Fresh hell

Yep, that’s where I am — in antibiotic hell.

Just 4 days into my 10-day course of prevantative, post-surgery oral antibiotics, and what a fresh hell it is.

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I’ll keep this short and sweet because my brain is sludge and because no one needs to hear the laundry list of complaints. How I took these drugs for 267 days I do not know. Four days alone and I’m ready to cry for mercy. Kudos to all you lovely friends who have reminded me that I can do this. Or that I can “so do 6 days,” as my bud Nicole texted me yesterday. I needed to hear that.

The other, non-abx side of my recovery is going quite well. Some might even say swimmingly. If not for the dreaded abx, I’d be cruising.

Instead, I’m … not. Would love to think of some witty antonym to cruising, but with the sludgy brain, it’s not gonna happen. So I’m doing whatever the opposite of cruising is. Barely gettin’ by. The teensy bit of energy I do have is spent on basics (brushing teeth, changing clothes) and keeping my kids just north of the subsistence line.

I know, I know: it’s temporary.

One day I will look back at this fresh hell and smile knowingly at the superpowers that propelled me through this mess.

I saw my all-time favorite surgeon yesterday for my second post-op checkup. He was looking fit & tan and especially dapper in his yellow tie. His rosy glow might have been from some weekend sun or from the aftereffects of our previous meeting, in which I ate crow and admitted that he was right, I was wrong about whether my reconstructed chest was ever going to look good again. He was was right, and it does.

He didn’t remove any stitches, so I’m still nice and securely stitched together. The site where he removed my port (hallelujah!) is pretty dadgum sore, but if that’s the worst of it I can take it. I peeked under the steri-strips and found that his stitches are especially tiny, neat, and tidy and I have every reason to believe that the scar will fade away nicely.

The photo is awful, and if that’s what my skin tone looks like in real life, I’m really going to feel sick, but I’m trying to keep this G-rated, and the lighting in my bathroom must be B-A-D. But you get the general idea of the incision on my left shoulder, just beneath the little birthmark that my mom used to say was where the stork kissed me when I was born.

So the healing continues, and the fresh hell of yet another course of Bactrim & Minocycline is proving to be quite the challenge. Six more days….I can so do that.