Positively Phoebe

**This post was transferred from the now defunct "The Long Ease" blog.** So much going on today.  Most exciting is that today is my first day working my newly negotiated schedule at my job.  Since I started there, I'd been working 7-4:30 M-Th and then in the beginning, just in the mornings on Friday.  But as we got busier, Fridays became til 3:30.  The overtime was nice, but the reality that working 9-1/2+ hour days was not easy for me became more and more apparent after my most recent bladder procedure.  By 2 or 3pm, I was ready to crawl under my desk and pass out.  My belief is that it had a lot to do with the fact that in order to be signed in at work by 7am, I was needing to get up by 4:30 or 5am.  Which, for someone who struggles as much with sleep as I do, SUCKS.  And no, I don't have a long commute, but my "post-cancer healthy lifestyle" is pretty time-consuming.  Every morning (when my bladder isn't being a jerk) I do a 20 minute wo...

That being the case, I figured this morning I would bring you all back into my humiliating world of post-treatment side effects. Today's installment of self-inflicted humiliation will revolve around the dreaded vaginal dilator. I HATE THIS THING!!!!! Seriously, I know I will hate it less if I use it more, but GAWD!  It is just terrible.  It hurts.  It makes me cramp.  It makes me bleed.  And the really sad part is... it's pretty small.  Like, its diameter is considerably LESS than the average wiener, and definitely less than that of the one I'm spending the rest of my life with.  Ahem... Every doctor appointment, they tell me "If you're having regular sex (at least 3 times a week), you won't NEED to use the dilator."  Excuse me, but I have not had sex three times in the past YEAR, people!  I was bleeding like a stuck pig for 11 months and then going through horrific cancer treatments for 3 months and the remaining side effect...

Remember that post about my last follow-up appointment?  You know.  The one where the doctor was all jazzed about my "beautiful cervix"?  Remember how awesome that was? Well... there is something that happened at that visit that I did NOT tell you about.  Something not just less awesome, but less THAN awesome.  Something I was hoping to avoid, but apparently cannot. The dreaded vaginal dilator. Yep.  My incredible shrinking vagina needs assistance.  Ugh.  And because both Ryan and I are so tweaked out about everything being all askew up in there, the whole "have sex at least three times a week to keep everything working" thing is totally not happening.  In all honesty, we've managed to "have relations" (as the nurse called it) exactly once - on that night at Mohican.  Where it hurt me and terrified us both and seems to have dried up (no pun intended) any desire either of us may have had to get it on. So yeah.  When...