Two Handed Again

Here are some things that are very good to have two hands to do: Style Hair, Eat, Type. Those are what I missed most, though the list could be very, very long. Things I did not miss are washing dishes and vacuuming. But that's okay. It was worth it. As of today I am finally and officially two handed. Woop! Woop! And I am dying to catch up on all the big events I mentioned in my earlier finger-pecking post, especially before the next big event of BRAND NEW GRANDBABY occurs. Which could be any second now. Could be right now in fact. Poor Jen feels the need to start every phone call with, "I'm NOT in labor." That's only cause I hung up on her this morning while I was with the doctor getting my official clearance to use my arm again, and then I freaked when I couldn't reach her. But it's okay. I'm calm now. So anyway, I'm gonna crank it out now. A day at time maybe. We'll see how it goes. First, while I'm on the subject, is this here arm surgery. It's called lymphevocenular bypass. Not really, I just don't want to look it up. But it's something like that. So here's the (trying to be) short story. They took out my lymph nodes under my arm cause they were full of cancer. Lymphatic fluid travels around your body via lymph nodes, so with those gone, the fluid gets traffic jammed in my arm and it gets all big and puffy and ugly. I posted a pic on facebook but I'm kind of regretting that now cause it's kind of freaky so I'm not gonna post it again here. But trust me it was big and ugly. So my genius doc (the same one who is doing my reconstruction) put some new channels in that connect the lympathic system with the venous system. Since the venous system is pumped via the heart, it gets all that fluid moving. (And in case you're worried, the lymph system ends up dumping its stuffing into the venous system a little further down the road anyway, so it's not mixing stuff that shouldn't be mixed. I was worried about that.) The end result, as of today, is that my arm is still a little big at the elbow, but the hand and wrist are ABSOTALUTELY normal! And the whole arm feels soft and light and amazingly wonderful. The best part is that I don't have to wear that ugly compression sleeve 24/7. So no more people asking me about my tats. That's kind of a bummer. But I'll live with it.