Back to School

This week I returned to school! Here's how this week went...

On Sunday I was so excited to go back to school. Not like a college kid's first day of college excited, but like a five year old on Christmas eve excited. Yeah... I was extremely excited, and how could you blame me? My number one goal after my health related goals from the cancer treatment was to return to school. Returning to school is the ultimate indicator to myself that my life is moving forward from the destruction that this past year caused. School brings a little bit more "normalcy" to my life.

I made sure I had all of my school supplies and books etc. I double and triple checked it. I checked my registration status and my class schedule online a dozen times; Half of the time in disbelief that I'm actually going back to school, and the other half making sure that everything is ready and I didn't screw up the registration after the confusing leave of absence process. I was obsessed with making sure everything went smoothly for the first day, and as far as preparation with supplies, and enrollment went; it did.

The first day generally went well. I got to my classes on time. I was an hour early to my first class because I was just that anxious to go to school. Arriving on campus(I commute by the way), and walking to my first class brought with it many emotions. I couldn't help but think how lucky I am to be going back to school when so many other kids aren't so lucky. Some of these people I have gotten to know over the last year through blogging, and had the same cancer as me. Kids with bright futures that were cut short because of this cancer. Now I'm not sure if my scans will be clean three months from now or ten years from now, and that's why I treat every day as a blessing... That applies to school in that I treat every second of every class like its the last time I will ever be strong enough to be in college.

It was a big day for Joey too; first day of high school!

I answered questions, took notes, and did my reading. I answered a lot of questions in my first class; Computer Engineering. I felt that I needed to get that out of my system. It was out of character for me to participate so much. I probably answered more questions than I would have last year combined in that one class. It was a big confidence booster for me.

This first week I only had 3 classes. Well technically I had four different classes, but I only had three at one time. More on that in a bit. My Math professor was away so I only had three of my four classes this week. Originally I had Spanish on my schedule, but after just two days of the class I realized that it was going to be too much work and stress for me. I haven't used spanish since my junior year of high school which now makes ~3.5 years, and it seems that college spanish is much more intense than the high school stuff. I need two units of a foreign language which is equivalent to four years of high school Spanish for the Computer Science major(which doesn't make sense to me at all especially considering it is the only major in the engineering department that requires this). Well anyway, I dropped it and scheduled Econ in its place. I dropped what would have been the most difficult class on my schedule in Spanish, and added Econ; the easiest class on my schedule. To sum up the difficulty of my courses:

-Physics: My most difficult class; I'll need to work hard to get a good grade like I did with my previous Physics class.
-Computer Engineering: Easy
-Matrices: The topic is interesting so I'll do well.
-Econ: Very Easy

Your probably wondering how I did this first week physically. If I had to grade it I'd give it a 70%. Tuesday and Thursday were easy because I had only one class those days. They were recovery days for me. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were exhausting. I'm there from 9 a.m until 3 p.m. My four hour break (which will become three hours next week with the addition of the Math class) is spent eating, studying, and napping in the library. By the time I get home I just want to eat and sleep. I could drink coffee like all of the other college students, but I'm extremely picky with putting any type of drugs or supplements in my body after receiving a lifetimes' worth of chemicals in the past year. I have to make sure I eat well, get adequate sleep at night, and keep my stress levels down. Dropping Spanish helped reduce my stress by a lot! My arm ached all week so I was popping the Advil to keep the pain down. My arm is simply not ready to be carrying a backpack, and writing notes all day yet. I think I needed at least another month for my arm to be ready for school. The last thing to note here is that using the handicapped parking makes a big difference for me. Especially since I would have to walk up a pretty steep hill if I didn't have it. This helps me not only conserve energy, but also limit the added wear and tear on the unstable hardware in my arm right now.

I have more that I want to write about, but this is already pretty lengthy...maybe I'll write another blog post in the next couple of days.

I'm so happy, and thankful to be back in school!

Surgery Follow Up

Yesterday I had a follow-up appointment for my surgery. I don't have to wear the sling anymore which is great! That thing was getting really annoying, and now I could start using my right arm again. Right now it's really stiff and painful, and I lost a lot of flexibility. She suggested that I just start out slow, and work my way up but don't progress to anything crazy like swimming or shooting hoops for at least six weeks from now. I can drive now, but I have to be really careful because I can't react quickly with my arm at this point. I didn't have an x-ray yesterday because it's way too early to tell if the bone graft is taking. I will go back for my next appointment at the end of November. Then I will have an x-ray, and hopefully it will show that it's finally taking, and I could move onto strength rehab(cross fingers). In summary when the end of November comes around, my arm won't feel any better than it did before my second surgery, but if the bone is taking then I did make progression towards having a more functional arm.

As far as I feel now... I feel o.k. Not great, but I think good enough for school. Surgery definitely set me back a bit. I haven't slept well since surgery, and that's because I had a really difficult time getting off of the painkillers. I took them longer than last surgery because my hip was a lot worse this time. Yesterday the first thing my surgeon asked me was not how my arm felt, but how my hip felt. She feels bad for how hard she was on it in surgery. I still have a little bit of pain in my hip, but I have only been taking tylenol for it. Walking isn't really that bad surprisingly. I mean it was difficult to walk the first week after surgery, and I was using a cane to get around the house, but it has gotten better. It's at its worst now when I lay down and that's why my sleeping got so messed up. I was taking dilaudid every night which would put me right to sleep, but when I tried to stop taking it I couldn't fall asleep. I moved on to taking ativan for a sleep aid which worked well until one night I was in so much hip pain that I couldn't fall asleep after taking it so I decided to take dilaudid for the pain. Bad idea! The two drugs used together made me so sick the following day. Since then I haven't taken anything to help me fall asleep, and I have finally adjusted as of a few days ago. I also lost some weight which is really bad for me since I'm already pretty thin. I've been eating well the last few days, and I'm trying my best to put some of that weight back on.

I go back to school on the 25th which is this Monday. I'm a little nervous about not being physically ready for it. Like this weekend I got a haircut(first haircut since August of 2013!), and afterwards I walked around the city for a little bit. I walked half of a mile, and was sooo tired. I'll be using handicap parking so I won't be walking that distance on a daily basis for school, but it's scary that I was so tired after walking only half of a mile! Getting back to a regular schedule, and being up and about every day is going to be a hard adjustment to make physically. The first things I thought after walking that distance was, "That was pretty rough", and "I hope I'm ready for five days a week of this for the next 4 months."

Remove the physical part of the equation, and I could say there is no doubt that I'm ready to return to school. Missing the past year of school really really stunk. There is no activity from my pre-cancer life that I wanted to do more this year than to go to school. One thing that was really difficult for me going through cancer was seeing everyone else's lives keep moving forward while my own just stopped. This Monday I get to return to what I missed so much this year. I can't wait!

Arm Surgery #2

On Tuesday I had surgery on my arm and hip. The procedure went well and I have no signs of nerve damage. I can move my fingers, and wrist freely. This time I was given a patch before my surgery to help with the nausea and it worked! I was a little bit allergic to the patch(my chest and arms got hot and red. It looked like I was sunburnt), but the pros far outweighed the cons. I only threw-up twice which is a lot less than last time. The surgery went as planned except for the surgery's duration. I was told it would take 1-2 hours, but it ended up taking almost 4 hours! When I woke up from the surgery and noticed that my surgery took a lot longer than expected I was really afraid to hear bad news(remember the mri on my arm didn't prove there was no cancer in my arm; it was clear with the little visibility of the scan, but it didn't show the whole picture). That was the type of news I was fearing, and was largely the reason why I threw-up in the hospital. Then they explained the reason my surgery took so long. It was because they had a difficult time scraping my hip for the bone cells. The nurses told me that if they knew that my surgery was going to take that long then I would have been cathed. Luckily for me I wasn't, but it was extremely difficult to pee. It took me so many tries and it wasn't until my last chance that i finally had success. Getting cathed was next because I was retaining too much fluid. It was funny in the end because the nurses were celebrating for me.

My arm scar was mostly reopened, and the scar on my hip is longer than the last time. There are 28 stitches in my arm and 10 in my left hip. My arm isn't as sore as the last time, but the hip is worse. I've been on the Dilaudid the last couple of days and it has made the pain mostly bearable. I had morphine in the hospital, but I switched to Dilaudid because it works better.

This time I have a little more restrictions from the surgery. I'm not allowed to use my arm for anything. I can't even use it for simple things like eating or typing. This post is all typed purely left handed. No stretching or anything. My arm is to stay in this sling and that is all.

I only stayed one night at the hospital and was discharged late Wednesday. Yesterday I was fighting to stay awake too much, and I felt like garbage. I slept through the majority of today, and I feel much better. I still get nauseous from time to time now that I'm off of the patch. I just take Ativan or zofran to combat that. My hip hurts a lot, but my arm isn't nearly as bad. Granted my arm hasn't been tested yet. It only bothers me if I sit straight up due to the gravity on it. I'll be wearing a sling for the next two weeks, and I'll be using my cane until it gets easier to move about. My arm and hip are both pretty swollen.

Hopefully this makes sense. I'm tired and can't think perfectly straight right now.

All in all the procedure was a success. Thanks for the prayers and support. Now hopefully my humerus will start to union. That is next.

Some pictures:

Joey

Mom

Drainage from my hip

Betadine was all over my arm. I think they did that for sarcoma awareness!

Those stockings are comfy

The hemovac drains( I had one for my hip and one for my arm like last time)

The Incision