ok, I'm here and with new boobs. My left chest is pretty sore. The doc had to really scrape out a lot of scar tissue. Even then there's no guarantee it'll stay gone, so it might harden up again. The right side is nice. It's not like a real boob by any stretch of the imagination, but compared to the baseball-hard tissue expanders they're heaven to me. And no chemo port any more!! I don't know if I'm happy or sad about it. When I first had it put in, I thought I'd never get used to having it in me. After almost 2 years of it, though, I was rather attached to it. But you have to maintain them -- technically you have to get them flushed every 5 weeks. Mine worked after not flushing them for months. But I was buying time. The insurance company would have eventually cut out supporting it.
I spent the week after the operation in bed, popping Percosets. What a great drug. I painted favor bags for the holiday potluck we're having, and watched TV the whole time. It was quite refreshing to be doing just fun stuff with no responsibilities.
This week I graduated from hospice volunteer training. I have some final paperwork and a TB test to do, and then I'll be ready to start volunteering. Last night I went to a reception they had to memorialize people who have died. A sort of gathering of the grieving families. I spoke with some of the people who had lost loved ones, and practiced the things we learned in class. Listening is such an important skill in this field. Listening, and not imposing your own stories or controlling the flow of conversation.... giving the other person the privilege of saying what they want to say in whatever way they want to say it.
I felt a little silly and kind of fake at first, just standing there smiling, and nodding and trying to go with the flow of the other person's comments, and show enough interest to ask questions, but not talk enough to control the conversation. I don't think I was completely successful, but the two people I talked with responded so positively to me that I felt very encouraged that maybe I might be good at this. I'm looking forward to doing this. December is an absolutely crazy month, though. Work pressures are incredibly intense, and we have the potluck party in a couple of weeks.
A LiveJournal friend, Leah, wrote about a friend, Jeff, who died of Hodgkins Lymphoma. He was 25. It's heartbreaking. His best friend wrote a beautiful, touching last entry. I'll be thinking about Jeff for a long time. May he rest in peace.
9:57:11 PM 
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