I'm way behind. I wanted to play catch up and write about several different things on their own. Instead I'm going to throw it all in here for a post full of randomness.
The last week and a half has been a lot of ups and downs, a post-surgery, post-breast cancer roller coaster. The first 48 hours I felt wonderful. It was crazy how great I felt. I think part of how great I felt was just being on this side of surgery. Every morning and night we tended to my small incisions from the surgery and Tony emptied my drains. Before surgery I didn't want to see my breasts at all. I planned to not look in the mirror at all. However, that first night home I mustered up my courage and looked at them. They were NOT pretty, but oddly enough I felt that I would be okay with them. That was a huge relief, as I was so worried that I wouldn't be. By Saturday that great feeling started to go a little South. Saturday was the first day of about a week of feeling nauseous almost all the time. No fun when you are recovering from surgery. I had no appetite and was barely able to eat anything. I spent my time in my chair with ottoman that Tony went out and picked up for me to sit in our room. I watched hours of HGTV (hours and hours because it made me sick to my stomach to surf channels) making metal notes of all the wonderful things we could do to decorate our house, how to most efficiently organize my sewing area and redo our family room and about the housing market in Atlanta, Turkey, Cairo, New York and Hawaii. I messed around on the computer only a little bit because looking at the screen and reading made me sick to my stomach. I slept curled up in a fuzzy blanket in my chair because it was too uncomfortable to move to the bed. I set my timer for meds (antibiotics, painkillers, burn cream, anti-nausea meds, which didn't seem to work) and kept a chart of when I took everything so I would NOT miss painkiller time. I didn't read a single book or magazine that friends gave to me because it made my stomach turn, plus made me dizzy, to look at a book and read. It was a full on carnival in my little world. The first weekend I was home my sister and dad were here to lend a helping hand. My dad made some meals, but he did the most pitching in during the following week. Taking kids to school and activities, picking them up from school and watching them during appointments. He was a life saver. While my sister was here she mostly kept me company and single-handedly got us caught up on laundry. Wow, that is sisterly love!
Saturday morning Tony loaded me up in the car and we headed to the gym to surprise our coach and say hello. I had planned to just stay until the workout started, but then I couldn't stand it and I sat down on a box complete with a pillow for comfort and watched the workout. About 15 minutes before the end of class I had reached my limit. I was exhausted and really starting to feel sick. I made it to the end of class to say goodbye and we headed home. That little outing broke me. I made it to my chair and slept for two hours.
Sunday was horrible. I was so nauseous all day, I felt like I would never not hurt again, I was so uncomfortable and I hated what I had just gone through. I sat quietly most of the day and when the end of the day came for us to tend to my sore, swollen Dolly Parton breasts my love affair with my new breasts came to a screeching halt. We unzipped my bra and as I put my burn cream on the incision points I started to cry. As Tony helped me get back into my bra (a painful, not fun task) I continued to cry. Tony gathered me up into his arms and I fell onto his chest as best as I could without causing myself more pain and cried and then sobbed. He said, "this is the first time you have cried since surgery." It was and it hasn't been the last.
The beginning of a new week. I have no idea if anything exciting happened Monday. All of my days run together into a blur of taking meds, tv, resting and a fuzzy blanket. Oh, wait. First thing Monday morning Tony called my doctor and asked if there was a different painkiller I could take as mine was making me so nauseous. So I started something new that was just as effective, but the nausea wasn't nearly as bad. We also had a 12 hour stomach bug travel through our house so I think Sunday when I felt so bad may have been a combo of bug and painkillers. Because feeling crappy from a huge surgery wasn't enough.
Tuesday brought our first follow-up appointment with my plastic surgeon, Dr. Nargi in Whitefish. I really like her. She is a breath of fresh air in the middle of all of this "ick". When choosing my plastic surgeon I talked to and asked many people their opinions and many people just offered their opinions and experiences without being asked. I appreciated that and kept a mental tally of pros and cons and bad and good experience stories for both. I had met Dr. Buchele before so just had to meet Dr. Nargi. She made me laugh and made me relax and gave me a break from all the seriousness of what was going on. She was highly recommended by somebody whose opinion means a lot to me and probably carried the most weight in my choice. I know I would have gotten great care from both, but I enjoyed Dr. Nargi and her surroundings just a tiny bit more. She is what I needed for this process. So my follow-up went well. She was very happy with how everything looked, both in my healing progress and symmetry of my girls. She said they looked great. She also said, I know you don't think so, but they do. She assured me the implants won't sit so high like they do now (I'm sporting some impressive cleavage right now). I was told still no overhead with my arms. I can only raise them to 90 degrees. Because of this my dad bought me a step stool so I can get to the top shelves in my cupboards and my pantry. :)
Skipping to Thursday, my first follow-up appointment with my Oncology Surgeon, Dr. Hulvat , at the Bass Breast Center . She was so amazing and everybody that I talked to about my surgery that had any experience with her said the exact same thing. I felt so confident that I was getting great care in every aspect of my experience here. It is a good feeling to know you are being well taken care of and in good hands. She was NEVER to busy to answer a question when we called or asked to see her when we had appointments with her nurse, returned calls quickly and was very straight forward and comforting at the same time when she gave us information. During our follow-up she checked to make sure everything was healing well and then went over my pathology report with me. All the tissue removed was tested. The right side was still clear which was so good to hear. Lymph nodes got a clean bill of health and the left side was just as troublesome as we knew it was before surgery. Three tumors were found. Two tumors showed DCIS, the cancer I was originally diagnosed with. There was a lot of other DCIS found besides these two tumors and that made up the abnormality of the top half of my breast. These two measured 1.2 cm and 1.7. In the ultrasound at the beginning of all of this they measured .7 cm and 1.2 cm. The third tumor was only 1.5 mm, but it was Stage 1 and invasive cancer. This is why my doctor always removes lymph nodes during surgery and has them tested while she is in there. If she hadn't and then we learned of this invasive cancer she would have had to do surgery again to check the lymph nodes to make sure the cancer hadn't traveled. Luckily, it hadn't. She told us that no doctor in their right mind would do chemo on a tumor that small, but a drug Tamoxifen is a consideration. There will be a blog post later dedicated strictly to this drug. We meet with an oncologist tomorrow to discuss the next step in my treatment. I am pretty certain that they are going to want me to do this drug. After researching it a lot, I have pretty much made up my mind that I will not. Tony fully supports this. In my opinion, the risks outweigh the benefits. Like I said, a blog post coming soon on that topic. However, we need to listen to what information the oncologist has for us before I make my final decision.
Mid-week brought an amazing surprise from my coach and his wife at our gym. I got a message from our coach that said, "We have surprises for you. ;)" Later that day I got a text with a picture from Tony when he went to the gym to workout. This is what I saw when I opened his text. I immediately had tears streaming down my face.
The next day I got an email with this picture from my coach that said, "This barbell is waiting for you, it has your name on it I think. ;]"
Just amazing. For those of you that don't know this, the heart design on the banner is the tattoo I got on my forearm at the beginning of my cancer journey. I had been wanting to get a tat on my forearm, but the forearm is pretty out there so I hadn't committed to getting it done. When I had my biopsies done and we were waiting for results I told Tony that if we got bad news I was calling the tattoo shop and making an appointment. That's exactly what I did. I love it and have never regretted getting it. The color has softened now and it is nice and soft and delicate. Just how I wanted it.
Friday brought a pretty down day. I was very tired and just having a hard day. I cried a lot. I'm entitled. I don't like my breasts. I don't like what was taken from me and I don't like what is left behind. It is funny how when some people ask if I am liking them think that I am not thankful for being cancer free when I say I don't. I usually get, "but now you don't have cancer". Yes, I know this and don't think a minute goes by that I am not thankful and most grateful for that. But, that is now separate from my new boobs. Just because I am happy beyond all belief to not have cancer doesn't translate into being giddy over my boobs. I truly hope that changes. I want to be okay with them. I can't wait for them to not be icky looking. Friends have told me when they see me, "your boobs look great!" Well, that means my plastic surgeon did her job. She told me right out from the beginning. "They aren't going to be pretty for quite a while, but they will at least give you the appearance of breasts in clothing." So, I guess they are doing what they are supposed to do right now.
I haven't been sleeping well. My legs ached horribly for two days straight and they kept me from being able to sleep. I was miserable. I know it was from being so inactive and having to sit and take it easy. One night I walked around the house at 1:00 a.m. trying to get some blood flowing. As of this morning, it finally calmed down. I tried to stay on my feet a lot yesterday to get some good blood flow going. It worked. Friday also brought day three of horrible pain in my left arm. The muscle tightness in my chest was causing a domino reaction of tight muscles and referred pain down to my forearm. The pain in my arm was more than I had felt in days in my chest. Friday I finally made an appointment to go see my PT. She did an hour of very gentle massage and from my shoulder all the way down my arm and gave me some very mild stretches that I could do without going over my head. It worked and my arm is pain-free.
So, that is my last week all thrown into one big pot. It is just the beginning. I am feeling pretty normal now as far as being able to be up and about and doing normal stuff around the house. I do still tire out and I have to listen to my body and know when it is time to sit down. We have a week of several appointments, I will be heading back to the gym on Wednesday and Tony will be going back to work at the office while the girls are in school. Slowly, but surely we are starting to fall back into the routine of our pre-surgery days with out the anxiety of breast cancer. It's a good feeling. I never thought I would look forward to the chaos of our everyday life. Normal is good.
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