Home Again, Home Again

I am successfully home from lung surgery!  Whohoo!  On Wednesday, Dr. Colson made three incisions in my torso and was able to remove two tumors in my left lung with minimal impact.  She was very pleased with the way the operation went, and said my lung looked great from the inside.  I only spent two nights in the hospital, which is much less time than I anticipated, and I am certainly not complaining.  Apparently I'm good at recovering (which is a particularly useful skill to have when you have a chronic disease).  Also, I'm on narcotics (so please excuse any extra weirdness my brain may produce here).



Being discharged, however, doesn't really mean I am doing a whole lot more at my house than I was in the hospital.  I have been parked on the couch since Tom delivered me home safely, with the cats helpfully holding down the blanket at my feet so it doesn't float away.  My whole left side hurts, but I have found that I have a pretty high tolerance for pain.  For about 24hrs after surgery, most of the muscles in my torso thought it would be helpful to spasm regularly, particularly around my incision sites.  As you might imagine, it was not actually very helpful (that damn latissimus dorsi muscle is such a jerk), and I was in a fair amount of pain.  Fortunately, the folks on the Thoracic floor at Brigham and Women's are good at their jobs, and took good care of me, pumping me full of drugs that helped ease my pain and relax the muscles.  Now that I'm at home, I still have pain, but it's nothing compared to the spasms.  Dr. Colson said I might be on drugs for a week or two, but after that I should be in pretty good shape.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to being waited on and chilling out, which will probably include watching too much Portlandia or Daily Show episodes on the internets, and re-reading the Divergent series in preparation for the first movie to come out.  I also hope to write a couple more blog posts about some things a little less cancer-y, so stay tuned!