A New Woman After Tube Removal

This morning at 4:30 A.M. I felt pretty bad- mostly congestion in and around the intubation tube. Breathing only by mouth is very uncomfortable as anybody with a BAD cold will say. While they promised to take it out on Friday, 4:30A.M. wasn't Friday to them, and they said the doctors do the rounds at 8A.M. Paraphrasing Einstein, 'A minute with your hand in a fire seems like an hour, and an hour with your love feels like a minute". So time inched by and at 8:15A.M. I felt terrible. Then the doctor came; she took out the offending tube from my nose to my stomach (yuk); I blew my nostrils out; I was a new woman....So much so that by the afternoon they took away the glucose infusion, the bandages, and I was walking the halls with my son (with pain medication still being infused every 6 hours), discussing all the Charles Burchfield art on the walls, and he was giving me his opinion about which of the photos I've taken this week might make good embellished fabric collages. At 4:30P.M. Dr.Lele came by with his student entourage, asked some questions and then said ....."you're ready to go home tomorrow". As I said before, I'll apparently need 5 weeks of radiation treatment because the muscle around the vagina was ...what's the word...cancer infected? Still haven't heard about the lymph nodes, but will look forward to there being no cancer intrusion there. Anyone who comments or reads this....

Love and thank you for being there for me,

Drina