After being coaxed back off the ledge on Tuesday night, I went back to the hospital on Wednesday morning. It is a measure of my recent health issues that I am now on nodding/hello terms with the surgical ward staff. They have been a great group of people, in all honesty.
Having sent a number of emails to my surgeon questioning the validity of inserting a chemo port, the surgeon did express surprise to find me laying in a ward bed that morning. since I had been scratched off the surgical list for the day. Not to worry, they were able to find a spot for me, albeit a bit later than planned.
At this point, the surgeon was also able to go over the biopsy results with. It was neither good news (benign everything) nor bad news (aggressive and spreading like, well, cancer), so take the wins when you get them.
By late morning I was being wheeled back to theatre, got a cheery "hello again" from the nurse, dealt with some paperwork mix-up, and was ready to go. Now, I was told a chemo port was a quick 30 minuter procedure, no fuss. As such, it was a tad disconcerting to see a load of scanning and X ray kit being wheeled in, doctors and nurses donning their X-ray flak jackets, and all that was missing was the machine that goes ping.
It must have been a couple of hours later when I came round in the recovery room and was sent back to the ward. The procedure had been deemed a success, no issues noted, and I now had a lovely wad of gauze protruding out of my shirt collar. No hiding this one, unless I started to wear turtle-neck jumpers or a scarf. Neither of which is particularly appropriate for here.
I got taken home, pretty much still in a daze from the painkillers, and then spent the rest of the day doing very little.
By Thursday I was back in the office, trying to juggle actual work stuff with an ever increasing set of admin tasks I needed to attend to. Today's tasks included the rather somber need to update my will, put a power of attorney in place, and draw up an advance directive. None of these documents filled me with much joy, but my lawyer provided first drafts, and I read them, and sent comments back.
Before lunch we wandered over the to the coffee shop. Before all this crap, I probably drank too much coffee each day. Since this crap, I now have one cup a day. Maybe one is still too much, but we'll see. As of now, it is something normal that I can do. All of my close friends know I am a creature of habit, happy to stick to daily routines for a duration that would drive others insane. One of these is going to the same coffee shop almost every work day for the past 8 or 9 years. It likely comes as no surprise that after all this time that I have gotten know the staff very well. The barista spotted my surgical dressing and asked what had happened (she knew of the appendix etc). I explained the full story, and she broke down in tears. Clearly it is not my intent to upset others, but as many times before, it is touching that someone who I simply cross paths with at one point in my life can be so impacted by, and sympathetic to, my plight. Her colleague then came out from the kitchen and expressed his shock at my news, and wished me all the best for the fight.
Early evening, a neighbour brought over some more food for us, and I had a catch up with him as to my latest plan, but this feast got shoved in the fridge for another night because we had the diversion of a pub quiz. I take pub quizzes seriously: my mood at work the next day is vastly different based on whether we won, we simply did well, or we absolutely screwed things up. Tonight we chalked up a win for the good guys, beating a nemesis by a single point (he was still muttering about whether table tennis was a racquet sport when we left the bar victorious: it is, BTW). Life can be sweet.