Mastectomy - March 26, 2014

Today is Saturday, March 29  and the first day I've felt up to writing about the mastectomy.  I was the first appointment for the operating room, having to be at the hospital at 5:45 a.m. Inserting the I.V. was horrible.  The nurse prodded the back of my hand until I thought I was going to faint.  Finally she got it, but it hurt like heck.  Next, was a trip to "nuclear medicine".  It was a room with blackened out windows and a metal army ration case with nuclear activated medicine or "blue dye" inside.  Both Dr. Tormey (the general surgeon) and Dr. Chase (the reconstruction plastic surgeon) first appeared when I was in the nuclear room.  Both doctors gave me a little intro into what was about to happen.  Dr. Tormey gave me some numbing shots in my left breast and then a shot of the nuclear stuff that is suppose to travel to the sentinel limp nodes which indicates which limp nodes she would take out. It wasn't painful at all. They told me I needed to "percolate like coffee" a little while before they could start surgery.

After a trip back to Cliff and my waiting area, I met the anesthesiologist and then I was off to the operating room.  The anesthesiologist  took me into the operating room awake.  It was interesting to see.  It was bright white as could be.  (I would have done a much better job decorating.) There were three other people in there.  One with what looked like a welding mask on was reading off stats to a nurse who was writing numbers on a white board.  He said "blades - four" and she wrote 4 by the word blades on the board, then he said "sponges - four" and she wrote 4 by the word sponge. That's the last I remember.

When I woke up about four hours later I was in recovery with a nurse by my side.  She called for Cliff and man was I relieved to see him.  He looked so incredibly handsome!  Then I looked down to see what my boob looked like and I was surprised to find no bandages and it looked great!  I was pleasantly surprised!  The incision is vertical down the top and front of my boob.  It starts up pretty high toward my neck.  (I won't be wearing any revealing strapless gowns any more - not that I ever did.)  I haven't yet seen where it ends, but Cliff tells me it goes down past where the nipple was. 

The first morning wasn't too bad.  I was relieved to be alive and still heavily medicated.  I was starving and so impressed with the hospital menu they gave me to order from.  The menu was incredible, like being on a cruise ship -- steak and shrimp, salmon, etc.  I ordered salmon and was eagerly awaiting its arrival when apparently the anti-nausea medication wore off.  I ended up filling one of the blue barf bags and immediately felt better, but not good enough to eat my dinner.  My kids all came to see me that first day and Macy spent the night in the room with me in a pull down chair.  The next day I ordered a yummy omelet, a whole grain pancake and orange juice for breakfast (which I did enjoy) and then got to go home.

It felt wonderful to be home.  At home I found a huge bouquet of flowers from my sister, Maureen, and Macy had completely redecorated our bedroom.  I put on the cute Victoria Secret jammies my girlfriends gave me and hopped (in a dainty way, I'm sure) into a nice new clean bed.

The past couple of days have had their ups and downs.  I've had terrible headaches, a sore back and shoulders and my reconstructed boob is about to pop! Hopefully not too many more days feeling like this.  I'm not supposed to put any ice on it, not supposed to take any aspirin either, but I did take BC Powder which is aspirin and caffeine and I credit BC Powder and ZzzQuil and my brother, Court, for saving my sanity Friday night when I was about to completely loose it.  Dr. Chase didn't ask if I had aspirin, so I didn't reveal my disobedience.


Love my new pajamas - they even have a pocket for my drain.

 

Yesterday at my first post op appointment with Dr. Chase he took out the drain.  The drain is a suction device that looks like a grenade.  You "milk" the tube of fluid and then squeeze the grenade to produce the suction that reduces excess fluid building up inside my chest.  (I think the drain does the job that the lymph nodes used to do.)  The fluid started out looking completely like blood to finally looking like a clear yellow fluid with an occasional blood clot.  It was stitched into me for the first few days and we needed to empty it out and measure the fluid every 8 hours.  Glad to have that drain out, but have to admit it wasn't actually as bad as I had envisioned.