Surgery

Friday morning we checked into the hospital at 7am. Eventually we were taken to nuclear medicine so that something could be injected into my nipple to determine which lymph nodes the surgeon needed to take.  The technologist took some images to determine where the lymph nodes were and marked them on my skin.  After about an hour, we were taken to the pre-op area where I met with my breast surgeon, plastic surgeon, ob/gyn & the anesthesiologist.  It was interesting because I had to explain to everyone what they were going to do to me- I guess they do that to make sure I really understand the procedures.  The plastic surgeon got out his purple pen and drew all over me, so that he knew what went where after the breast surgeon removed all of the breast tissue.

They finally wheeled me back, so I said goodbye to Ray.  The last thing I remember is being in the operating room.

When I woke up, I was in the recovery room.  I found out that my surgery ended up being closer to 6 hours (instead of the 4-4.5 hours they projected).  The breast surgeon took 5 lymph nodes out to be tested but the prelim results were negative for cancer in the nodes.  She told us that it is 90% accurate so there's only a very small chance that the cancer spread.  I'll take those odds!

I had to stay in recovery longer than anticipated because my heart rate got kind of high (130s) but once I got some steroids, I was cleared to move to my room around 9pm.  My nurse was great and very attentive.  I was able to get up and walk around a bit, although the pain in my abdomen was worse than I expected.  The tubal ligation was kind of an afterthought procedure, but i didn't get the numbing like they did for the other surgeries.  I got some good drugs though!

I was able to come home around 3:30pm on Saturday.  I'm getting lots of great care here at home- Elianna really likes being involved in draining my drains.  She might just be our future nurse!

  I don't feel nearly as bad as I thought I would, to be honest.  I'm 4 days out from surgery now and can get around pretty well.  I'm still pretty tired and sore.  Physically I'm doing pretty well.  I'm having trouble emotionally though, but I'm not quite ready to blog about that yet but plan to once I can get my thoughts to make sense.