They’ve agreed to postpone my radiation for a week. I’m glad. I’m so paranoid at this point of something else going wrong even tho the implant is gone that I don’t want to push what little luck I seem to have.
I don’t have any real pain from the operation and don’t think I will. I don’t have any strength on that side and don’t expect to for a few days at least. I wonder why they give child proof containers to people who can only use one hand to open them? I am trying to baby that side of me and will until I see the surgeon again on Thursday.
I thought if I just got through chemo I’d be on the home stretch and would start to feel better. And I was. I felt my mood picking up, and could see the end. Then this problem with the implant. I feel like someone knocked my legs out from under me. Again. It is so very hard to stay or even be ‘up’ when it seems like one thing after another goes wrong. I don’t think I’ll be completely unguarded until even the radiation is done at this point.

So I’m at the babysitter’s 🙂 Surgery was at 11. I left the hospital at about 4. They had a hard time waking me up, then I couldn’t clear my lungs so they gave me some drug with the oxygen. My blood pressure was also too low. All for a 15 minute procedure. The Dr has given me antibiotics, and hasn’t completely closed the incision, guess it may be or he’s afraid of infection. I go see him on Thursday. He also mentioned getting in a home care nurse for me to change my bandages. No pain yet. I imagine that’ll happen. I let radiation know I’d had the surgery, not sure if they’re going to move my appointments or not, will find that out tomorrow.

I’m not ready for surgery tomorrow. I’m not ready for pain on top of pain. I’m not ready to look like I’m 10 again. I’m not ready to stay somewhere other than home. I’m feeling really anxious and just don’t want to do this. I want to run away and hide where no one can find me and just forget about this whole cancer business. But that isn’t an option.

I got a call from the hospital this morning telling me to be there at 10:15am, surgery at 12:15 and hopefully home by 4. The joke is the surgery will take all of about 15 minutes after I’m under anesthesia.
Then I get a call a few hours later saying to be there at 9. I said I’d been called already, I’d been told to be there at 10:15. This woman was a b*tch. She asked who had called, giving me the impression she thought it was a crank call and as she’d ‘just told me’ I’m to be there at 9. Why did I apologize to her? Funny but she’s the first meany I’ve talked to since this all started.
Then I got a call from the Cancer Clinic letting me know there are resources available to me, support groups and stuff. They’re a little late with THAT phone call.
Tonight the surgical nurse called to go over the forms over the phone so I wouldn’t need to drive all the way out there. That was nice. First thing she asked was how I was doing with all this. Only not nice is I’m gonna need a babysitter overnight 😦 I didn’t need one the last 2 surgeries cause I was in the hospital overnight. This nurse was explaining the soap I need to shower with the morning of the surgery (I didn’t need to do this either) and I told her I have a bandage over my breast implant and sorry but that wasn’t coming off. I don’t want to have to look at it. She was fine with that.
So how am I doing with all this? I’m pissed off, disappointed, scared of life without boobs and for the first time since all this started, wondering ‘why me’ and just plain old sad.

I went and saw the plastic surgeon today. Last night the scab over my implant started leaking so they got me in to see him today. The implant has become exposed and has to come out. He’s getting me in on Monday for the surgery because I start radiation on Thursday. He kept apologizing to me which I found odd. Before I knew when the surgery was I asked about the urgency of getting it out. He said if it wasn’t taken out it would fall out. Then went on to tell me a story of a woman who’s implant fell out while she was golfing and she just taped it back in!! I’m not going through any of this again. Guess I’m looking into prosthetics next.
A bright side to all this? I’ll be back at work sooner than I thought.

I did it. I got a tattoo today. I figured I was due for a reward at this point. Funny how it hardly hurts after all the pain I’ve been in. It’s on my right wrist and I love it. Thanks N for the original design, even tho it’s been changed a bit 🙂

I was up early this morning to get to Abbotsford for my 9am appointment and was freaked out by the time I got to my car. The news had cars in the ditch and roads closed all over Abbotsford due to black ice and frozen roads. Thankfully my drive was easy. The thing about it tho is it’s about an 85-90 km round trip. For 25 days. Roughly an hour and a half of driving. And about $75 in parking.
They started out by explaining about the radiation and the machine, they usually do a simulation of the procedure but I stopped the tech from going over it. I explained to her that I’d been to one of my mom’s appointments last year so I knew the routine. Apparently if I get side effects they’ll be more fatigue because I’m already suffering with it from the chemo and blisters (she indicated I’d get these like they were a done deal) that can be dealt with by using certain creams. Nothing will be as bad as the side effects from chemo.
Then I had the CT scan. A normal experience turned rather unpleasant. They made me take my wig off for starters, then when they stripped the gown off me and saw the scars and the implant that still has a scab on it (funny thing about chemo, it stopped the healing process that was happening and my implant side looked the same 2 weeks ago as it did before the chemo. It isn’t completely healed yet) the CT scan techs, who looked all of 15, got real quiet for about 10 seconds. Then it was business as usual. I’m sure they’ve seen worse. They scanned me, made a mold of my upper back, arms and head so that I’m always in the same position, drew all over my chest with a black marker and tattooed me in 3 places. These are just little black dots that can be mistaken for moles. One of these days I’ll get a procedure that doesn’t make me feel like half a human, but today wasn’t it.
My first radiation appointment is Feb 2nd, my last will be march 7th.

I have all the symptoms of an allergy right now, the sneezing, watery eye thing so I went to the pharmacy intending to pick up some sort of antihistamine. Because my chemo is only about 5 weeks in the past I thought I’d better ask a pharmacist if I can take it. Bottom line is I need to ask my chemo people. There can be complications. I guess I’ll live with the allergy symptoms for now.
So when exactly is this ‘after chemo’ that I keep reading about and the doctors talk about? When can I just live like I used to? When can I forget that I even had chemo and my body doesn’t tell me every day that it wasn’t a dream?
I haven’t even read the paperwork I got about radiation yet. I just so don’t want to deal with more ‘be careful of…’ right now. I’m sure they’ll tell me what I need to know tomorrow when I go for my appointment for the CT scan and the mold and stuff and get my first radiation appointment.

Got out to Abbotsford fine today. There were a couple of places that were icky but was a relatively easy drive-for my sister. The physical was only a look at my chest (I’d say breasts but I don’t have any anymore) and to tap my stomach. Why I had to get totally undressed for that is beyond me.
Then we got to the nitty gritty. The margin that they were able to leave that I’ve always been told was ‘less than 5 mm’ was actually less than 1 mm. Not nearly enough. So she never really gave me an opt out of having radiation. Between the margin and that they only got a total of 4 lymph nodes that weren’t cancerous and the sentinel node that was cancerous, (they really like to get 10 + nodes) she went right in to the side effects of radiation. Then went on to tell me that she didn’t want to wait for me to get the expander (which is about a 6 month wait) because that’s waiting too long and that the implant wasn’t possible after radiation because radiation messes with the skin, makes it hard and not pliable. At that point I was tearing up thinking my only option was to get the implant that I already have removed and have prosthetic breasts. I wasn’t going to walk around with one side with a breast implant and one side flatter n’ a board.
My sister, gotta love her, would pipe in when I couldn’t talk and ask the questions I wanted to. It always surprises me how close her and I really are.
Anyhow, the radiation oncologist ended up calling my plastic surgeon who assured her he could do the expander/implant after the radiation. So. I’m having 25 sessions of radiation-5 weeks-normally 18 sessions, but she wants to do more with less intensity to help with the expander. Then I’ll have the expander put in. After that I just gotta wait for it to be pumped up for the implant surgery. I go for a CT scan next week then the radiation starts after that.
On a high note, I can get my tattoo whenever I want, radiation won’t interfere with it but she doesn’t want me to get it on the same side as I had the cancer and lymph nodes removed to avoid getting lymphedema . I can live with that!

I have my radiology appointment tomorrow in Abbotsford, my sister is taking me and I’m worried. It’s supposed to snow again. I’m hoping it doesn’t and the roads are clear. I don’t want to have to rebook the appointment.