Not the post I expected to type. Stick with me here. Content warnings: Cancer, surgeries, mortality, and general unpleasantness in the context of a dog. I'm postponing my surgery until after my wedding. I know, I know, I've been fighting for this for 15 years now, so why am I waiting? Because if I don't, I may lose my mind. And here's why:
You may already know that May was something of a shitshow for me. And by that, I mean May fucking sucked. I had plans of doing a weekly countdown to the Yeeterus, talking about how I felt, what appointments were happening, things of that nature. As you can see, that didn't happen. Not out of laziness or disinterest, but because I couldn't mentally bring myself to do it. All the excitement I had for finally fixing my body was overshadowed by the shit.
Early in May, I noticed that my corgi mix Vera seemed to be having some issues with her anal glands. For about 2 days, she was poking at her butt like dogs sometimes do when an anal gland won't express itself, and then I noticed that it looked like one or both of her anal glands were leaking. Which is gross, but not necessarily too concerning. It's not entirely uncommon for dogs to have a blocked anal gland, and if it's a partial blockage, then it makes sense that the fluid would more leak out than come out normally during defecation. I gave it a day or two to resolve, and when it didn't, I called the vet. They couldn't get her in immediately, but it seemed like such a small thing that I didn't really worry about it. We saw the vet less than a week after the problem started.
The left anal glad was full, but not problematic. The right, however, had a mass. And not a small one.
I'll save you all the suspense and worry I went through: it turned out to be adenocarcinoma, a highly metastatic form of cancer. Even before that had been confirmed, I agreed that the mass had to be removed, because cancer or not, it was causing her at least discomfort, and I was not looking forward to cleaning anal gland fluid off of everything for the rest of her life. The mass was large; the removed anal gland was over 3x the usual size with the mass. Both glands were removed out of an abundance of caution. Margins were achieved on all sides, albeit some as small as 1mm. X-rays showed no signs of metastases at the time of surgery. But even if we caught it before it had a chance to spread, it will come back.
There were some post-surgical complications. Fortunately, continence was never an issue, despite some pretty aggressive tissue removal. Infection was an issue that ultimately led to a revision surgery, a drain, and so fucking many tears and second-guesses. This was a 3-week process that felt like 3 months and probably took 3 years off my life. Vera is finally showing serious progress, but ultimately, we may have as little as 6 months left with her. Devastated does not begin to describe it.
Meanwhile, since mid-April, Lee and I have been seeing a personal trainer in addition to dieting. We both desperately want to lose some weight and also get in shape before the wedding. It's been HARD. Our trainer doesn't let us slack off, and she has every intention of getting us to our goals in our goal time. It's been a complete nightmare, to be completely honest. We have been eating extremely well: high protein, low fat, low (but not super-low) carb. I've been following Weight Watchers (which as worked for me very well in the past) and Lee has been counting calories. We've been wearing FitBits to keep track of our activity, making sure we eat in accordance with said activity, drinking far more water than we ever have previously, and are getting at least our recommended weekly exercise. And yet...the scale has barely moved, and measurements certainly haven't. It's fucking maddening. This past week, I've finally started to see some (very, very slow) weight loss. The most infuriating part is that before COVID, I was doing WW with no exercise and had lost 25lbs, dropped noticeably in clothing size, and was barely even sticking to the diet. There was a lot of fudging involved. Had it not been for the 'rona, I would have hit my goal weight well before my original wedding date and been perfectly happy. Now, I'm doing absolutely everything right and seeing no results. It's fucking maddening.
Like I said, I have finally started to see the weight start to trickle off. I've only missed 2 training sessions, one to illness and one to utter exhaustion, and have even gone so far as to follow the training session via facebook messenger video chat. I may not have a whole lot of progress regarding weight loss/size loss, but I'm definitely stronger, and measurably more fit than I was when I started. There's absolutely no doubt about that. Minimally invasive or not, a hysterectomy is a major surgery. I would be out of the gym for a bare minimum of 2 weeks, with a possibility of being out for as much as 8 weeks. Even if it was only 2 weeks, how much progress would I lose? Yes, I'd probably drop a couple of pounds by having body parts removed, but how badly would it stall overall? And if I should backslide and gain weight? Honestly, my body image is pretty fucking shit as it is. If that happened, I'd probably lose my fucking mind altogether.
And there's more going on than just those things. Don't particularly feel like getting into them here, but suffice it to say, I mulled it over for a couple of weeks, and I decided that going through with surgery now, in the middle of all this, with so much up in the air would be a bad call for my mental health. I am still doing the surgery. This is in no way me backing out entirely. This is me prioritizing my mental health over the fix of a long-term physical issue that is currently being controlled by medication. So this morning, I called my doctor's office. I explained that some major things had come up, and that I need to postpone. I'll admit, it didn't feel great to make that call. It was definitely me making a trade, and even though I know it's the right call, it's not a trade I particularly wanted to make. The new surgery has not been scheduled yet. I assume November is just too far away to schedule. I have a note in my phone to call back later in the summer.
There's no feel-good ending here. Shit has gone somewhat awry, and in order to maintain my sanity, I'm holding off on something I've wanted for a long time. If the IUD wasn't working at least acceptably well, I wouldn't wait. If Vera's prognosis was clearer, I probably wouldn't wait. If I was making better progress with getting in shape/losing weight, or if I could be guaranteed that I'd be back to my current workout routine in 2 weeks, I probably wouldn't wait. If the other factors that I haven't discussed weren't gnawing at my mind, I probably wouldn't wait. If two or more of those things weren't factors, I definitely wouldn't wait. But that's a pile of reasons that I should wait. Sure, there's still a degree of "Feels Bad, Man" involved, but ultimately, waiting is the smart move. Yeeterus 2021 will still happen, just later than originally planned.
