Surgery Scheduled

I was so nervous about going to the consult with my surgeon today. I had already decided what I thought was the right choice for me surgery wise and for some reason I was nervous that the doctor would fight with me about it. I know that this comes from the years that I spent fighting with doctors for Gessner and his health. I tried to tell myself that the surgeon had not given me any reason to think that he would not support my choices and my experience with the entire cancer team and hospital has been wonderful, but I was still very anxious. My good friend Sandy came with me for support.

The appointment went very well and there was nothing to be anxious about. A lumpectomy was not an option because my tumor is actually bigger than it was when I was first diagnosed. A lumpectomy was only a possibility if they were able to shrink the tumor. So, having a total mastectomy of the affected breast (the right one) was the surgeon's recommendation. He was also very supportive of my decision to have the left one removed as well. He understood my fear about another cancer in that breast and also the just the logistics of reconstruction, etc. I am a DD, so having only one breast until reconstruction would leave me pretty lopsided.

I am relieved that it went so smoothly and we are all on the same page. Surgery is scheduled for August 16th. The procedure will last a couple of hours and I will probably stay just one night in the hospital. They will have me up and moving around right away and doing range of motion exercises to make sure that my shoulders do not get locked up. I will have two drains placed to keep fluid from accumulating near the incisions. I will have to keep those in for about two weeks. I will have to restrict my upper body activity--no lifting, vacuuming, that sort of thing, but can otherwise be active. It will take about 6 weeks to be fully recovered.

During the surgery they will remove a number of lymph nodes on my right side and biopsy the sentinel node on the left side. I originally thought that I would have the sentinel node biopsy on the right as well but the surgeon prefers to remove the nodes because of the size of my tumor and the aggressiveness of it. They will test the nodes and whether or not there are signs of cancer will help dictate further treatment. They will also run pathology on Gertrude (the tumor) and that too will help determine if I will need radiation and/or additional chemotherapy. It takes about a week for those additional results. If additional treatment is necessary, I will have to wait about 6 weeks to fully heal from the surgery.

Then there is reconstruction. Sometimes they are able to do immediate reconstruction, but I am not a candidate for that because I may need additional treatment. The surgeon estimated that I will have to wait for about a year for reconstruction. It might be sooner if I don't need additional treatment. This gives me time to research plastic surgeons and procedures.

I'm relieved to have this scheduled and a bit nervous about the prospect of surgery. But actually I think that the surgery is going to be a lot easier than chemo has been. Plus, it will be really nice to have this tumor out! It has been growing at least in its outer dimensions. Right now it is nearly 10 cm (and I started out around 5 cm). The doctors are hopeful that the inside of the tumor is mostly dead and just the outer ring remains cancerous, but they won't know this until they take the tumor out. It has also been hurting, with increasing pain over the last couple of days. I am starting to have some limits to my range of motion with my right arm because of the tumor and the pain. So, it is time for Gertrude to go. Her eviction notice has been served and in less than a month, she's outta here!

I have my last chemo treatment on July 25th (this coming Monday) and then I will be taking a short vacation to Hawaii before surgery. All my doctors think that it is a wonderful idea! I'm hoping to relax and find some distractions. It sounds better than sitting around waiting for surgery (we have to wait a few weeks after chemo before surgery to allow my body to heal and my blood counts to return to normal).