Aug 9, 2023
Treatment day 160: 205 more to go.
T minus 21 hours!
I saw the plastic surgeon today for my pre op appointment. He drew all over me getting ready for my surgery tomorrow. I’ll check in with my original radiologist at 10am tomorrow to get a radioactive seed put into my lymph node then head over to surgery from there. Surgery is scheduled for 12:45. I’m told it will take 3.5 to 4 hours then an hour at least in recovery before I get sent home. It’s at an outpatient surgery center so home the same day.
They’ll do the seed implant, possible lymph node dissection, double mastectomy and plastic surgery reconstruction. My plastic surgeon said he wants me to manage the pain with ibuprofen and Tylenol but did put in a prescription for pain meds should I need it, but last resort.
At this point I’m tired of thinking about it and just want to get the ball rolling and get it done and over with. It’s just about time!
Aug 10, 2023
Before Surgery
I’m radioactive!
Seed is implanted. That was actually painless. If I didn’t watch him on the ultrasound screen I wouldn’t believe anything happened!
Getting registered at the surgery center now.
After Surgery
Home!
Dr said everything went well.
Just took anti nausea meds and half a pain pill. Hopefully feel better soon.
Aug 11, 2023
Post op day 1: Ouch!
My ribs hurt. I feel like someone sat on me
I’m back to ‘too scared to sneeze’ again although I discovered hiccups don’t hurt.
I tend to not worry about things I have no control over. Right before I went in for my surgery my breast surgeon was giving me a little pep talk about the surgical procedure and finished with, “don’t worry.” My plastic surgeon was there too and I said, “I’m not worried, you two can worry about that.” The plastic surgeon looked at her and said (as he’s learned from my last couple visits with him) “yeah, she’s remarkably chill”
I took half of a pain pill yesterday and it did nothing. Right before bed I took ibuprofen and Tylenol and didn’t have any pain all night. Maybe he was onto something!
Overall I’m doing pretty good. Now it’s one day at a time. My first follow up is next Friday with the plastic surgeon. Until then it’s managing pain and 2 drains, antibiotics and rest.
Aug 13, 2023
Treatment day 164: 201 more to go
Post op day 3:
Nausea is gone. Headache comes and goes but is mild. Pain is tolerable and when I’m sitting or laying down is pretty much gone until I get up again. But that’s when I keep up with my ibuprofen and Tylenol otherwise it hurts! Overall it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Mostly it’s my ribs that hurt. And where the drains are placed on my sides.
Success these days is getting the box of cereal off the top of the fridge all by myself.
Oh, and sneezing isn’t as bad as I expected!
I can’t believe my last chemo was 2 months ago. How did that happen?
Aug 15, 2023
Treatment day 166: 199 more to go
I haven’t talked to a dr about it yet because, you know, everything comes out in the patient portal first (which is how I found out I even had cancer in the first place) but my surgical pathology report just came back and says: <drumroll please>
“No residual carcinoma” !!!!
What a huge relief!!!
My treatment will continue, it isn’t over yet, but its a good start!!! I will continue with anti-cancer drugs until I reach my one year mark next spring and may or may not need radiation therapy since it spread to the lymph nodes.
Aug 24, 2023
Treatment day 175: 216 days left!
Ok, so the math doesn’t add up this time… my oncologist gave me a specific date that I’m going to have my last anticancer injection and it’s a few weeks later than I thought. That’s fine though. That’s the easy part of the whole thing!
Post Op day 14!
So, updates… the past couple days I’ve had several follow up appointments clustered together:
Labs look good. No concerns there.
Breast surgeon: everything looks good. I had a complete response to the chemo and no longer have cancer! But we already knew that.
I’ve gotten a pain down my right arm with restricted range of motion so she gave me some stretches to do to see if that relieves it otherwise she could refer me to a physical therapist.
Her opinion on radiation therapy is that I don’t need it, but she’s aware that it’s a controversial opinion. Some people feel that if there was cancer in the lymph nodes radiation therapy is part of treatment and that’s that. But she feels that if the lymph node that was effected has been removed and there wasn’t any more in any other ones as indicated by the pathologist then what are we even aiming the radiation at? It does damage to the body and shouldn’t be done “just because.” She said theres a study being done about it, but they don’t have an answer yet. So, she referred me to a radiation oncologist to discuss this with him before a final decision is made. Right now I’m leaning toward no, but open minded to hear his opinion.
Next appointment with her is in a month.
Oncologist: everything looks good. I’m due for another echocardiogram so I got a referral for that. Those are every 3 months throughout treatment.
My anticancer injections will start up again next week then continue every 3 weeks until March 27th 2024.
He also put in a referral back to the interventional radiologist to have my chest port taken out. I could leave it in and use it for labs, but it is uncomfortable so I pushed for it to get removed. I’ll get a phone call soon to make that appointment.
Plastic surgeon: I got my surgical drains removed today. Thank goodness!!!! Those hurt. It hurt having them removed too, but they’re gone now! Yay!!! Hopefully in another 48 hours I can shower again! whoohoo!
He wants to wait for my incisions to heal more before anything else happens so that’s all we did today.
I think that’s all! Busy couple days, but moving right along! Things are still sore and hurt if I move the wrong way, but I already feel a LOT better with the drains out!
Time to rest!
Aug 27, 2023
Treatment day 177: 213 more to go. (I think, now the math is messing me up)
10 weeks post chemo
17 days post op
Feeling pretty good right now. Which is a nice break from ‘tired of this and want it to be over.’ Not that that’s not still true, but I feel better at the moment so I’ll take it.
First day that I haven’t had any pain meds at all. We’ll see how long this lasts. I’m at the time where I shouldn’t need them anymore, but it sneaks back up on me after a while.
First for-real shower in over 2 weeks. That was nice! Sometimes it’s the little things! I had to wait for incisions to heal. It felt good to do something that required me to move around more. I’m still hesitant from feeling weird when I do move. Probably more psychological than physical although I still have issues with my right arm.
Making progress! One day at a time
Aug 31, 2023
I’m officially 3 weeks post surgery. It’s starting to transition from pain to just weird and uncomfortable. Dancing to the music again. <gently>
Right now we’re sitting and waiting to watch some necrosis that happened on one of my incisions. It’s not that big, (like a nickel?!) but if it doesn’t heal its another surgery. Dr said if it’s superficial it should heal underneath and act like a scab coming off later. If not then it’ll be removed surgically. But we won’t know which direction we’re going with this until we watch it for a while.
I now have an appt with the radiation oncologist later in Sept. to have a discussion and see what his opinion is. Still hoping for no.
I restarted my anticancer injections yesterday. Back to a 3 week schedule until late March.
10 more to go! Hurray for no miserable side effects with this part. At least none that I noticed.
Still waiting for appts to get my port removed and have my next echocardiogram.
That’s about all that’s going on around here.
Oh, and if you thought it was true that a watched pot doesn’t boil… watch your hair and see how fast it grows (spoiler alert: like none)