Outgrowth

Inspirational song: The Waiting (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers)

Dr Google tells me that the average time to process and return a pathology report is three to seven days. Awesome. The reason I looked this up was I started looking at my phone compulsively this morning, waiting for a notification from the UCHealth app that never showed up. I was thinking surely it would just take a day, right? No such luck. I'm going to assume I have to read the time estimate in business days for them to run all the slides and whatnot and prepare a report for me. So at best, what, Tuesday to hear whether the nugget was just a boring little chickpea or an angry little garbanzo with evil intent. (I use this metaphor because in the photos from the inside, it looked like a little flattened legume of equivalent size.) Yes, the rule is don't panic while you wait. But Inigo Montoya spoke for us all when he said, "I hate waiting."

I did not feel 100% today. I'm moving slowly because my belly is still tender and my head and neck feel wrong. I know why my insides hurt. I do not tolerate any sort of foreign objects in my body (see: my pure loathing of the chemo port), and I have a new metal clip and glob of carbon black ink in me. The head and neck might be because I literally flopped back and forth in bed, wholly unable to sleep until past 4:30 this morning. The other option was when they were repositioning me so I wasn't mooning the surgery recovery ward, that they mishandled my neck. I'm willing to assume it was me not them.

On a happier note, we got a package in the mail this afternoon. It's mostly birthday presents for Dmitri from his auntie. But included in the mix was a little baggie for me of succulent leaves that were sprouting roots and tiny new plants. I think they are crassulas (like jade). They could be pachyphytum. If they survive to maturity, I'll be able to tell. My daughter said she got the plant at a dollar store of some variety, and it has been the strongest, most resilient thing she has ever seen. Harvey's brother Ziggy keeps stomping on it and knocking leaves off, and those leaves just pick back up and start growing again. Just the kind of pluck I needed this week.

(sniffing the box that came from the apartment where his birth mother and brother still live)