Three weeks

Three weeks out from my surgery.  It has been a long, frustrating stretch.  And, after a couple of weeks of revolving family members staying with me, my first day back on my own at home.  I am feeling confident about this.  The new regimen on ibuprofen and muscle relaxers has been good.  The swelling in my upper chest muscles has gone down significantly.  It is easier to breathe and I can almost lie all the way down on my back when I sleep.  I also have discovered a reclining side sleeping position on the healthy side of my body that works nice for sleep too.  The weird water balloon like swelling under my arm on my side is still there though.  Not sure what will happen next with that, I see the doctor again in a couple of days.

My mobility over the last few days has increased.  I am still keeping my outings to places that are not too crowded.   Over the weekend, I made it to a sushi restaurant, the beach and to a movie.  The outings went well.  My favorite was the beach, it was nice to sit out there and watch the waves again.  It's been a slow progress, but I am slowly getting back in the swing of things and that feels good.

Step by step, inch by inch

Each day my excursions out of the house get a little bit longer.

Yesterday after my doctor appointment I went out to lunch again.  Then we went to fill my prescription which seem to take forever.  I was out for a little over five hours.  This was followed by serious couch time then bed.

Today was even longer.  Started off with a little lunch at a favorite sandwich shop, then to Target for some household supplies.  Afterwards, I stopped by the office to do a little work.  I have been out of the office for more than two weeks, so there was quite a pile on my desk.  Basically attended to a few important things, organized the rest, and was ready to go home.  This excursion was over six and half hours.  Again followed by some couch time and sleep.

I feel like I have tons of energy in reserve and just want to go.  It is only when I go that I realize the energy well gets drained pretty quickly.  I am happy to be out more in public.  I am not as anxious moving around as I first was last weekend.  I try very hard to stay away from crowded areas.  Hope to get more in my reserve tank for tomorrow.

Good bye, stitches

Time again for my weekly visit to the doctor, this time they will be taking out the stitches from my surgery.  I also wanted more insight into the elephant that is sitting on my chest.  I explained to my doctor that I felt the swelling was getting worse, not better.  Even lying back to take the stitches out was very uncomfortable and difficult to breathe.

Dr.: “ Are you lying on that side of your body when you sleep?”

Me:  “Nope, I have been sleeping in an upright position since the surgery.  I cannot even lie down on my back, let alone my side, my chest area is so tight.”

It was fun watching my doctor ponder this.  She examined the areas again.  Basically what it comes down to is this, because I am quite physically fit and have strong upper body muscles (thank you swimming and surfing) the expander they placed under my pectoral muscle is causing that muscle to spasm.  So the solution for now is to put me on some muscle relaxers to relieve a little pain and help me get sleep.  Sleep is key to recovery so I am game.  I haven’t had a good night sleep in a few nights.  She also wants me to take ibuprofen to help with the muscle swelling.  For the side swelling, possible fluid build up from the surgery, she has me wearing either a compression bra or sports bra to help the fluids reabsorb into my body.  That sounds just so pleasant.

There is good news, I do get to do lower body exercises!  So if I want I can do leg workouts in the pool, either walking or jogging, even a little kicking.  I just cannot do any upper body work (no strenuous activity) for at least three more weeks.  Which is understandable since there is so much swelling and discomfort.

Yay for the little things!!!

Argh

It’s been a frustrating few days.  Every day is different.  Some days I feel good and want to be out and about.  The next day I can feel like total crap.  It’s so hard to predict what my energy level will be each day.  Much depends on how I sleep the night before.  There have been many restless nights this week. 

I am trying to wean myself off the pain medications.  Unlike most people, the pain meds do not have a euphoric effect on me instead they make me nauseous.  So nauseous that even looking at food on the TV turns my stomach.  Plus, I am not really feeling much “pain”; it is more just uncomfortable ness from all the swelling in the surgical area.  It's like having an elephant sitting on my chest.  At least that is what it feels like.  The swelling on my left chest area and side has not gotten any better since last week.  It almost feels worse.  It is a very tight, constraining feeling, like I have a baby elephant sitting on me.  It makes it difficult to breathe, especially when I am out for my walks.

My legs are very restless, so I have been fighting the pain and tightness, and still getting out for walks at least twice a day.  It's a crazy mind game.  Most of my body is wondering why we are just sitting around not doing anything.  My mind is trying to reason with my legs, they want to go, go go.  But, my lungs want to stop, stop, stop.  It's all very frustrating for me.  I'm actually getting tired of sitting around my house watching TV.

Almost Human

Each day I start to feel a little more human again.  The pain has subsided substantially the last few days.  I find myself awake for longer stretches of time.  The walk down the block is easier, still slow, but easier. My breathing is back to normal.  The hump of swelling under my arm is really the only indication that there is something off with my body, besides the missing left breast.

After being home for a week, spending most of my time sleeping, I finally felt the urge to get out of the house for something other than a doctor appointment.  This morning we took a little adventure out to the farmer’s market.  Just a little over a mile and half down the street from my house.  The healthy me would normally just walk to that part of town.  Today’s me, took the bus.  It was a short, quick ride.  It being early Saturday morning, the bus was pretty empty.  This is good, since I am still leery about being around lots of people for fear of being bumped into.  The farmer’s market was also not very crowded which was nice.  It was a nice cool, partly sunny, comfortable morning to be walking around.  After slowly meandering around for about an hour or so, sampling fruits and making a few purchases we headed back home via bus.

The whole outing was about an hour and a half, which then resulted in a two-hour nap.

All-in-all, it felt good to be out and about.  Might even venture down the street for pizza tonight!

Bye, bye grenades

Today the drains came out. Yay!!  Ouch!!

Since surgery, I have had two long tubes coming out of the side of my body to drain fluids from the operation.  The liquid would be deposited in two plastic, grenade-looking bottles.  These were emptied twice a day.  One has to be mindful not to accidentally tug on the tubes since they were stitched into my body, or lay on top of the grenades.

Now, with any foreign object stuck in your body it isn’t fun having said object removed.  There are still some parts of the surgical area that are a bit numb.  One of the tubes removed from that area, barely felt anything.  The other tube however was in a much more sensitive area and wasn’t very pleasant to have it removed.  Can’t really describe it other than a really, really, really hard pinch.

On our way home, we stopped at the local burger joint for some lunch.  This was my first outing in public place, other than yesterday’s doctor appointment.  It was an early lunch so the restaurant was not very crowded at first.  Towards the end of the meal, the place filled up and it got noisy.  I was feeling tired and was ready to leave.

The four-hour excursion to doctor and then lunch resulted in four-hour nap.

Friends of Hal

Met with my breast cancer surgeon today to go over the pathology results from surgery.

There is a little good and bad in the report.  The good being, the breast area has been cleared of all cancerous cells.  The area tested around the tumor showed at least 7 other friends of Hal ranging from .1 to 1.5 cm in dimension, distributed in upper inner, upper outer, and lower outer quadrants.  And, the area was larger than originally thought – 10 cm.  So it was a good decision to go with the full mastectomy.  The skin and nipple also showed no evidence of malignancy, which was good.  

The bad came in the lymph nodes.  The sentinel lymph node tested during surgery was positive for metastatic carcinoma.  Thus, 17 other lymph nodes were harvested for further testing.  Three of the seventeen were also positive for metastatic carcinoma.

Conclusion – Staging T1N1 = Stage 2B cancer

Next step, to make an appointment with an oncologist to determine when chemotherapy will start.

Blah!!

On a lighter note, the putrid smell coming from the surgical area is not infected.  Apparently when you cannot wash an area of your body for a week it begins to smell like a rotting dead animal.  Since I usually spend a lot of time in the water, I have never encountered this before.

Sleep is my friend

I am amazed at how much I sleep.  I’m so used to being on the go and keeping busy, now I barely go a couple of hours before I need to sleep.  It’s very surreal for me, not having the energy to even get up to sit in a chair to watch television.  That seems like quite an accomplishment for the day.  I took a short walk down the block and back.  I needed a nap right away, think I slept for two hours after that.

The Journey Home

It is so good to be home, especially after the long painful journey to get here.

Like I had mentioned before, this whole surgery/hospital stay was a first for me.  I can’t even describe accurately the amount of pain I was in for the first 24 hours, it hurt to eat, to breathe, to move.  After the first night the doctors decided to hook me up to an IV morphine pump so I could administer pain meds as needed.  It took a few hours after being hooked up for the pain to become manageable.  In the mean time I had a few visitors to help distract me from how I felt.  Surprisingly, I was wide awake most of the day.  By the evening I had figured out how to “stay ahead” of the pain and that night was able to sleep in two-hour stretches.

The next morning all the doctors made their rounds.  They asked how I was feeling.  The pain was manageable and I felt, finally under control.  They wanted to take me off the IV pump and start me on oral pain medication to start me on the path to be able to go home.  I was feeling pretty good and was open to the transition.  The physical therapist came by and we went for a walk around the floor.  It was difficult to breathe while walking and I felt a little dizzy.  I was happy to be back in bed.  A little while later, lunch came.  I got about half my lunch eaten before the pain in my chest became unbearable.  They were going to do an IV dilaudid breakthrough for pain, but even that pain was unbearable.  They had to re-do my IV hook up which was very unpleasant every little touch to my body was too much.  They finally got the breakthrough in my system and I pretty much fell asleep a few minutes later.  Ironically, while all this was happening the anesthesiologist was asking me questions about my pain management just as I was falling asleep from the breakthrough.  I slept for a few hours and woke up feeling better.  The nurses monitored my pain through the night with various oral medications.

Friday morning.  I woke up feeling better, the pain was under control again.  The doctors made their rounds in the morning and we discussed if I felt well enough to go home.  I wanted to wait to see if I could get through lunch without another episode like yesterday.  They agreed and we waited.  The two things I was worried about causing pain were walking and eating.  Both of those activities had caused me lots of pain the past couple of days.  I made it through a short walk in the hallways and lunch with minimal pain.  By the time the doctors made their afternoon rounds, about 3pm, I was feeling pretty good.  The pain was manageable and I hadn’t had any spikes today.  So they began the discharge process.  By 7:30pm I was home.  Yay!!

R.B. was in bed with me the whole time.

Home again, Home again, Jiggedy Jig

After a four day roller coaster ride of trying to get me stabilized, my pain management is finally under control and I can go home!!!  Very happy!!

Thanks to all my visitors and well-wishers, it helped keep my spirits up.

When my thoughts are a bit more lucid, I will post again about my journey in the hospital.  Until then, I am just happy to be going home.

Oh, the pain

There is pain, then there is Pain, and then there is PAIN!!!!

From the minute they woke me up in recovery there has been pain like I have never felt before.  And that is saying a lot, for I have broken many a bone before.  It hurts to even breathe.  On their scale of 1 – 10, I was off the chart.  The pain meds made me more sleepy than loopy.  Unfortunately I couldn’t fall asleep either.  They had me hooked up to a machine monitoring my breathing and I’m a very slow breather when I fall asleep.  So every time I would start to fall asleep the machine would start to beep and the nurse would tell me to breathe.  Then there is the whole dry mouth, thirsty feeling.  They won’t let me drink anything until they move me to my room because of they whole nausea thing either.  I was in recovery for a long 4.5 hours.  The surgery took 3.5 hours.

Once in my room they tried to make me as comfortable as possible.  R.B. makes a perfect armrest.  He’s nice and soft.  The pain was still horrible.  Around 1:30am they finally upped my dose.  I finally fell asleep about 2am.  Then the pain woke me up at 4:30am.  So much for that sleeping thing.

RB my recovery buddy

Thanks to everyone who sent messages yesterday, sorry I wasn't in much condition to return them :-)

Good-bye, Hal

Today is the day.  I woke up this morning nauseous.  I used to wake up this way before each triathlon I did.  My stomach would just be churning with nerves.  It probably doesn’t help that I maybe slept 4 hours last night.  I just couldn’t shut down my mind very easily.  For as tired as my body felt, my mind was just racing with thoughts.

In less than 4 hours the procedure will start.  Blah!  Trying to keep it together and not freak out.  Insanely scared right now. 

Even Hal is a little sore this morning.  It’s almost as even it knows today is the day.

I appreciate all the love and support I have gotten, especially the last 24 hours.  Thank you all for your kind thoughts and messages.

Twas the night before surgery...

It’s been a crazy day of last minute preparations.  Had my pre-op appointment this morning.  Once again inundated with tons of information on things to do and not do before surgery.  I still don’t understand why I can’t have any water before surgery.  Oh well, just going with it.  I also got some information on what to expect if surgery all goes well.  Let’s see, with the Tissue Expander Breast Reconstruction there will be some chest wall discomfort, swelling and bruising which may take up to two weeks to fully recover from.  Then, when that is healed they will start the tissue expansions, which will go as long as needed.  Basically, if I have a higher tolerance for pain they will be able to fill up the expander quicker.  Now doesn’t that sound fun.     

Oh, and then there is the drain that will be coming out of my chest to expel fluids from surgery.  That gets to stay in for about a week.  It looks like a grenade at the end of a long tube (about 3ft.)  Yep, it just seems to be getting better and better.

Activity wise, I get to take short walks for the first week I am home.  That is a complete change of pace for me. Plus, the definition of “short” walk was not really addressed.  But, the hill I live by is off limits.  I cannot push or pull with my arms for two weeks and need to avoid lifting more than 8 lbs (a gallon of milk is 8 lbs).  It’s gonna be a long two weeks.  Looking for couch buddies to entertain me. 

With all this information the only thing really missing is the emotional, mental part, other than everyone telling me everything is going to be fine and just stay positive.  That is easier said then done.  Tomorrow I will be losing a part of my body.  Um, still haven’t wrapped my head around that one.  Have you really thought about it, losing a part of your body.  Think real hard.  Imagine what it would feel like when you are in the shower and going over the area where it once was.  Image lying in bed on the area where it once was.  Today I did one last swim workout at the pool and I was doing just that.  Thinking about how my stroke would feel different or how the water would feel against my body as I glide through the water.  It is a bit overwhelming.  And then there is the whole aspect of the surgery.  This is a totally new experience for me, I have no idea what is going to happen.  Everyone keeps telling me I’ll be getting some good meds for the pain.  Um, just what kind of pain should I be expecting?  How much pain is there going to be? Are we talking about broken bone pain?  Dislocated finger pain?  Dental implant pain?  What’s the scale here?  Those I’m familiar with, so when you tell me there is pain what are we really talking about?

Yeah, it still sucks!!!

Lastly, thank you to all the messages I have received today.  I appreciate all the support from everyone and I’m sorry if I did not get responses out to all of you.  It’s been a crazy day.

In the home stretch

Last weekend in this chapter of my life and trying to make the most of it.  Hopefully it will be filled with a lot of laughs and good times!!!

Emotionally draining

It's been a long four days.  With the surgery date moved up, I've been making the rounds trying to let people know.  No matter how many times you say it, it does not get any easier to tell someone you have breast cancer.  I'm spent emotionally and pretty much can not tell anyone else in person, I just don't have it in me.  I just want to go away, have this taken care of, and come back as if nothing has happened.  Too bad it doesn't work that way.

Eight days and counting.