How to Survive a Menty B breaks down medical trauma and illness-induced PTSD with me, a therapist with both PTSD and a Ph.D.
This is my survival guide, my survival story, and my survivor legacy.
How to Survive a Menty B is a library for people navigating the upheaval of medical trauma and PTSD. With each post, I explore a new topic and dissect the role of medical trauma in daily life and relationships.
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How Did That Happen?
Medical Trauma Journal
Wednesday 11/17/21
It’s been over a year of living out here in the woods. It’s nearly Thanksgiving. How did that happen?
The past months blur into a single thread – my fight with cancer.
This morning, my drain hole leaked again. It's stubborn and refusing to heal, an angry, leaking metaphor in my side if I’ve ever seen one.
My body hurts but I think it wants progress more than relief.
I have a BTS song in my head and I will let it bounce around, offering a momentary dance party in the sun.
I will read and listen to music in the sun while I still can.
Thursday 11/18/21
The night brings sweats and a throbbing reminder of the pain in my bones.
The hole in my side seems a little smaller and didn't leak an entire river out this morning—just a dribble.
I keep cleaning it with alcohol, milking out anything that I can, and then loosely covering it with gauze and tape to let it dry. Today, I'll nap in the bedroom and see if I can’t let it air dry for a touch.
Bone pain is the worst complaint today, though.
And then life continues…
I think my childhood best friend is dying.
Last week, my sister forwarded me a GoFundMe link for my childhood best friend.
I thought it couldn't be real. It was written presumably by my friend, or at least from her point of view.
Could this be a joke/prank/hilarious scam? Maybe? It’s in poor taste, but maybe?
It didn't sit well with me. The post said she had been sick for a while and was given two months, but would be traveling to have some surgery at UCLA. It also said she was not ready to go but was happy and at peace. My brain looked for every possible language loophole to prove what I wanted it to. My brain and I needed reassurance that this was somehow not real.
I kept clicking the link as the days passed. I looked for signs that this wasn't true and that I didn't have to think about it anymore. But people kept donating to it. I might even recognize a few names, but I couldn't be sure. I still didn't want to know.
It's like I want to pour her out into my pensive. I keep thinking about all these moments she was there for in my life and our experiences together.
I donated money and sent a text. I can’t leave it alone.
Saturday 11/20/21
My ear still hurts a lot. It’s painful eating and drinking, too.
But my drain hole is less leaky. Hopefully, this hole will finally close once and for all. I know I keep hoping that every week.
I miss my family. I wish I felt better. I want to see my sister. I wish I could work out already. I want a vacation. I wish for a beach. I want my hair back.
Sunday 11/21/21
My ear is still really fucked up. Sharp shooting pains, sore throat, headache. My jaw is clenched too much at night, too.
I'm tired. I am still getting 8 hours of sleep, but I'm tired.
I'm starting to think I'm dying again. I was beginning to let it sink in that I might have a life, but now I am sure I will get pneumonia and die. Or create a life and then get secondary breast cancer.
My incisions are a little more red today. I have a low-grade fever. My ear hurts. My throat hurts. The whole left side of my face is sensitive to the touch, and the lymph node in my neck on the left side is swollen.
I need yet another doctor's appointment.
I've been taking Tylenol and Advil and resting a lot. I am drinking lots of liquids. I went for a walk outside.
But I feel like shit and can’t do anything about it.
Monday 11/22/21
The day started simply enough: Wake up, brush my teeth, take medicine, and get dressed.
Except halfway through getting dressed, I started puking bile.
I was trying to get dressed for a follow-up appointment with the plastics team, so I was headed to the doctor’s office anyway.
Once we arrived, no one knew what to make of all my symptoms. My ear hurts, my throat hurts, my wound is leaking, and I generally feel like shit—no fever today, but sometimes chills. I was vomiting bile tons of times. But my Southern politeness almost got me sent home.
I don’t complain, and I can speak to them calmly about how terrible I feel because I grew up in doctors’ offices and I’ve had cancer for 8 months now.
Three, very expensive, fancy, medical professionals in the best cancer hospital in the world were standing around me saying that, based on everything I was saying, I should go to the hospital immediately, but because I seemed fine, they were confused.
I’m just polite. And it almost got me killed.
Matt had to swoop in and explain to help me out. I wonder what I’d be like if I had been from Brooklyn.
So, they sent us to the big hospital. The scary hospital.
So far, I got IV antibiotics and am staying overnight. Ultrasound in the morning to see what’s hanging out in the boob. Clearly, it’s something. Like I’ve been saying.
But now they’ve all seen the ooze, the yellowy-green pus blood fluid that’s been coming out of the open hole in my side for a while now.
I’d feel safer being here, except I’m not in love with all the choices.
Either I feel better, and there’s not a pus bubble in my boob, and I can go home. Maybe…
Or, they do the ultrasound and find some fluid they could drain out with a needle. Maybe…
Or, they have to take me back to surgery. That’s the tricky one. They could go in there and clean out all the nasty shit and then put another expander back in that isn’t covered in pus.
Or, they could take me back to surgery and say it’s a mess in here and leave a flat closure for now. Not feeling great about that…
Again, I want to feel better, and my body seems to have other plans.
Meanwhile, I’m sweating my ass off in this plastic bed, and I don’t know what will happen.
Eventually, it will get better, I guess, but holy shit, I’m not sure when.
Grist for the mill, my therapist would say.