Loss and Life in General

So far 2016 has not been an easy year for me.  Was given the skin cancer diagnosis on January 21st and things have been pretty par for the course since then.  The trials and tribulations of being married to an adult child of a narcissist (who also happens to be in complete denial of the face that his mother is a narcissist) have not gotten any easier.  This past Monday (March 7) we found out the counselor we've been working with for months died suddenly and unexpectedly.  It affected me quite profoundly and has left me feeling the loss of the support he provided.  At this point I'm not willing to even consider finding another counselor because we put in so much emotional work and I just don't feel like I can do that again anytime soon.  Building a good relationship with any counselor is crucial to getting anything constructive done and I just don't have the emotional energy available for that.  The other part of this, of course, is dealing with Donald's constant need for reassurance at the expense of my feeling of emotional stability.  It's not a good combination and with the death of our counselor the separation will probably come sooner rather than later.  The other major issue with Father Eugene's unexpected death is I'm now left with either finding another counselor who's dealt with childhood sexual trauma before or just dealing with it on my own.  And right now I just don't know how to proceed with that.

Update on the pre-op appointment is next, although if you've got a problem with needles you may want to stop reading here.

So...it might be best to talk a bit about the mass that was removed from my right eyelid in December before I get into the pre-op info.  The ophthalmologist at Langley AFB and an assistant removed the bulk of the tumor on my eyelid with a local anesthetic.  This means they used lots of eye drops the numb the hell out of my eye, and finally inserted a needle with general anesthetic several places around the eyelid and finally into the eye itself.  It sucked.  I'm not afraid of needles and could get shots all day long, but having a needled inserted into my eyeball was quite anxiety producing.  After that needle it was a piece of cake.

Now, moving on to the pre-op....the very nice dermatology specialists had several of us folks who were going to be receiving MOHS surgery to have their cancer tumors removed watch a video.  The video was great except that it talked about taking some extra tissue around the actual tumor to ensure all the cancer was removed.  That particular method isn't going to work well with me because there IS no extra tissue on the human eyelid.  The other issue the video raised that concerned me was the fact that is talked about doing multiple sessions of general anesthetic to get all the cancer.

I was less than thrilled by the idea of having a needle go into my eyeball not only once, but possibly several times.  It was a concern I raised with the surgeon who was understanding, but said the only other possibility was to put me to sleep for the day so they could do the removals as necessary.  Being put to sleep was not a thrilling idea either because I need to be able to eat frequently to manage my hypoglycemia.  There are times I'm amazed my body functions at all with the multitude of individual problems it has.  The surgeon was confident he'd be able to remove the mass in one go, but of course he can't guarantee that because once the mass is off they have to cut the skin into layers and look at each layer under a microscope to make sure they got all the cancerous tissue off.  So we decided that instead of having to go through my eye more than once he'd instead go through a nerve in my mouth.  Which I'm much more on board for, so yay I suppose.  The surgery itself is scheduled for May 10 and we've pretty much been told to expect to be at the hospital for most of the day.

The other super great thing that happened is I got the results back from the biopsy done on the other side of my face.  It's showing pre-cancerous (which means it's on its way to becoming cancerous, but isn't quite there yet) which brought me a lecture to do all the things I'm already doing when I'm in the Sun but hey, who's counting wear sunscreen and reapply every two hours, wear a wide-brimmed hat, put on clothing with SPF, and wear sunglasses.  Okay, I don't wear sunglasses all that often because I have prescription glasses, but I guess I'll be wearing them over the summer now.  Ugh.  At least I know when the hell they're going to cut my eyelid now -_-