Back To Radiology
The morning of my surgery I started at the imaging center staring at that familiar ceiling one more time. The radiologist was going to put a radioactive seed into my affected lymph node so the surgeon could trace which node it was in to surgically remove it and follow that deeper until she didn’t need to remove any more. The lymph nodes are like tree branches and she needed something to follow.
Getting the seed placed was pain free. If I didn’t watch him do it I wouldn’t believe he did anything. Just like the biopsies it was guided by ultrasound and over relatively quickly.
Now it’s off to the surgery center
The Surgery Center
The surgery center is outpatient so patients go home same day. I read online after a mastectomy some women stay in the hospital for up to a few days. I was shocked that this was going to be outpatient. My plan was 1 hour in recovery then home. My surgeon’s explanation for that: I could eat and use the bathroom right away, hospitals are where a lot of infections are picked up, at home I could get my pain meds when I wanted and not wait on a nurse to bring it and she wanted me up and moving around. So outpatient it is!
I got prepped in preop as you would expect. Gown, no-slip socks, hair net, IV, vitals and soon to be a new set of purple marker lines over the top of the “old” ones from yesterday.
My plastic surgeon came in first to talk to me followed shortly by my breast surgeon. My breast surgeon gave me a pep talk about what was about to happen in the OR and ended that with, “don’t worry!” I was already tired of thinking about this and it was out of my hands at this point, whatever was going to happen was going to happen so I looked up at her and replied, “I’m not worried, you two can worry about that!” She was shocked and looked at the plastic surgeon like she didn’t even know what to say and he said, “yeah, she’s remarkably chill.” That made me laugh.
The two of them headed out to get ready and soon the anesthesiologist came in for his turn. He introduced himself and explained his part in all this and soon I was off to the OR. They had me slide over to the OR table and the last thing I remember was the anesthesiologist saying, “think of something happy to dream about” and I was out.
I soon woke up in recovery and saw my plastic surgeon at the foot of my bed and hear him say, “surgery was a success, everything went well” and he left.
I had bandages over the incisions and was wrapped like a mummy over that. All I can think about that was how challenging that must be to do to someone who is out from anesthesia.
It wasn’t long before a nurse came in and sat up my bed and told me to get dressed. I wasn’t quite ready for this because I was still very groggy and unsteady but managed to put my clothes on and lay back down. I brought one of my button up shirts that has inside pockets to put the drain bulbs in which made it very easy to get dressed.
When the nurse came back in I mentioned my throat hurt from the tube the anesthesiologist put in and he asked if I wanted something to drink. I asked for a drink of water and a few minutes later he came back. He didn’t have water. He had a wheel chair. He had me get up and into the wheel chair then wheeled me out the back door where my family was waiting for me.
I really don’t think I was in recovery for an hour! And I never did get my water.
I lived an hour away and half way home I suddenly felt my head clear and I felt MUCH better. “THIS would have been a good time to go home” I thought.
So What Did The Surgeons Do?
My breast surgeon started the surgery while my plastic surgeon prepped for his part. This was a mastectomy with “immediate reconstruction” since it happened together. She removed all my breast tissue from both sides and sent the tissue to pathology to see if the cancer was gone. She also did a “lymph node dissection” where she followed the radioactive seed to the affected lymph node, removed it and gave it to a pathologist who was in the room. It came back clean. She went one farther, removed it and the pathologist checked it. It also came back clean. This is where she stopped. Since there wasn’t any trace of cancer I only had 2 lymph nodes removed.
Eventually the plastic surgeon stepped in and took over. He was placing tissue expanders on each side which, I didn’t know until later, were sewn directly onto the pec muscles via 3 tabs on the expanders. This caused a lot of pain in the first few weeks and tapered down to a lot of discomfort when I tried to stretch or move later. This lasted until I had them removed 10 months later.
After the expanders were placed, while I was still asleep, the plastic surgeon started them with a small amount of air instead of saline so they were lighter while I healed. Eventually this would get replaced with saline and more would get added over time stretching the skin and preparing it for permanent implants.
He then placed 2 drains, one on each side below my armpits and some bandages over my incisions then wrapped me in a mummy wrap that was basically an Ace Bandage that was 6″ wide and 15′ long.
Soon I was off to recovery. I think the total surgery lasted about 4 hours.