"She's Down! She's Down!"

Susan going into triage mode!

As my sister would say, "Only you Yog, only you." And I had hoped that this journey would be free of a 'Yog incident' but apparently I just couldn't escape one; two days before the big surgery was my time! And now that you've officially met Susan and Sydney (AKA S & S), it might be time to come clean about such an incident and give you a little pre-surgery back story.

So, after seeing the plastic surgeon 3 weeks ago and meeting S & S for tea and dinner, they invited us back to their house to pick up some post-surgery items to help me out. We followed our new Cancer Concierge friends home and parked in their long driveway. As I squeezed out of the passenger seat (that was parked mighty close to their driveway column), I felt my right foot slipping off of their driveway and into a garden area. Feeling myself falling backwards, I saw a shadow in the dark that looked like a 'limb' so I grabbed onto it to help my body stay upright. As I quickly clutched onto it and as my momentum was pulling me backwards towards the ground, I couldn't seem to stop myself from falling back. Then, I felt needles in my hand as it slid down the 'branch' (AKA, cactus plant!). 'LET GO! LET IT GO YOG!' is all I heard screaming in my head. Falling back, I was suddenly aware that my left arm was going down on the driveway which I felt I needed to protect immediately since I had an armpit of stitches from lymph node surgery the day before. I tossed my iPhone onto the cement and landed straight down on my hand and elbow in the middle of our friend's cactus garden. YIKES! What was poking me underneath?

Hil came running around the car, while Sydney (still recovering from reconstruction surgery 3 weeks earlier) starts yelling at Susan parked ahead of us! "She's down! She's down!" Immediately, Hil ran over to me in the dark (mind you, she NEVER swears, and even when she does, it sounds so weak that I usually rate her - 4.5, 3.0, 6.5!), when I was greeted with her screaming at me as she knelt down beside me - "Gah Yog - WHAT THE HELL?! WHAT THE HELL?!" Shocked, I said, "Why are you yelling at me?" "I'M NOT!" (still heard yelling!). In the meantime, Susan, calmly walks towards us saying, "What do you mean she's down?"

Not able to roll over on my left side back onto the driveway because of my soreness from the surgery and not wanting to roll over to my right into more of the cactus garden, all I could think about were the thorns in my hand and whatever was poking me on my backside. Eventually, Hil got in front of me so that I could wrap one arm around her neck as Susan pushed with all of her might from behind me on the slanted driveway. Finally, they got me back up onto the cement and in a standing position. Whew!

I hobbled into the house with all three of them surrounding me in order to sit me down, when Sydney and Susan promptly went into triage mode (man, that nursing action is impressive!).  And may I say that it was so handy to have a nurse and a wound-care specialist on hand during this type of situation. Sydney got me my pain meds, Susan pulled out her soft-sided, red, wound care suitcase and swiftly went into I'm-on-Survivor-and-I'm-a-bad-ass-girl-scout mode. She immediately started washing my hands with antiseptic, brushing the cactus thorns off, unzipping my sweatshirt to take it off to tie an icepack to my hip with it while checking my stitches and giving me arnica to keep my hip from bruising (too late!). Sydney handed me a glass of water and my Norco prescription, while Hil kept comforting me from behind - this new 'Healing Dream Team' was kicking booty on my newest problem. Within minutes, we were all roaring with laughter, cracking jokes, feeding their dogs while doing a lemme-show-you-my-new-breast reconstruction-show-and-tell-session.

All in all, this crazy incident lightened my mental load and gave hope that on the other side of this in less than 24 hours, there would be life to live that was full of fun, laughter, friends and inevitably, another 'Yog Incident.' (I did not disappoint sister! Did not.)