Hey, it’s my birthday!

Today was my birthday, and here’s how it went: I couldn’t sleep last night, so I was in a kind of over-tired zombie mode all day. Coming out of my room, my family wished me a happy birthday. Grandma gave me a gift bag containing some jelly babies, shampoo, and R100 ZAR ($5.67 USD) cash. Dad deposited R1000 ZAR ($56.68 USD) into my bank account, and Mom set up a birthday party spread of snacks and cupcakes for lunch. I thanked the family, grabbed some snacks, went back to bed, watched some VanLife YouTube videos while eating snacks, took some painkillers, and then fell asleep, only waking up around 7 p.m.

Honestly, it hasn’t been the greatest of birthdays. I’m still in pain from my June 24 surgery. I haven’t taken a bath in over a week as the wound dressing is not supposed to get wet, so I’m only cleaning with adult washcloths/wet wipes every day until the stitches are due to come out on July 10. They removed a total of three lymph nodes from under my right arm, and the surgeon said they look superficial, not how cancerous lymph nodes usually appear, so hopefully that’s a good thing and hopefully it means that the cancer is not back and that it’s just related to muscle injury and infection. But then the issue remains of how are they going to fix my muscle? Will it require more surgery? Can they even fix it? Or am I going to be in chronic pain and have strange lumps for life?

I have to go to any clinic on July 10 to get the stitches removed, but I’m only going back to the hospital again on the 21st for a follow-up to get the results from the biopsy. If it’s cancer again, I’ll need chemotherapy again. If it’s due to muscle injury, I’ll probably need more surgery. If it’s both, I’ll need chemo and surgery. In the meantime, I’m still in pain and can’t do much. It’s seriously frustrating and messing up my plans and my ability to do something to work towards making my plans a reality.

I just want to get past this frustrating and painful moment of my existence so that I can get on with life and keep doing things and stuff. There’s still so much to do, to see, to explore, and to experience, and I can’t fucking wait to be able to take a proper bath or shower again because even though the wet wipe washcloths are sufficient in keeping me clean, nothing beats a nice long soak in the tub, fully submerged from the neck down in warm water. Bath time is therapy, honestly.

Special thanks to the those who have provided support and who have sent messages of kindness and well wishes on my birthday.

#Personal