Normal life...I see you in the distance...

So I have been out of the hospital for about two weeks and my infection seems to have cleared up. Last Friday I had a bit of good news; I saw my spinal surgeon and he agreed that I no longer have to wear the turtle shell suit of armor! I was jumping up and down!! He did ask that I wear the neck brace for another couple of months but I was more than happy to do that, I just didn't want to wear the body brace from hell. I can dress around a neck brace lol I can work in a neck brace, hell I can even drive in a neck brace...steps back to normal. Speaking of work, since he seemed to be in a good mood, was happy with the way the incision was sewn up, letting me out of my brace, I asked him about work, as in can I finally go back! He looked at me like I was crazy and said why would you want to? You're going through so much, yadda yadda and I said, for one thing I'm going crazy at home and for another, quite frankly, I need my paycheck back, I've got doctor bills and a new apartment to save for in addition to the fact that if you, Dr. Lee, would like to get paid, I need to work! He looked at me and said, my bill? MY BILL? Consider it written off, you don't owe me anything. I'll write off whatever you owe me, oh and no more copays and xray fees for you. I'll take care of it. I didn't know what to say, I was stunned. After repeatedly thanking him, he asked me, ok so do you still need to work if I do this?? I humbly said well, yes, you're not my only doc but I promise to take it easy, I have a desk job for gods sake, I'm not running marathons lol and he agreed that I could go back to work as long as I promise to listen to my body and not let myself get run down. I have really been blessed with an incredible team of doctors.
So! As excited as I was to jump right back into the swing of things, I still had two drains coming out of my chest that needed to finish draining and be removed. Tuesday I saw my plastic surgeon and even drove myself to the appointment. Freedom! Dr Spann said the drains weren't ready yet, they needed a couple more days, and he looked at my neck incision and said he was mostly happy but there was two spots that were still open and releasing green stuff. He explained it wasn't really an infection but it was a cluster of bacteria that needed to leave the wound before the skin would close up, instructed me to put neosporin on it for another week and take a new antibiotic called Cipro that should kill the bacteria from the inside and THEN he would try to take the stitches out on the 16th. As for the drains, he said if they stayed under 20 ml for the next two days, to come back Thursday and he would remove them. Well, they did stay below 20 so I (drove myself again, yay!) to his office and got them removed yesterday. Now, in the hospital, we had a convo and the doc said I was allowed to go thru another round of chemo when the drains were removed so yesterday at my appointment, I asked him if it was ok if I went through chemo next week and he refused. He said that the neck opening was not a good mix with chemo and if I really wanted my neck to heal once and for all, I needed to be patient, let the new medicine and neosporin do their thing and put off chemo until the skin has healed really well. I see where he's coming from, trust me, no one more than me wants the skin to close for good but it screws up my plans not to go through chemo next week. See, I didn't want to go back to work on a Monday and have to take off a few hours for chemo on a Wed...I wanted to go through chemo on the wed before I went back to work, have thu-sun to recover from it and start fresh and new on monday with 3 weeks of no doc appointments...but whatever. I'll make it work.
Anyways, now we're just being patient, using the meds and praying for the incision to close close close but I am getting closer to getting my normal life back! In other news, I weighed 159 at the docs office. Thats 52 lbs since I got sick. Now, I'm sure at least 15lbs of it had to be all boobs that were removed :) but some must have come off elsewhere because it looks like I need to go shopping for new clothes...everything is too big! Yay for tax returns...