Thursday, April 5, 2012

 Surgery was Tuesday and I was back home by 3pm on Wednesday. The tremendous support from family and friends really helped to keep me positive.  My sister-in-law made a cute profile for Face Book that said "Kick it Kim". Friends and family turned Face Book pink for a day! So cool!

Several family members joined me in the pre-op area and as usual kept us in stitches. Little did a good friend know he was the subject of our laughter as we relived some Florida moments. It was a great distraction! They took me for surgery about 11am and I was back in my room by 3pm and settled in. No problems with nausea...thank goodness. I deal with pain way better than nausea.

My surgeon started the operation part of the journey by praying with us. That was awesome! Surgery lasted just over two hours which included removing both breasts and biopsying lymph nodes on the left. Apparently three lit up with the dye that was injected-all in the sentinel node area- so he took all three. The preliminary report during surgery showed that they were OK. Praying that the final report shows the same. I have tubes in each side of my chest. They are called Jackson-Pratt drains and are a simple vacuum system. I empty them, record the drainage, and log my outputs. Very simple process that I am quite familiar with so no issues there. I will post a picture later. My new camisoles are wonderful for holding the drains so I don't have to pin them to my clothes. I was able to shower in the first 24 hours just couldn't let the water flow directly over my incisions. That was heavenly! Brad was very good about helping me with that. I can say that my belly looks much bigger when I don't have to look past boobs to see it! Was having a little trouble keeping the drains out of my way while showering. Do you remember the song "Do Your Ears Hang Low?"  Well Brad came up with the idea of throwing them over my shoulder (the drains that is). Leave it to an engineer! And it worked! Another friend suggested I tie an old pair of pantyhose around my neck and pin them to that. Also a great idea.  So far Brad's  been a trooper-guess this is where the "for better for worse, in sickness and in health" part comes into play. He just keeps saying he wants me around for many more years, it doesn't matter if part of me is missing as long as the cancer is gone. AMEN!

I could not have asked for better care! I used to work with the nurse in charge of the med-surg floor and pacu.(medical surgical unit and post-op anesthesia care unit). She sent me a message that she had assigned another former co-worker of mine to be my pacu nurse. My sister put dibs in on my floor nurses and low and behold a dear friend from nursing school made sure she was my primary nurse during surgery. Talk about TLC. It was like old home week! It was so comforting to see so many familiar faces and to have such great care from other gals I had never met. Brad spent the night with me and my sister checked in frequently as well. We had a system down for notifying those who asked to be updated that way one person wasn't trying to handle all the communications by themselves. Everyone was very considerate about letting me rest yet keeping in touch to make sure I was doing fine.

The surgeon did a skin sparing technique so now I have what I refer to as "floppy disks".  Pretty accurate really. He was able to leave the little crease under each breast and just a little area in the middle. If I do reconstruct all that extra skin is there and can be stretched further for the implants. Should I decide completely against it then I will have surgery to remove the extra tissue. If you have ever seen a woman who has had a mastectomy it is a large incision near the center of the breast. The nipple and the areola are both removed. Usually the tissue is pulled snug and stitched. For me it kind of looks like a moon crater. Sunken in the middle but raised on the perimeters. The incisions themselves look beautiful-at least to my nursing eyes. Nice and neat with sutures that will dissolve and some steri-strips in place for awhile. I also have a small incision over near my left armpit where they took the lymph nodes. Bruising has started to set in and overall it's a little disturbing to look at but it will get better.

I had a PCA pump to control my pain after surgery and then Wednesday morning when it was empty I switched over to oral pain meds. Seemed to do fine with that. Also a couple of doses of an anti-inflammatory medication made me much more comfortable. The best way to describe my pain is it feels like someone took a scraper and just scraped under my skin from one armpit to the other. There is some numbness in the tissue there. The only bad pain I have had is some intermittent burning/shooting pain in the area of the drains. Now that stops me in my tracks! At least it doesn't last long.

The only minor issue was that overnight my blood pressure was slowly dropping. By morning it had gotten as low as 88/54 and my heart rate was only 55. Both low for me. My nurse was on top of things and called and got an order for a fluid bolus. She gave me 500cc of fluid over an hour and things were back to normal. I was just a little bit dry as we nurses would say.

I was very thankful I could stay overnight in the hospital, although as hospitals go I didn't get much rest. We walked several times and slowly I was able to get rid of tubes and monitoring devices. We headed home Wednesday afternoon and I took a nap almost immediately. The kids and Brad seemed a little amazed at how tired they were. I reminded them that sometimes it is almost as stressful being the family member waiting on the news as being the patient. It brought back lots of memories for me from 5 years ago when we almost lost my dad. Many hours spent worrying-it does take a toll.