Short-lived Luck

Weeks went by and I was recovering from the surgery: the chest pain was getting less and less, day by day, however, my coughing remained.

In early December I got a call from my dear friend Danilo who recently got married and had baby girl twins in August. His Moroccan wife and family organized a sort of wedding and baptism ceremony for their girls in Marrakech, and invited me as I am honored to be one of the godmothers of the baby girls. I was totally excited to make a trip to Marrakech, but I required the permission of my lung surgeon first. Hence, I sent him immediately an email and shortly after he responded with positive news that I was allowed to take a flight.   

It was a very diversified week in Marrakech and every one took good care of me. The ceremony was planned for the following day after my arrival, and I still had to choose a caftan to wear during the celebrations. My pick was a green golden long caftan with golden ballerinas that would hide my prosthetic leg. All other women were wearing super high heels, which are not an option for me anymore.

In the late afternoon before the event, all of us women went for hair styling and make up. It was a pretty easy job on me, as I only required only make up. By this stage I had started having my first hair stubbles and I even stopped wearing a headscarf. The evenings start very late in Morocco and finish at 4am in the morning. It was a beautiful experience including traditional music, singing and ceremonial rituals such as the change of clothes of the bride and the henna tattoo painting on the bride’s hand. My main objective of this trip was to be there at the event and to meet my two gorgeous godchildren. For that reason, there wasn’t much time for sightseeing, and I rather wanted to spend time with my dear friends and my other “second family”. I stayed with Danilo’s parents Ourika Valley, a region 30km south from Marrakech entering the High Atlas Mountains.

One of the must see in Marrakech is Jemaa el-Fnaa, one of most popular squares, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985. Historically, rulers who sought to maintain their power by frightening the public used this square for public decapitations. Today the square is filled with storytellers, musicians, dancers, snake charmers, herb sellers, and more. One of the many souks surrounds the square and is crowed with many tourists. On my last day, we visited Majorelle Garden, a botanical garden in the middle of Marrakech that was designed by French artist Jacques Majorelle in the 1920s. Since 1980 the garden has been owned by Yves Saint-Laurent and his life partner Pierre Bergé. Yves Saint-Laurent’s ashes were scattered in Majorelle Garden after he died.

Upon my return, I obviously got a flu caused probably by the traveling which was a bit too tiring for me. On 17 December 2015, I had my appointment in hospital for my follow-up lung CT-scan and of course I got more bad news. I had two new spots on lung: this time they are on the right side, but the freshly operated left side remained clear. Additionally, I had a new knot in the soft tissue (fat tissue) of my butt cheeks. My luck was clearly short-lived!

My doctors urged me to do have these removed, and 5 days later I got my next general anesthesia and a thermal ablation. To be precise, the surgeon conducted a microwave ablation, where a microwave antenna is placed inside the metastasis. The microwave energy creates heat, which destroys the diseased cells. This procedure is done underneath a CT-machine to locate the metastasis correctly and to the probe will be inserted through your chest or your back (depending on the metastasis’ location). After the ablation, I had a chest x-ray to ensure my lung has not collapsed from an air pocket created in the space between my lungs and chest wall (called a pneumothorax). In my case, I had a small air pocket immediately after my surgery, but in the evening of the same day my 2^nd x-ray showed no more air is left. The following day I was meant to go back home and the doctors requested for one more x-ray before my dismissal. Obviously, luck was not on my side. I suddenly had developed a huge air pocket (pneumothorax) within 24hours and was taken into ICU. I got a tube inserted underneath my armpit, which was connected with a pump to remove the air.

Christmas Eve in Hospital

Our Christmas plans with my family in Italy had to be cancelled, and I had to accept spending Christmas in hospital. I have to be honest that I fell into a very bad depression during this time, and I started to be extremely unhappy about my situation and I started to question everything and every decision I had taken so far. My family was however amazing as usual, and tried to make my hospital stay as pleasant as possible. On Christmas Eve my parents and my brother came to see me in hospital and we had all dinner together. They brought all sorts of cold cuts, cheese, coleslaw salads, smoked salmon, and pate’ that we ate with bread and had some wine too. I was lucky to have a single room, and hence was not disturbing anyone. On Christmas day I had the next positive surprise: my mum made Lasagne with deer Bolognese. We enjoyed our lunch all together in my hospital room. Even though I was annoyed at not being able to spend the day with my grandmother and uncle in Italy, I was still grateful to have my family around me in hospital. Unfortunately, those days were clouded with very strong pain, and due to the tube I wasn’t able to move my right arm.

Family Lunch in Italy

After one week in hospital the air pocket was gone and I was allowed to go home. I actually had to decide if I was to straight away go ahead the other surgery on my butt cheek or if to firstly go home to recover for a week. I was biased in taking this decision, as on one side I wanted to get it all done, but on the other side mentally I wasn’t ready. So I decided to go home and we planned the surgery for the 7^th January 2016.

As depressed as I was I needed a change of scenery, and we headed to Italy for a week so that I could see my family. We spent New Year’s Eve in our house at Lake Garda, had our family lunches and I simply rested most of the time.

On 7 January 2016, I got the metastasis at my butt cheek removed. It was a short operation again under general anesthesia, but only a one-night hospital stay was required for observation. I got 5 stitches and I am marked with another 6 cm long scar. The downside of having the stiches on my but cheek was that I was not able to wear my prosthetic leg for several weeks until the wound was healed properly. Even though I overcame all these obstacles, I fell into more of a depression and one of the reasons was my 30^th birthday which was drawing nearer.