September 29, 2015

The hardest thing to do right now is putting on my left sock.  Putting on a sock, a simple little thing that I won’t take for granted after this. Other things that are quite difficult: getting in and out of the car, driving over bumpy patches of road, getting in and out of bed, opening a bottle of ibuprofen, picking something up that’s on the floor, putting my shoes on, tying my shoes, particularly my left shoe.

My left arm was in rough shape since the surgery removed five lymph nodes along with my left breast. I couldn’t raise my arm over my shoulder two days ago. If you don’t exercise your arm after an axillary lymph node dissection, you’re kind of screwed. Your remaining lymph nodes can stop draining properly, causing the arm to swell and a significant loss of range of motion. I need my lymph nodes to be doing their jobs right now more than ever, so I’m doing the exercises religiously. The simple task of walking my hand up and down the wall until I can feel my underarm pull a little gets easier by the day. The exercises are basically waking up the remaining lymph nodes, and don’t seem to affect the actual incision at all.

Full recovery after lymph node removal takes four to six weeks. I now shouldn’t get blood drawn or blood pressure taken from my left arm because I have less drainage creating an elevated risk of swelling. The lymph nodes send out fluid to help heal an injury and with fewer places to drain it, it can result in inflammation and swelling. Squeezing my fist above my heart over and over helps pump fluid out of the lymph nodes. You can feel all sorts of things happening during the exercises, including warm tingles mixed with slight discomfort.

Balance is my best friend right now. When you can’t use one side of your body, there is an amplifying domino effect that reverbs through the rest of your body and you need to figure out how to compensate for it. Yoga is your friend in times like these. Really it should be your friend all the time because sooner or later we will all break down physically so knowing how to balance now while you’re healthy is key. I’m not talking about the yoga people do and exclaim, “I can do man push-ups!” “Look at my beefy arms, woo!” It’s not a competition; it’s a practice in awareness of your body.

A few years ago Amelia pointed out the importance of the squat as we age. “Because dammit, we will not be the people who can’t get the hell off off the toilet when we’re old,” she says. A wise woman. I can’t use the left side of my body very well right now and suddenly I’m asking my thighs do a lot more than they used to do four days ago. Picking something up? I can’t just bend at the waist now. I have to do a deep squat to the ground and then back up. And I have to do it correctly, with my back as straight as possible. Day two I had some serious thigh burn, but my body has already adjusted and my thighs feel fine today. (You know what that means? “Squats! Yeah, look at my beefy quads, woo!”)

Getting in and out of bed? Now that is a production. I can’t really use my back because it’s pretty impossible to isolate my right side while telling my left side not to work, so it’s all stomach, all core. But we adapt. We get good at things relatively quickly. This is our new normal, Amelia and I keep saying.