One Week Post-Mastectomy

Well, I've been home from the hospital for a week now.  The surgery went well.  Where should I start? What do you want to know?  Honestly, it hasn't been bad!  I am under strict instructions to do nothing with my arms until further notice, so for the past week, I have sat on the reclining love seat doing really nothing as everyone else waits on me.  The person who should be complaining is Trevor.  He's now the Dad, the Mom, and my Home Care Nurse.  It's a big job and he's doing so well.  He spends a lot of the time just keeping the kids away from me, because the slightest touch or bump makes me wail in pain.  And I can't use my arms to push Ellie away if she starts climbing on me, so I yell for Trevor and he come running to grab her before she hurts me.

How does it feel?  Well, if I'm not moving around or being touched, the pain is controlled pretty well with the Vicodin (which I'm slowly trying to wean myself off of).  The sensation that bothers me the most is the numbness in the upper part of my left arm.  When the surgeon removed my lymph nodes, the nerves that go to the back of my arm were in the tissue, and were removed as well.  It's a weird combination of numbness and heightened sensitivity back there.  The slightest touch in one spot bothers me so much, but another spot right next to it is completely numb.  Trevor reminds me that my C-section incision felt the same way as it healed, and now it's just numb there.  So hopefully, the super-sensitivity goes away soon. 

Drains. I'll bet ya didn't know about the drains!  Unless you were one of my friends that came over a couple of nights ago and were subjected to a full show and tell!  But don't worry, I won't post pictures here. ;)  I left the hospital with 2 drains on each side.  2 tubes leading out of my body just under my armpits on each side lead to little bulbs that look like grenades.  Fluid drains from where my breasts were down the tubes and into the bulbs.  I have to wear special camisoles that have little pockets to hold my drains underneath my shirts.  Then twice a day I empty, measure and record the amount and color of fluid that I've lost.  The color was bright red for the first couple days and has gradually changed to yellow.  When the amount of fluid decreases to an amount pleasing to my surgeon, I get the drains removed.

Two days ago, I saw my plastic surgeon, Dr. Scott, for a post surgery check up.  He said everything was healing fine, and the fluid was low enough to get rid of one drain on each side.  He just snipped a stitch and just pulled the things out!  Yes, it pinched a little, and it made me pretty woozy, but it wasn't horrible.  So, now I'm down to 2.  YES!  As you can imagine, it isn't very fun having tubes coming out of your body.  It's really weird, and I can't wait for the last two to go bye bye.

He did expand the expanders a tiny bit at the time of surgery, and he said he'd expand me a bit more next week.  He's going to do that to take up space and eliminate space for fluid to build up inside my chest.  Then he'll leave me alone for a little while as I heal, I think.

OH!  How could I neglect to report that we heard back from pathology?!  Dr. Soriano called Friday evening to tell us that they found the tumor in the breast tissue and it had shrunk to 2cm, and the margins were great.  This was good news because if the tumor had been too close to the chest muscle, I would have had to go back in for another surgery as they removed more of my muscle.  Ugh.  Also, out of the 11 lymph nodes removed, 0 had cancer in them!!  And they found no cancer on the right side (which was only a slight concern in the first place).  Happy day!  Trevor and I are so excited. 

All in all, I'm thrilled with how things are going.  I have said it before and I'll say it again:  I'd rather recover from surgery a million times than go through chemo again once.  I'm so happy right now!  I know it's been extra easy for me because of my wonderful husband and a tremendous amount of support from our family and friends.  Thanks everyone for praying for me and being there to help us out.

Mastectomy Eve!

Well, tomorrow's a big day for me:  the day I lose my womanhood. ;)  I'm actually feeling pretty OK with everything, considering what's coming up.  I'm mostly concerned that it's going to be hard not holding and hugging my kids for a few weeks.  As I tucked the girls in their beds tonight, I was thinking of how sad it was that this would be the last time in a while that I'll be able to pick up Ellie and hold her tight. She's running a fever tonight, so I've had to distance myself from her so I don't get sick before the surgery, and it's been hard.

It has been a while since my last blog post.  Truthfully, I've been feeling so good and life has been so very normal, that I haven't had any updates.  I've been cleaning my own house, cooking food and for the most part taking care of my own kids!  It has felt great to have my life back and get back to the way it was before chemo.  For the most part.  I still take almost daily afternoon naps.  The fatigue is still there, mostly I think because I don't sleep well at night anymore - hot flashes.

About a week and a half ago, we met with my surgeon, Dr. Soriano, to discuss the upcoming surgery.  I asked him a question I don't recommend ever asking a doctor if you have cancer: What are the chances of recurrence after my treatment is finished?  What he told us completely rocked our world.  He told us that I had a 60% chance of living for 5 more years.  Uh, what?  So are you saying I have a 40% chance of dying in the next 5 years?  (I'm such a pessimist, I know.)  He said that the nature of my HER2 positive cancer is very aggressive and the tumor was really large.  According to the past studies, 60% of women with that kind of tumor that same size lived for the next 5 years.  After crying a little- or a lot, I'm not sure, we asked him all sorts of questions about what we could possibly do to increase my survival rate.  He told me to eat organically, and watch what kinds of health and beauty products I use.  He gave me a website to consult for this and recommended 3 books to read.

Hmm... so maybe this cancer thing is a little more serious than we thought?  We scheduled an MRI to determine whether the tumor affected my chest muscle or not.  This would determine whether or not Dr. Soriano  would have to remove any of the muscle during the mastectomy.  The absolutely WONDERFUL news is that the MRI showed no trace of the cancer!  The chemo did it's job as well as any of us could have hoped it would.

In light of our new found realization of the serious nature of my condition, we decided to go to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance for a second opinion.  Luckily, we were able to get in before the date of my scheduled surgery, and we had all of my medical records sent over to them.  The appointment was last Tuesday, and I'm really glad we went there.  All 3 doctors (surgeon, medical oncologist, and radiation oncologist) met with me briefly first thing, then we had an hour break as the doctors talked about my case in a conference.  My good friend Emily works nearby, so she knew all the best hospital cafeterias in the area and took us to a really nice one. ;)  Anyways, when we got back to the SCCA, we spent a very long afternoon meeting with each doctor individually.

We learned that my medical oncologist in Everett had me on the harshest chemo drugs she could have chosen (Yay, Dr. Wang!  She picked the right ones, they worked!).  So, all my whining was for good cause.  We also learned that the radiation oncologist at SCCA specializes in breast radiation, and uses a neat new technique that will minimize exposure to my heart and lungs of the radiation.  We also learned of another reconstruction option that sounds like it will be better for me.  The surgeon said that a plastic surgeon could insert expanders at the time of the mastectomy, then stretch my skin over the course of the next several weeks before radiation.  After radiation, those expanders would be swapped out for permanent implants.  This eliminates the need to pull skin and muscle or fat from other areas of my body.  And it eliminates the need for another major surgery in the fall.  And most importantly, we learned that these doctors think I have a much better chance of surviving for 5 more years. :)  I'm feeling very positive and hopeful for the future.

After a stressful couple of days trying to coordinate everything, I'm all set for my bilateral skin-sparing mastectomy, auxillary node removal and expander placement tomorrow morning bright and early!  See you on the flippity flip!

Now that I'm a superhero...

So yesterday for the 3rd time in a week, I was injected with a radioactive substance. Now, just a week ago, I didn't even know that nuclear medicine existed! (I know, call me sheltered) As he did the injection - which hurt so badly I clawed in to Trevor's hand and uttered a few words I'm not proud of - the doctor said to me, "now you'll understand why I never get Christmas cards from my patients." Seriously, he said that! They had to inject my breast with this substance to see which lymph nodes it would travel to first, thus predicting which lymph nodes the cancer would spread to, if it were to spread. They will do a biopsy on those nodes and hopefully all is well and they find nothing wrong with them!

After they were done taking pictures of my lymph nodes, I traveled up stairs to surgery. This was actually the much more pleasant than one would think. I got to lay in a super comfy bed while wearing a special kind of hospital gown that was hooked to a blower that filled it with warm air. Sooooo cool! I got to adjust the temperature of the air, I probably looked like a marshmallow. In one hand I held the remote for that, and in the other hand I held a remote for the TV. You should be jealous, it was heaven. Not long after, they gave me a little shot, wheeled me down to surgery, and I was asleep before I even got there.

I woke up in a different room with different nurses (why do they do that?) with someone saying, "Lauren, you can wake up now". I drifted in and out of sleep for about an hour. I had this inner fight with myself: I should wake up, they want me up. But, it feels so good to just lay here. I don't have to get up if I don't want to. But they probably want me out of here, I need to wake up! And so on. Looking back, I shoulda just stayed asleep, but I'm too worried about putting people out, and heaven knows I shouldn't put out those nurses!

I'm home now and healing just fine along with the help of my new friend: VICODIN. It's pretty nice, and no, you can't have any. So stop asking. I think at some point today I'll take a shower and get dressed, but that's pretty low priority. Top priority really is sitting here in my bed eating these sumosas while I dink around on the computer. Mom is here watching the kids for the 2nd day in a row, which is so nice, as I can't drive or lift children for about a week.

Oh, tomorrow is the start of the big fundraising garage sale my friends are putting on up here. It is so awesome to see the outpouring of love and help we've recieved already. I am one very blessed girl. My friend is taking me tomorrow afternoon to a class put on by the American Cancer Society called "Look Good, Feel Better". The aim of the class is to help cancer survivors learn how to paint on our eyebrows during chemo, and tye scarves around our bald heads in a cute way.

That's all I have for now! I've gotta go... eat something else and maybe sleep a little more. I know, tough day. :)