenienced, but I know with them making me rearrange my surgeon appointment, there’s probably not a lot of wiggle room.

        “If the medicine isn’t refilled, the pump is going to go crazy,” the weekend nurse explains.  “It’ll start beeping.  Oh, and your blood will back up into the tubing, so you’re going to want to clamp this yellow clip.”  She then showed me where the power button is on the pump for when it starts beeping at me and how to use the yellow clip.

        Monday morning I had to tutor.  Thankfully my student and I were muted when the beeping started.  I clawed at the bag, desperately searching for that power button that the nurse pointed out.  I couldn’t find it.  I had to take apart all the velcro holding the pump in, sifting through tubing (there’s got to be at least 10 feet of tubing all wrapped up in there), and pulled the little machine out.  I found the button.  I pushed it.  Still beeping.  I held it down for a few seconds.  Still beeping.  I pushed it twice.  Still beeping.  That’s when I see the little screen on the machine.  “Silence” and “Acknowledge” are my two choices.  I click on “Silence.”  It silences.  But only for about a minute, and then it starts beeping again.  I click on “Acknowledge.”  That seemed to work.  I also realize that I didn’t actually have to dig the machine out of the bag, disrupting all the velcro and the feet upon feet of tubing.  There’s a little window on the bag where I could have hit “Acknowledge” without even opening the bag.  Good to know.

My student and I unmuted and continued our tutoring session.  The machine periodically beeped–maybe every 15 minutes at that point–making sure I acknowledged that I had hit “Acknowledge.”  Every time it beeps, my student looks up a little startled, and I just act like I hear nothing.  I don’t feel like going into any explanation right now.

        I also went to my Physical Therapy appointment.  I’m most excited about PT because it’s the closest I can get to exercise.  On the packet of paperwork, they asked me my goals in PT.  I wrote “to be able to shave my armpit.”  When I showed the physical therapist how much I can lift my arm, she was impressed, “You’re almost there!” she said.  I responded, “Yea, but I would need nose hair clippers to really be able to get in there.  I think I could braid it at this point.”  Had she been drinking something, she would have spit it out all over me.  Again, I don’t think these medical workers know how to take me and my humor.

        I get why people give up.  I totally understand the desire to unplug all this crap and just live out the remainder of my days carefree.  I wish I were able to exercise.  Every time I hear one of my songs that I would listen to while jogging, the urge in me to just start running has to be stifled.  When I would jog, I would push myself to my limits, pushing harder and harder as I would go, muting the inner dialogue “You can’t do this,” “You’re not strong enough.”  I always used those phrases to push harder–use that inner voice as my motivation to prove myself wrong.  I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do once chemo starts, but I’ll at least be able to walk.  And dance.  Well, walk-dance.  I can’t wait for those mornings.  If I can just get there.