Katie's blog, post-op edition

                Hi! I had my mastectomy eight days ago, and I’m finally ready to write again. I was in the hospital  for one night, and on some serious painkillers for several days thereafter. The surgery itself seemed to go well as it could.  It was pretty straightforward.  There were no reactions to anesthesia or anything like that.  Of course, I was pretty sore for a while.

                There was the normal amount of hospital-related silliness.  Their pre-op admissions person told us to be there at 6am.  When we got there at 6am, they asked us why we had some so early.  We sat around for a long time. Then they told me, after I had already been to the bathroom, that I had to pee in a cup for a pregnancy test.  Really.  As I hadn’t been allowed to drink anything, including coffee, since the previous day, this was easier said than done and I was grouchy about it. I also told them it was pretty unnecessary, since I’d had my tubes tied eight years earlier and I am also post-menopausal.

                “Humor us,” they said.  We game some thought to having John pee in the cup for me, and debated whether they would even notice, but  eventually I did it, because  pissing off my crack team of cancer doctors is not what I want to do.  But then the nurses forgot to process the cup of pee, so when 10am rolled around and it was time to do surgery, they had to wait while they went off and ran the pregnancy test.  Of course, I still wasn’t pregnant.

                Many, many thanks to Pam, who drove my kids around that morning, and Deepika, who drove them around that afternoon and fed them, and Sarah, who did it the next day!

                So far, I’m hanging in there.  It is still a bit sore, but manageable with just regular old Tylenol. This morning, one of my surgeons told me I could start driving again. Still can’t go to the gym or do much that’s active, but, hey, that includes vacuuming, and I am told I can start with physical therapy probably next week. They will also start inflating my new boob next week, so I hope to look less lopsided then.

                Yesterday, my surgeon sort of took the wind out of my sails with my pathology report.  It was not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be.  Everyone had felt the chemotherapy just went great—and it did.  My plastic surgeon was pleased at how much the tumors had shrunk.  They were able to use all my own skin as a result, that sort of thing.  But I had thought that “successful” chemotherapy would have wiped out the cancer cells in the lymph nodes, and that was not the case. During surgery, they removed nine lymph nodes, and six of them still contained cancer cells.  This is not good, and it sent me into a panic. For a supposedly faithful Christian, I am still totally not wanting to die.

                However, my surgeon says I should not be panicking at all, and that this was pretty much what she had expected to see.  She said it is still “most likely” that we can get a full cure via radiation and tamoxifen, which I began taking yesterday.  I had hoped for a cleaner bill of health than that, but that was probably just inflated expectations on my part.

                A friend of mine who is a medical doctor helped me put it into some perspective.  He said it is disappointing when you think you see the finish line, but then you realize it wasn’t where you thought it was.  Still, that is how a lot of cancer cases work. There is a  great deal of ambiguity, even when things are going relatively well, for the first several years, at least.  I just have to get my head around that.

                It was very helpful talking with him, and with my friend who brought us dinner, and my other friend who brought us another dinner, and my other friend who brought my kid home from day camp yesterday!  You all are keeping me sane and treating me like a queen.  Another example:  we are enjoying fresh HUCKLEBERRIES that two of you sent me from a place in Oregon!  Heavens, they’re tasty!  And expeditious. 

Surgery day after tomorrow

                We are gearing up for my big surgery the day after tomorrow, trying to get all our kids’ schedules aligned and all our ducks in a row.  We owe a lot of thanks to friends who are running here and there to pick up and feed and entertain and comfort our kids this week!  Thanks, guys!

                In the end, I decided to not have surgery on the second breast.  The odds are pretty good it will never develop cancer, and I just don’t feel like any unnecessary medical procedures right now.

                This attitude on my part made for an interesting exchange with my plastic surgeon, when we first met.

                “What is your current bra size?” she asked.

                I told her.

                “What bra size would you like it to be?” she asked.

                I just sat there and looked stupid for a minute. This was not a question I had ever asked myself.  I had never wished my breasts were smaller, or bigger, or more even.  I had become aware, at some point when I was breastfeeding children, that my breasts were not perfectly even.  Well, that is why God made bra straps adjustable, I thought.   Really, until my breasts tried to murder me, I was quite happy with them the way they were.

                Silly me!  When you really measure them and photograph them and take a plumb line to them and think about them like a plastic surgeon does, there’s a lot of aesthetic problems there we could fix.  They aren’t even.  And they’re too big, apparently, or too “generous,” as one of the doctors put it, trying to be nice.  And they’re getting sort of saggy, compared to what they could be.

                Because, it turns out, my boobs and I have Options. We could do an old-fashioned implant.  Or we could take one of my back muscles and fashion a new boob out of it.  Or they could use of my abs.  Or part of my middle-aged gut, and give me a tummy tuck at the same time.  And then, I could have surgery on the other boob, to make it smaller and perkier and match the other one more perfectly.  And when they tattoo the colored parts on there (which they do) I could get a sexy little butterfly or something on there as well.  The girls could be better than they were before…better…stronger…faster.

                But I’m just no fun.  Unless it is going to give me a real chance at living longer, I am not interested in a boob job right now.  Which is just as well, it turns out, since none of those more-complicated plastic surgeries could be done until some months after radiation is finished, anyway.  And I don’t even start radiation until some time in September.  So I have time to think it over. Meanwhile, all they can really do is basic reconstruction, where they implant a sort of inner-tube in there, which they gradually fill, over the course of a few weeks, with saline to make room for whatever we implant in there later. That won’t be for maybe nine months or a year.

                For now, the rest of this cancer management seems to be going well.  It is so good to not be on chemo anymore!  I still feel a little better every day, and I finished chemotherapy a month ago.  I have pretty much got all the feeling back in my fingertips.  My fingernails never fell off.  Most of them did get nasty brown spots that looked like nicotine stains, but even those are fading now.  I did have one big toenail that I kept on with Band-Aids for some time, but it is also doing better. I have some nasty scars on my arm, from a PIC line and another Taxotere burn, but they are beginning to fade some. I am still bald and my eyes are still tearing all the time, but those problems should start coming right soon.

                I did have a scare about a week and a half ago, when the person at Sibley who was giving me my pre-op physical found what she described as a “growth” in my right eye. I hadn’t known it was there, inside my lower eyelid, but darned if she wasn’t right.  A really ugly-looking thing, too, and she said I should have my doctor look at it since we don’t want to mess with our vision, do we?

                I certainly don’t.  I am a painter, among other things, and messing with our vision would certainly play hob with that, or with driving kids around town. But even worse, when you say “a growth” to a person with breast cancer, that person immediately jumps to the conclusion that there’s been a metastasis and she now has breast cancer in her eye, and is going to die.

                Fortunately, after I left there and panicked for about a half an hour, I called my oncologist.  One of his wonder nurses called me back almost immediately, and explained to me that persons like myself who go utterly bald after chemotherapy—and that includes losing your eyelashes—well, you get all sorts of cysts and things in your eyes because your eyelashes aren’t there to keep junk out.  Who knew eyelashes are so functional? I didn’t.

                But happily, today I finally got in to see my eye doctor and he confirmed that this little lump in my eye is annoying but totally harmless.  Yay!

                On a more serious note, perhaps our largest problem of late has been our youngest child’s reaction to all this.  Matthew, who is 8 years old, is an anxious kid anyway.  But my illness really threw him for a loop, and he started both acting out aggressively and also having anxiety attacks.  We are now seeing a very good therapist in D.C., and we think this is helping him.  It’s a schlepp to get down there, but Matthew likes him, which is great. Thanks for everyone’s prayers and good thoughts in this area!

Sorry for not writing!

Hello friends!  I have to apologize for the gap in blog updates there.  People are beginning to ask if something is wrong.  I didn't mean to scare anyone.
     I am doing very well, actually.  But the final chemo really laid me out for a while.  The docs and nurses had warned me it would get worse at the end, because some of the effects are cumulative, and they were right.  After my very first chemo treatment, I was out with my friends eating BBQ the next night!  But after the final treatment, I basically laid on the couch for ten days or so, whenever I could.  I felt much sicker, and for much longer, than I had for earlier treatments.  I did not do any writing or much reading, or much of anything beyond basic family maintenance, for a couple of weeks.  I should have had someone take my picture and post it here while I was at my sickest, because that probably was my low-water point right there, but I didn't have the presence of mind.
     The good news is, we are now three weeks and a couple days beyond the last treatment, and I am feeling better every day.  I can taste food again! I am feeling queasy much less often.  I am back to the gym now.  Soon, my hair will start growing back and my eyes will stop watering and so on.
     I am scheduled for surgery on Aug. 17 and am looking forward to having that over with.  I will be having a regular mastectomy with reconstruction, on one side only.  I have a great surgeon and plastic surgeon.  I'll be doing radiation after that, until approximately Halloween, and then hope to be done with this chapter of life.
     Thank you for your cards and casseroles and hugs and books and CDs!