Stuff and (Curse Words)

Several things:
--My scar is healing beautifully. It looks amazing. I still haven't had any post-surgical pain, which is awesome.

--I can’t eat solid food; not even saltines, rice, or pasta. I can’t drink anything other than Ensure and water.

I ate four bites of plain spaghetti with a minute amount of cheese and margarine, and thirty-six hours later, I’m just now feeling a little bit better.

There could be a shared cause between the digestive (curse word) and these (curse word) clots. See following....

-- I’ve been learning about clots this past week. This information sums up what appears to be going on in my (curse word) body most concisely:

Some types of lung, stomach and bowel cancers produce a substance called MUCIN. This mucous substance increases your risk of developing a blood clot. If you have cancer of the pancreas, bowel, lung, stomach, ovary, or womb, you are at a slightly higher increased risk of developing a blood clot. (Source)

Trousseau Syndrome: Mucin that activates clots in certain cancers that is associated with venous thrombosis and hypercoagulability; the blood may spontaneously form clots in the portal vessels, the deep veins of the extremities (such as the leg), or the superficial veins anywhere on the body. These clots present as visibly swollen blood vessels (vasculitis), especially the veins, or as intermittent pain in the affected areas; marantic/non bacterial thrombotic endocarditis. (Source)

Basically, it appears that this mucin is my problem. The bottom line is that the tumors in my body shed their malignant outer surface cells and these cells get into my bloodstream and mess my blood and digestive systems up. (Source)

It’s okay to only be able to drink Ensure and water when I’m home with Dresden; it’s a lot harder when I’m with other people who are eating and drinking all kinds of delicious things that I want to enjoy with them. Even when I’m at home, I can’t have the few things I was still able to eat a couple weeks ago...

--As for the clots in my arm and leg, they appear to be resolved or resolving. My left foot started hurting very badly on Saturday and I began putting Arnica gel on it... It took away a bit of the pain and I’m pretty sure it somehow helped prevent whatever was trying to start going on there. So that’s good, and it's something I'll know to do in the future.

That’s what’s going on with that stuff.

--I’ve also been having some insanely intense chills that last for hours and hours—and don’t stop until I sit in a bathtub of hot water for about thirty minutes or put socks on my hands and feet and get under a mountain of blankets.

I never knew my body could get so cold. The weird thing is that after I begin to warm up, my body often feels like someone turned up an internal furnace about twenty degrees, usually for about fifteen minutes to an hour. It’s very strange.

--I think that’s enough for one blog post.

I’m ready to be Home and it’s extremely difficult to keep this (curse word) in perspective right now.

I’m ready to be done with clots and mucin and Ensure and being exhausted all of the time and my hip hurting and random veins hurting and digestive anguish and cold chills etc etc etc.

In His Grip, Martha