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.
No comments:
Post a Comment