A Reminder to All and An Update on My Sister

First I will start with the update on my sister.  If you haven't been following me the whole time, then this information will be helpful to you.  My sister Michelle was diagnosed with atypical hyperplasia.  Basically, she had pre-cancerous cells.  So, she chose to have a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy done.  While I am 3 weeks ahead of her in this journey, we are able to go through it with each other.

She finally had her drain tubes removed yesterday, after having them in for over a week.  Then you put the other stuff that she has told me about her doctors, I just want to go pick her up from Ohio and bring her out here and let my care team take care of her.  So anyhow, they still are going to wait another 2 weeks before they start pumping her up.  Okay then.....

When they removed her left breast (which is the one she was having issues with), they found that she was a ticking time bomb.  She was full of those pre-cancerous cells.  Thank you God for letting my own breast issues warrant my sister to check herself.  I've been told that I helped to save her life.  That's a good feeling, but I also just wanted to make sure that my sisters were to take care of themselves and listen to their bodies.

Now, the reminder to you all.

This morning I woke up to a post on Facebook that I was tagged in.  I'm not going to go into detail as I don't want to violate the privacy of this person, but she is having issues that I remember started before my journey really started.  I don't want to scare her, but I also don't want her to ignore things.

So, if you feel like something is off, go have it checked out.  If you still think that something isn't right even when the doctor says you are fine, get a 2nd opinion.  I was never really good at doing that until this happened to me.  Oh, and another word of advice STOP GOOGLING symptoms.  You'll end up driving yourself crazy and diagnosing yourself with stuff that is not even remotely close.  Yes, I did the whole Google thing and scared myself.  Even now Dr. Mess and Renee tell me to stop Googling and just let it go or ask them about it.  So that is my advice for the day.

One more thing that I just realized....I am 1 month and 1 day post op and the cancer cells have been removed from me.  However, since there is no 100%  cancer free given until the 5 year mark, I will gladly count each of these months until that 5 year mark.

I hope each of you have a beautiful and blessed day and thank you for loving me through it.

6 Days Post Mastectomy

So I went in at 7:00am on Friday July 29th for the mastectomy.  I was terrified to say the least.  There was a lot of anxiety, a lot of anger, a lot of tears and everything else in between.  I didn't balk on it, so my journey is continuing.

I was finally taken back to surgery after have a radioactive dye shot into my right nipple and massaged in to take pictures of where lymph nodes were.  This was rather interesting and educational so I knew what nodes Dr. Jacobs would be taking out.  After that I was wheeled back to my pre-op room to wait on Dr. Mess to arrive and have me sign all of the day of surgery consent forms.

My anesthesiologist came out to get me and gave me a kick ass cocktail that had me pretty out of it before they could truly knock me out in the OR.  I only slightly remember pieces of words that everyone was saying before I was completely under.

I came out of surgery screaming bloody murder and begging for them to drug me as much as possible because the pain was too much to handle.  Whatever they happened to give me worked pretty well as I slept and didn't feel much of anything.

My day was filled with nurses coming in and out to check my vitals, dose me with more Morphine, ask me how I was feeling and to empty my drain tubes.  Sleep wasn't too good that night, and it was okay for the most part.

The next day Dr. Mess came in and said that with as good as I looked and how chipper I appeared, I could go home after lunch.  GOOD DEAL!!  Dr. Jacobs came in a bit later and said about the same as Dr. Mess.  Not long after that I found myself headed home.

I set up camp for a couple of days on the couch so that I could sleep and not hurt any part of myself.  That worked, but I wasn't able to sleep next to Andy which made me a bit restless.  Finally on Tuesday night I was able to be propped up and sleep in my own bed while holding my husband's hand.  Sleep was peaceful.

Today I went to see Dr. Mess.  I had the bandages removed and cried.  I guess seeing them bandaged up versus without the bandages is two entirely different things.  It was highly emotional.  I also had the pleasure of having the drain tubes removed.  It was not nearly as horrific as I have read all over the internet.

Now all I have to do is go back on Monday for Dr. Mess to check me again, and if all is well, I may, just may get my first saline injection.  Then on Tuesday I get to see Miss Vickie and Dr. Jacobs so they can see how I am and hopefully give me the results of the pathology report of the lymph nodes that were taken out.

For now though, I am going to take my meds and try to get some sleep.  Thank you all for the continued prayers, thoughts and blessings.  They mean more to me than most of you know.  Much love to all of you while you are loving me through this.

15 Days to Surgery....

I haven't really updated this as there hasn't really been anything going on.  Of course that was until this week started.  So here's the skinny on what has been going on.

I quit smoking.  I am 9 1/2 days smoke free so far.  It's not been nearly as bad as I thought that it would be. Or maybe it was just that I was finally ready for that change to happen.  After being smoke free for 48 hours, I started walking.  My first walk was 4 miles.  Yeah, a little ambitious, but it was nice to be able to walk that much and not huff and puff.  Each day I was continuing to walk 2 miles, but then on Sunday the shin splints and pain in my ankles got to be too much for me, so I was only able to walk a mile and then I've been resting for a couple of days.

Yesterday I had my pre-op appointment with my primary physician.  Not much to report there other than I had an EKG done and was given the paperwork for my bloodwork.  So off I went to the vampires to let them draw my blood.  I have a pretty nasty bruise, which is probably a first in a lot of years.

Today I had my pre-op appointments with Miss Vickie and with Dr. Mess.

Miss Vickie went over all of the instructions with me on what to do before the surgery and what to expect after and how everything will go while I am in surgery.  I was told that I am to be there at 7:00 am and that I had to start out with about 5 needles that shoot me full of radioactive dye to check the lymph nodes in the armpit area.  Apparently, Dr. Jacobs will be removing 3 of them and then it has to be sent off to pathology.  Would it surprise you if I said that I am terrified of that?  The last time something came back from pathology it said it was cancer.  I sure don't want to hear that things have gotten worse or spread or whatever, but it is something that is necessary.  What I worry about is that there is going to be something on that pathology report that will warrant chemo, which will make me lose my hair.  Yes, I am that vain I guess. Let's just cross our fingers that bad doesn't come from those results.

Now after Dr. Jacobs gets one breast done, Dr. Mess will come in and work on that breast while Dr. Jacobs works on the other.  The tend to do it this way since they don't want to keep me asleep for too long. Dr. Mess will be the one that finishes everything up and then goes out to talk to Andy and let him know how I am doing.

From the information I gathered from Dr. Mess today, I will pretty much be flat chested when I come out and my boob area will be highly deformed.  This is what happens when you have a mastectomy and reconstruction.  I guess I thought that I would have the tissue expanders inflated enough during surgery that I wouldn't be flat chested.  Apparently that is not the case here.  I am seriously not looking forward to that part.

After I have had my post-op appointment with Dr. Mess, I will have one with Dr. Jacobs, then another with Dr. Mess.  When those appointments are all said and done, I will be looking at having the saline injected into the tissue expanders each week until I am at my desired size.  Once I am to that size, I will go back in for a surgery to have my actual implants put in.  Then the journey will continue after that.

Plastic Surgeon Visit #2

So I met with Dr. Mess today.  She is the plastic surgeon who would do implants if I so chose that path.  She was absolutely wonderful and answered all the questions I had about implants and even answered new questions I had about the DIEP flap.

I asked her if I had enough fat in the momma pouch to give me the same size of breasts I already had.  Her answer was no.  So that leads to the decision that I made today.  I will be going with Dr. Mess to do my surgery and I will have implants put in.

She asked about what size I currently am, and I gave her the measurements that Victoria's Secrets gave me, which is a 36 D.  So after taking some pictures and measuring me, she came up with me being just shy of a D.  So I told her that I would like to be a full D when we are done.  She said that it was no big deal and a D is absolutely possible and would look very good.  That made me happy, as I refused to be anything less than what I currently am.  So I guess all of you would like to know when the surgery is to be done.

I have scheduled the surgery to be done on July 26th.  That will give me enough time to gather up caretakers so that I can be taken care of during my downtime.  I know I already have my mother in law and a couple of other people offer up their time, which is making this a little bit easier.

Essentially what they are going to do is do the double mastectomy and then put expanders in.  I'll have to go in and have them filled up so that the skin stretches out to the size that I want to be.  After that, I'll go back in and be opened up to put my real implants in.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to have the nipple reconstruction done or not.  I know that they will only be able to preserve the left nipple since that breast has not been messed with.  The right can't be saved.  I won't have any feeling in the remaining nipple and if a reconstruction was done on the right, there would be no feeling in that.  I also don't plan on having any more children that I would have to breast feed.  So really, what is the point in even having the nipples reconstructed?

I can have tattoos put where the nipples are to be and they would be 3D and would look like there were nipples there.  I could also do some other sort of tattoo there in place of the nipples.  Maybe I'll put some pretty pink daisies there.  Hell, who knows.  LOL!  Either way, that's the only other decision it seems that I need to make.

After sitting and talking to Dr. Mess and then talking to Andy about my decision, I can say that I am happy with it.  I'm sure that it'll be trying on me at times, especially when I am dealing with having the expanders in.
Overall though, I think I'm ready for this.  

The MRI Results Are Back and....

...nothing is on them.  Which is a good sign.  It means that they don't see anything else.  At least at this point in this journey.  So, where do I go from here?

I'll be talking to Miss Vickie sometime today to schedule appointments to meet with plastic surgeons.  I figured that I would take the road that is more complicated at the beginning, but hopefully means that I won't have to deal with any of this stuff later on.  At the beginning of this journey I was presented with the options of a lumpectomy with radiation or the mastectomy.

If I were to do the lumpectomy with radiation, it would mean going in 5 days a week for 6 weeks.  Frankly, I don't have the support system here that I can even do this option.  With momma not being able to drive, Andy not being able to take that long off, and no second set of hands for momma to deal with the boys, I've chosen to go with the mastectomy, more specifically a double mastectomy.

Now some would probably ask me why I am choosing to undergo such an intensive surgery with hellacious recovery time.  As Dr. Jacobs pointed out to me, I have to do what is best for me and what is easiest to do at this point in time.  It is true that I don't have a support system with this option either, but it does give me the ability to stay at home and not have to run out every day for radiation.  The down side to this is going to be the recovery time.  I'm not entirely sure how long that will be since I haven't talked to the plastic surgeons yet, but I know it will be a little while since I am opting to do a DIEP flap.  At least that is what I've already settled on unless the plastic surgeon scares me too much.

Pretty much with a DIEP flap, they will go in and remove fat and tissue from my belly to build my new breasts from it.  This pretty much means that my breasts will be more like the ones I already have.  They'll be more natural as opposed to implants.

I guess I just don't want to be that lady walking around at 70ish years old and having the boobs of a 20 something.  The other downside with implants would be that I would have to have them replaced every 10 years.  I'm not really into the idea of having to get my chest cut into every 10 years.  When I get this done, I want it over and done with.

Now that's not to say that I won't have other surgeries, as I already know ahead of time that I will have to do 2 more.  One of them would be to reconstruct the nipple and then the other would be to tattoo on the areola.  In talking with my sister Lynda yesterday, she didn't know that they tattooed your boobs to make them more normal.  She then made the comment about asking if I could have something pretty tattooed there.  I honestly laughed about it.  Could you imagine me asking a doctor if I could just have lilies tattooed there?  LOL!  Right, I know you laughed.

Anyhow, what I understand from what Dr. Jacobs told me, the DIEP flap surgery will be done at the time the mastectomy is done.  So the surgery would more or less be about 8-12 hours with a minimum of a 3 day hospital stay.  I'm sure that once I talk to the plastic surgeons, there will be more information and better understanding of this.  So for now, that is all the information that I know.