The tokens of attention of some of you are like soothing spring showers on dry soil. Thank you sooo much! I'm absolutely convinced all your positive thoughts have a healing effect.

Photo made by Frank, 29 March 2011

When Frank suggested to me in January to set up a blog about my health, my first reaction was quite hesitant. Put news about myself online? Specifically news about something as personal as my own health? It felt like a weird kind of exhibitionism, something totally against my nature. Questions of concerned collegues and friends however did start to get in the way of our daily Chime-correspondence, and I decided to give it a try and go with modern times. Frank helped me with the first message, and after that (read: after another month of hesitation) , I finally found the courage to write my own messages.

Now I'd like to go a step further and report in some detail about my last operation. This is in total contradiction to my upbringing: traditionally, within my family, talking about ilnesses is simply 'not done'! But the story is actually pretty exciting, and I'm sure some of you will enjoy reading it. In the end, you're reading this blog to know about my health, isn't it? If you're not interested in medical details, simply skip the rest of this message.

When the first CT scan was made after the big operation last year, the doctors told me with some reluctance that it had shown a piece of disputable material somewhere on the top of my liver. Their first idea was to wait and see how chemotherapy influenced this spot, and perhaps stop the chemo treatment halfway and operate first, if scans showed this was urgent. Nothing had changed halfway down the treatment, and chemo was continued as planned until December. Scans showed no change, and the urgency of this 'detail' seemed to be forgotten. In February, I decided to call the oncologist myself and ask whether it wouldn't be a good idea to get rid of this piece of meat (knowing the liver can be pretty vulnerable)! She reacted enthousiastically and immediately made an appointment with my gynaecologist and a liver specialist to get the job done. So I went into hospital on 15 March thinking that I would come out with a, perhaps a tiny bit smaller, but healthier liver.

The operation was quite heavy, quite successfull and quite surprising. It turned out that the nasty bit of material was not on my liver, but on my diaphragm! So there they were, a liver specialist and three gynaecologists cutting away at my diaphragm. When I woke up, the first thing they asked me was to take a deep breath. Ouch! That hurt! But I did it, and survived. Like a newly born, taking its first breath... The days that followed, to my vague surprise, I was treated like a lung patient: I was on oxygine, had to inhale some kind of medicinal steam three times a day, was visited by physiotherapists who gave me 'swimming' and breathing excercises, and had to practice my lungs with a little plastic cup with an orange ping pong ball in it which I had to get floating for five seconds by inhaling deeply (of course the kids were eager to try this toy too!). Nobody at the gynaecology department (where I was nursed) could explain to me clearly why all this was necessary, all they told me was that the surgeons had cut a hole in my diaphragm which they had neatly sewn up again. Finally my own (much admired) gynaecologist came to see me just before I left hospital again. He explained that the diaphragm is a kind of muscle which regulates your breathing (so it's a moving life force, like your heart!) And it's the boundary between your ventral cavity and your breast cavity. Normally, there is a vacuum between the diaphragm and the lungs, so that the lungs can be properly effected by the pulling force of this breathing muscle. During the operation, by making an opening in my diaphragm, this vacuum was lifted! I have no idea how they restored it (or perhaps my own body did this), but they made several lung photos to be sure that everything was all right. And my body has been doing a lot of recovering since. I must admit I have my hi and lo days, but over all speaking I'm quite proud at the way I'm coping. I was told it takes about six weeks to heal from a biggy like this.