In December I met with a Physical Therapist who informed me about the lymphedema I now have for the rest of my life due to the surgery I had back in July.  1 person out of 100 develop lymphedema after having robotic surgery for cancer…for me it is a result of removing many lymph nodes from my abdominal area.  They remove them as that is the first place uterine cancer would spread.  So to make sure there is no cancer there… they remove them.

 Lymphedema is swelling.. in my case, my legs, especially the left leg.  Feel free to look it up on the internet…  Don’t look at the pictures…as they may gross you out….but rest assured if you do look, my legs are far from those pictures and I don’t intend on letting them get that way.

I have never understood what lymph nodes do for the body….until now.  They are important little nodes to have.  However, now that I have lymphadema… support stockings, bandage wrapping, PT exercises…will all be a daily routine for me.  I guess I will be more in touch with my body than ever before… we will have to become friends!

I admit I am not a very good patient…  I still have not developed a routine of doing the lymphatic massage two times a day…nor do I wear support hose during the day…and often don’t wrap my legs at night.  But after a few days of neglecting all these… my legs get swollen and hard and eventually hurt. 

Just the past couple of weeks I decided I needed to step down from some volunteer work and focus on getting into the habit of taking care of my body.  So I’ll start on Monday… no wait… maybe that is when I start my diet… no perhaps it is when I start my new water class.  Oh for goodness sakes…guess I will be starting a lot of new things to get my physical body back on track.

Have you ever promised yourself that you would start on Monday… I am thinking with all the failed Mondays I’ve tried… perhaps I will start on Tuesday to make this different.  So here’s to Tuesday!  Do you need to start something come Tuesday?  Join me!