The Ladies Room Door Art Series: Part Four

The latest in our Ladies Room Door Art Series!

I found the door above at Spanky’s. Cliff and I enjoyed lunch there after my first appointment at UNC hospital. The door has a smokey 1930-1940 look.

I discovered the door below at Old Chicago Pizza and Taproom in Chapel Hill. Love the wavy glass.

 

I spotted this on my return to UNC Hospital for a post-op check up. The Old Well is a beloved landmark on the university campus.

Daughter Laura and son-in-law Matt flew to  Turkey this summer. “Please find me some doors,” I begged. Laura reports that most looked like the one below.

But Matt got a shot of this one at La Pasion, a restaurant in Bodrum.

 

Matt’s mom Candace is a loyal blog reader. She photographed this little girl at Rockland’s Barbeque and Grilling Company in Arlington, Virginia.

Candace  found a co-ed door in a New York City bar.

And this ladies room door at the Cisco Brewery on Nantucket.

Here’s the bar’s scary men’s room door!

I ran into this elegant paper sign at the Lazy Days Winnery in Virginia. The owner of the winery is a gynecologist who not only makes wine but raises monkeys. Hmmm. Wish I could snag him for a guest post for Friend for the Ride.

 

Another paper sign!

Candace pronounced this the “booby prize” of her latest findings. This door is located at Providence Hospital, Washington, DC. Yikes! Not sure I want to sign up for surgery there any time soon.

Keep your cameras ready when you make a trek to the ladies room, and do send the photos my way. Remember, every trip to the potty is an opportunity to discover an intriguing work of art.

Thanks!

Here are the other posts in the series:

 

Part One

Part Two

 

Part Three

The Lady in the Park

My Cancer Story: Out of Surgery

I opened my eyes.The clock said noon.

Four and a half hours gone by in a twinkling.

Barbara body check:

No nausea.

No memory of a tube being whipped from my throat.

No weirdness from a catheter.

Worries Two, Three, and Four, all vanished.

Yes!

“You’ve been out of surgery for an hour,” the recovery room nurse said.

I did some fast math. My surgery lasted a half hour longer than expected, by my calculations.

Did the doctor need to remove additional nodes, meaning the cancer had spread?

Worry Number One, The Big One, despite my sleepy brain, loomed large.

An orderly wheeled me out of the recovery room.

I saw Cliff for a moment. At least I thought I did.

A blur of walls. The ding of an elevator.

Next, I was in a hospital bed.

I glanced around. No other beds.My own room. Worry Number Five, gone!.

Cara, who introduced herself as my nurse, explained lots of stuff. I mostly remember her pointing out the  TV remote control and the phone, tucked in on one side of the bed. Cool!

But what about the pathology? Cliff had promised to tell me right away, good news or bad.

But he had said nothing in the flash of an instant I saw his face.

Did that mean bad news? Was he waiting until I was more stable?

Finally, at one-thirty, he stepped through the hospital room door. I hit him with the question immediately: “What’s the pathology?”

“All good!  Everything is good.”

I sank back into the bed. Never, ever have I experienced such relief.

That joy took hold and hasn’t left me yet.

My first meal arrived. A liquid one that included my beloved Coke!

Despite my high spirits, I fussed at Cliff, “Why didn’t you tell me the good news when you saw me after recovery?”

He explained that besides a half-smile, I slept, and of course, he didn’t know he wouldn’t be coming into my room right away. (Turns out, the orderly and nurse asked him to wait while they got me settled, and then forgot about him until he began to worry and inquired.)

Maybe waiting made the news even more powerful, if that’s possible.

All was forgiven, and Cliff enjoyed my jello with gusto.

An hour later we checked out the bandages. Amazing, isn’t it, that not so many years ago, this would have been a giant incision.

A visit from our pastor (don’t worry, I didn’t reveal my stomach) and phone calls added to the room’s festive spirit. Everyone reported later that I was an upbeat chatterbox.

Ordering a meal at UNC Hosptial  is great sport. The menu is divided into pretend restaurants. This is the page with Asian food.

We decided to select dinner from the Southern Cooking page. After all, we were in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Best milkshake ever. It’s probably all I really consumed. While food sounded, looked, and tasted good, my appetite was missing and wouldn’t return for two weeks.

Cara printed three goals on the white board across from my bed:

Walk.

Pee.

Eat.

Eat: Although I didn’t consume much, I passed the eating test.

Pee: The catheter, which began to bother me some by nighttime, was staying in until the morning, per doctor’s orders. Pain medicine helped. Official peeing would come tomorrow.

Walk: I’ve heard story after story of patients being pushed out of bed.

“Am I getting up?” I asked the late night nurse.

“Nope,” said the nurse. “You aren’t going anywhere tonight.”

If you told me three months ago that I’d be hooked up to tubes and ordered to stay in bed at UNC Hospital, I’d have panicked.

But that night, in that hospital bed, was just about the happiest night of my life.

I’m not sugarcoating the experience.

I’m not making light of something so serious.

I’m writing the truth.

The surgery over. My pain minimal. An excellent surgeon and her team. The kindness of family and friends and hospital staff.

And most of all, an excellent pathology report.

What more could this girl want?

My Cancer Story: Oncology

 

When you get cancer, words you rarely use  pop to the top of your vocab list.

“Oncology” is one of them.

My gynecologist said it first, but the word really hit home when I read it on the appointment letter from UNC Hospital:

UNC  OBGYN  GYN ONCOLOGY

I began to talk about MY oncologist.

Dr. Gehrig is the  head of the department, an expert in endometrial cancer and laproscopic and robotic surgery.

That Monday morning,  Cliff and I made our way down  a hallway with a huge sign shouting the word again:

Gynecological Oncology

First came registration and then weight, blood pressure, and a few other checks.

Next they ushered us into a small exam room. My eyes immediately caught this poster:

Prior to this, I most often used “survivor” in reference to the TV show. Add “survivor” to the updated vocab list.

UNC is a teaching hospital. I met with the Fellow, Dario Roque, who turns out, went to Davidson College. He partied with my kids! (and more importantly, studied hard with my kids).

Dr. Rogue brought out a chart of the female reproductive organs.

“From your pathology, we know you have an early stage, non-aggressive cancer on part of your uterine wall” (“pathology” being another vocab word I would use over and over in the coming weeks), “but we don’t know what types or stages of cancer we’ll find in the remainder of the uterus.”

Whoa.

I learned the difference between the type of cancer and the stage. “Stage” is how far the disease has spread.

“If the cancer has penetrated more than fifty percent of the uterine wall,” Dr. Roque explained, “you’ll need radiation.”

I asked about the dreaded chemo.

“With endometrial cancer, we only do chemo if the cancer has gone into your lymph nodes.”

He explained the surgery. Five incisions in the abdomen, one for a camera. “We pull the uterus out the vagina unless your uterus is too large. Then we have to make a bigger incision in your abdomen. We’ll remove nodes. We’ll test all of it while you’re still under anesthesia.”

Happily, my uterus proved, during the exam that followed, not to be large. Who knew?

After the exam, Dr. Gehrig came in and went over my diagnosis and the procedure.

“Bring a list of questions,” Cliff had told me over and over.

I was so nervous, I never brought out my list.

But I asked plenty of questions and got lots of answers. Cliff took notes.

Last, I met the researchers.

I agreed to participate in several studies, including the study from the poster above. For the first time, I realized I might help cancer patients who come after me.

Cliff and I had an hour and a half before I was due in what UNC calls “Precare:” chest x-ray, blood tests, a talk with the nurse about hospital prep, and an EKG. We hotfooted it up to Franklin Street to restaurant row, right off the UNC campus.

We courted in Chapel Hill in the 70s. I was in grad school there, and Cliff was finishing his engineering degree at Duke. Back then my uterus was just a young thing, and its only problem was cramps.

We stepped into Spanky’s, on the corner of Franklin and Columbia Street.

I opened my menu.

My mind spun from the morning events. I liked the doctors and staff. I was scared, sure, but encouraged by what I learned about the surgery and expectations for recovery.

Cliff and I have been eating out together for years, lots of years. Festive outings filled with lively conversation and good food.

“Festive” is not a word I ever thought would go on my cancer vocab list.

Festive

But “festive” describes that lunch.

Festive since I love portabello mushroom melts and Spanky’s.

Festive thanks to the good vibes we got from UNC Hospital.

Festive because I sat across from a husband who knows how to make the best of a ninety minute break from medical vocabulary.

“Festive” comes from the word “festival,” which means “a time of celebration.”

“Celebrate” isn’t a word I thought I’d add to the cancer vocab list either.

But in the weeks to come, I learned I had plenty to celebrate, in ways that surprised me.

Stick with me! The story continues. Thanks for reading and for all your love and good wishes.

My Cancer Story: Afloat!

 

Thank you all for your lively and encouraging words. Your replies to this post about my endometrial cancer touched  me and sent happy healing energy through the Web.

As soon as I was diagnosed, Friend for the Ride helped keep me afloat!

I knew I could tell my story here.  My goal is to get the word out about endometrial cancer and to comfort others who face this form of the Big C.  Posts coming soon! Once a post goes up, the link will be added to the page at the top of the blog.

I knew too, that I’d have fun taking photos for the blog, and that Cliff, my wonderful assistant through all of this, would help.

Here’s one he snapped of my first meal, a liquid one, after surgery.

 

That’s a refreshing  mojito in the plastic glass. (They do, I must say, fail to add rum at UNC Hospital).

I got great news from the oncologist last week when the final pathology came in. No further treatments.

My body is mending, although I have a new understanding of what folks mean by post-surgery exhaustion.

My appetite came back yesterday. I’ve always thought it might be useful to have no appetite, but you only have to lose it to know the joy of its return.

But back to you all.

As a friend wrote to me two weeks ago:

So much love!

XOXO
Barbara

Top Photo: I gave out the orange floats during a children’s sermon at church a few months ago. I snapped the photo knowing I would use it for the blog in one post or another. Didn’t have a clue that post would be about a topic so serious and a relief so deep.