kareina

I worked from home on Monday, but only managed about 3 hours total spread over the day. Tuesday morning I wasn't being any more productive, but then at 11:00 I got an email saying that they have finished the repairs to the valve on the gas line, so I got Josie to drive me in and I ran that experiment I had set up on the 1st of March (that is how long the lab was closed this time). That took 4 hours, and while it ran I was productive on other tasks that need doing.

Because I have the association at work that if I go to the loo I do a handstand against the wall outside my corridor on the return, it was really, really hard not to do my handstands! I really wanted to. But while I have fairly good range of motion given it hasn't been a full week yet since I let them slice right through the skin of my chest and remove the bothersome stuff and then take in my skin to fit properly, I am not pushing it. Lifting arms to shoulder height no problem, but I am not yet pushing my elbows up past that level--I have no wish to open the seams!

After work I walked over to Phire practice and gave Villiam the camera that he left at my place at the party the weekend before surgery, but then I was tired so Josie came back for me, and I wound up going to bed early (about 20:15) and sleeping 10 hours. I no longer need to wear that elastic girdle like thing around my ribs when I sleep--things have healed enough that I can just roll over (still carefully) with no pain, and it has been a day and a half since I bothered with any pain meds at all (not that I ever had actual pain--only an occasional, fleeting, warning flash if I tried moving wrong).

This morning I have a meeting to help a student with her data, so Josie will drive me back in. This evening we are invited to David and Caroline's for dinner, so Josie can eat some fish with them.

My appointment paper said to be at the reception area at 07:20. However, Josie isn't used to driving in the snow, and only picked up the rental car yesterday, so we left the house early. This we were at the door 06:50, but, of course, they don't open that early. So we sood and waited and a minute or two later SvartulvR arrived to het ready for his surgeries he is doing for the day. He was surprised to see me, since he was pretty certain that he would have known if I was one of his patients of the day, but I explained that I was here to be rid of my breasts, not get my ears fixed.

So he let us into the ear-nose waiting roo, which is right next to the day surgery waiting  room. After a bit a nurse came by and usshered us back out as we were in the wrong place. I explained  that  Vi visste det, men  Anton öppnade dörren för oss . But we returned to waiting outside the correct door, with a handfull of other people who had arrived in the meantime.

Then day surgery reception opened the door, and soon it was my turn. My total fee for the day surgery was 200 SEK (around €20). I  love living in Sweden! Then they gave me my hospital gown socks and underpants, and, after I had changed, I had a meeting with the surgeon.I confirmed that the plsn was to take the full breast amd nipples too, and then he drew lines as guids for cutting and matching the seam after. As one who had done a bit of fiting I could tell from the pattern that he knew what he was doing.

Then they put me on a bed to wait my turn. A cute nurse named Urban came to give me a handful of pills. He told me what they were,  but I forgot the list. One was morphine though.

I told Josie that when Dad was on morphine for his cancer pain that he got really talkactive, but that I doubted anyone would notice if it does that to me. Urban had planed to put an IV in my foot, well out of the surgeon's way. However, my foot veins looked too small, so he filled a glove with warm water and tucked it into my sock to see if the warmth helped make the veins bigger and easier to stick.

However, before that had time to work to was my turn to go to the operating room, where they decided that they may as well put the IV into my hand instead. They did, and that is the last thing I remember till I woke up in the recovery room around 11:30.

I will try to type up the rest later, but now I want breakfast...

Today I had an appointment with the plastic surgery section of the local hospital. I have been in their queue since October, when the psychologist section decided that I could skip that step in the queuing process, based on what the local health practitioner said when she wrote me the referral there. The appointment was for 08:50, so I didn't bother to go to the office first.. Indeed, I could have slept in, since I didn't need to leave the house till after 08:00 to be there in good time, but clearly my body didn't want to risk oversleeping, as I woke at 06:30.

The appointment itself cost nothing. (I truly love living in Sweden, and the fact that we have health care!) The doc was an older man (or at least he looked older to me, but recently I have noticed that some people that I would guess as older turn out to be younger than I am). He asked me to explain to him exactly what procedure I want done (remove the breasts--all of them, including the nipples), wanted to know if there is a history of breast cancer in the family (not that I know of, but I would like to donate my breast tissue to science, if we can find a researcher who has a use for healthy tissue for experiments or comparison purposes), double checked to be certain that I understand that there is no going back, that once this is done they are gone forever, I can't change my mind later (yes, please! I will be forever grateful to whomever can get these things off of my chest and out of my way and also increase blood flow to my arms by banishing those elastic bands). Then we briefly discussed where to put the seam. I commented that I thought it would look good to have the seam running diagonally from the shoulder to the middle. He said that they used to do that, back in the 1920's, but found that sometimes the scar tissue would thicken and interfere with arm movement, which is why they switched to horizontal. that makes sense to me, I like the idea of full arm movement. I also asked about recovery time, and he said that it is up to the patient how long to wait before resuming workouts--use common sense and listen to the body, but a week to 10 days is good to avoid working out. I can live with that.

Then he sent me to the nurses to fill in a health history quiz and have blood drawn for some sort of testing. I asked the nurse who drew the blood if she knows how long the queue would likely be between this appointment and getting called for surgery, and she said that it can take months, perhaps even nearly a year, but it is impossible to really predict, though they try to work as fast as they can. But I understand, these things still take time. I can wait.I have put up with them for decades, a few more months can be endured.

After the appointment I went to the office, where I managed to accomplish more than 5.5 hours of work for LTU, during which I finally updated my spreadsheet of hours worked vs how many the uni thinks I should work, so now I know that I had managed to get completely caught up in hours by the end of March, but am now about 6 hours behind for April. Oops. Then I opted to skip the Phire annual general meeting and just go home and relax (since there wouldn't be any acroyoga at the meeting anyway). Much to my surprise, as I was curled up on the couch with a book they called me from the meeting to let me know that I had been nominated to serve on the Phire board as the officer in charge of guiding people in making costumes and props, and would I be willing to accept the nomination? I double checked to be certain that they wanted someone to help and advise on costumes and not be the one making them, and with the warning that I don't have so much time, agreed to accept the nomination. Luckily, some hours later I got a message that during the voting they decided that since my time is in short supply they wouldn't put me on the board (that position is an optional one anyway), and I am not expected to attend the weekly board meetings.

However, the phone call was enough to remind me that I should put my book down and be useful, so I then did several hours of thesis work. One of the things I did was import the spreadsheet I have been filling in with the location of the steatite artifacts from the Swedish Historical Museum's database, plus the various "keywords" I have been adding to the card for each, into the graphing program I am so fond of, so I could try playing with the data there. One of the keyword categories I have been using is assigning a colour word based on the photograph (when there is one), and so far have several variants on pink and several on green. It turns out that of the 50 samples in the spreadsheet so far the pinks tend to be inland, getting close to the Norwegian border, while the greens tend to be more coastal. However, that is only about 1/7th of the samples in the database, so that pattern may well change. Even so, it was interesting to note, and I took the time to type up a summary of what I was seeing, including a photo, and share it with my advisors in my "supervision blog" (only visible to the two of them).

Sadly, right after I sat down to the computer this evening I got a message from my sister saying that she and mom were at the emergency room again. They don't yet have any idea what the problem is this time, but she has just gone for more tests, and it is nearly 02:00 my time, so I think I will go do my yoga and get to bed, and hope that there is good news on that front in the morning.