Christina’s Story

Site created on March 10, 2010

In 2009, at 32 years old, I was introduced to what has become one of my life's greatest teachers: a rare cancer named Pseudo-Myxoma Peritonei.  Given that my lifestyle had long been held up by the pillars of clean California eating, hatha yoga, running, & laughing so hard that my chipmunk cheeks hurt, I was completely blindsided by the diagnosis.  I've learned that we can do everything right, & still things can go wrong.  The question then becomes, what will we make of our new situation? I challenge you to find the silver linings, even on your darkest of days. They are there. Just open your eyes.

http://pmppals.org
http://www.pmpawareness.org/

Newest Update

Journal entry by Christina Vincent

It is a long-standing truism which bounces around my circle that the hospital is no place to heal.   (At least not your standard western medical facility.)  Granted, I can't shower enough accolades upon St. Francis Memorial in San Francisco and UPMC in Pittsburgh...two hospitals embodied by such first-class staff that they very nearly escape the above declaration.  My doctors here in San Francisco are well aware of the dangers of prolonged hospital stays (increased chance of pneumonia &/or exposure to infections like MRSA http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/methicillin-resistant-staphylococcus-aureus-mrsa-overview & VRE: http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/vancomycin-resistant-enterococci-vre-overview), so it was no surprise they were just as eager to get me home as I was to fly that surgical coup.

So here I am 3 days and 7 hours back in the comforts of mi casa...and it feels so good. It's the simple things...like opening all the windows in my bedroom and then lying there sprawled out on my pillows feeling the breeze do its easy dance around me. It's that change of air flow... the awareness of the charge of life through the movement of air... little things like that which have me elated to be out of the hospital. Is that crazy? That sensing the movement of air is a highlight of my day? Because it is. The steady sterile state inside the hospital walls was enough to make me feel like a rat in the control group of someone's science fair project.  Not that I was alert and aware of much from last Tuesday through Saturday afternoon. But you get the picture.

Doctor's orders are pretty clear: frequent little bits at a time.  Whether we're talking eating or moving around...I've embraced his directive.  And it's working.  My mom has also threatened to go Nurse Ratched on me if I EVEN THINK about dialing up the pace; so there's further incentive to be a patient patient.  Together she and I do my CWP shuffle every morning...about a mile and a half...enough to get the cobwebs out before spending the rest of the day at home in the official Chill-Out Zone. So I'm embracing my silent sitting Buddha. In my backyard. In the sunshine. Hey, what's not to love about watching the hummingbirds darting about, or the resident doe and her little bambis foraging in the grasses on the hillside, or there amidst the rosebushes the occasional lizard porn? I tell ya, this house-arrest thing ain't half bad.

Further proof that home is where the healing is? I haven't taken any pain medication since Sunday morning at 4am. That's not to say I don't have frequent reminders that I was just sliced open for the fifth time...Coughing? Hiccuping? SNEEZING?! Forget it. Hurts like the dickens. So pain? Lord knows, it's present and accounted for.  But, the truth is, I'd rather say "OW!" a thousand times and be clear-headed than feel nothing and be in adrift in an eternal cerebral haze.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for better living through chemistry, believe me. For a week my hand never let go of that morphine pump. But remaining disembodied is a fast ticket to nowhere. And I'm not a fan of Limbo.

There is another perk to the mandated Chill-Out Zone, one that feeds my vanity streak. (Yes, I'm human).  My tissues are still...settling. While my surgeon doubled up on securing his excellent work with both internal sutures and external staples, I have come away from this surgery with, how shall we say, a slightly altered abdominal topography.  Looking down my midline, it's clear that I now have what my Colombian carino has so eloquently dubbed "The Ridge".  A pitched-tent effect down the center of my belly. An abdominal mohawk.  A ventral fin. My surgeon said not to worry at all, "It's just a little edema and it should soon flatten...ish."  Gulp. I guess if it doesn't, I'll have a wicked backstroke.  In the meantime, I've been ordered to don a corset-like velcro wrap around my mid-section to hold me in place, lest I lose my stuffing.  What was at first cumbersome has now become second skin. So much in fact that I never want to be without this wrap. When on occasion I am, I feel I might slink to the floor like a marionette for lack of something holding me up.  In retrospect, this should have been included in my first 4-weeks post-op regiment after *every* abdominal surgery I've endured.  Any of you PMPers out there at the start of your journey, ask your physicians about how to maintain abdominal connective tissue integrity post-op.  You may save yourself a future surgery.

Until next time, my love to all.  I promise to be good and rest here in my Chill-Out Zone embracing one of my favorite Dad-isms: sometimes I sits and thinks...and sometimes I just sits.

And that's a wrap,
CWP 





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