And Onward Against Lymphedema

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

One thing leads to another.

In this case once my wife rammed her hand against the wall last Thanksgiving; once the swelling began – subtle and mostly unnoticed; once she had trigger finger in which the tendon running through a particular finger swelled a bit and no longer slipped and slid through its usually smooth opening; once the doctor gave two shots to the finger with cortisone that certainly cured the trigger finger but made the swelling worse; once the cancer doctor pooh-poohed the possibility lymphedema occurring in one of HIS patients!; once the practitioner who was supposed to order the compression sleeve and glove; once she finally went to a practitioner who did arm massage AND remembered to order the garments…

Now it’s a daily, sometimes painful, always tedious, usually uncomfortable battle to wrap the arm before work, wear the compression glove (AND figure out how to clean it after holding the hands of two dozen grubby kindergartners), and a monstrously over-sized oven mitt looking nighttime compression sleeve (and hoping she doesn’t take it off in the middle of the night without knowing it…)

So, you think it’s tedious reading this?

Try living it.

Just like with the 18 repeats of the every-three-week chemo treatments, healing is not coming fast. In fact, it seems to be not coming at all.

What is it that the massage therapy and oven mitt treatment and daily wrapping is trying to accomplish? The answer to that is simple: push the lymph back into the system when some of the pumps are missing.

As I explained before, lymph carries the white blood cells that fight disease. That’s a good thing, right? Yes. If you get a cut on your finger, the lymph with its white blood cells it pushed through your body not by a heart, but by the bending of your arms, legs and neck. The movement of the muscle squish thumb-sized bags called nodes and lymph squirts out, rushing to the site of the infection.

The squished nodes start to expand again, sucking up spare lymph and sending it on its way.

Of course, these are the very nodes that become infected with breast cancer cells and are cut out.So – if you have fewer nodes, they can’t pump the lymph away and it stays.

And stays.

And stays.

The arm or leg or foot or neck swells with lymph. That is lymphedema.

Sending the lymph back to where it belongs is like trying to replace the ruined water turbines inside of a monstrous hydroelectric dam with hand pumps duct-taped to the outside of the dam. While it can work, the process of pumping them is a daily, sometimes tedious, usually uncomfortable battle before work…

My wife battles lymphedema constantly as well as working at a challenging job with very needy children. I do what I can to support her, but that usually amounts to being a cheer section and sometimes massaging the arm to drain the lymph back down to its home nodes where it belongs.

It’s a long, hard battle and I continue to stand on the sidelines, struggling with what I can and cannot do.

Image: http://www.nationalgeographicstock.com/comp/04/528/1347295.jpg
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