My Cancer Story: The Mastectomy

If you haven’t yet read the previous posts about my cancer journey, you can start from the beginning right here.

Sorry for the delay, but since my last post I have had a few bad days and haven’t quite felt up to writing.  I’m happy to say that I’m feeling much better and I’m ready to get y’all caught up to date with this post.

 On Friday, September 25, I met with the plastic/reconstructive surgeon at 8:00 am to discuss my surgery options and hopefully schedule the surgery.  While my general surgeon would perform the actual mastectomy, the plastic surgeon would be in the operating room as well to immediately begin the reconstruction process.  I was so anxious driving to the appointment.  I remember pulling into the parking lot and forcing myself to calm down and desperately wishing my husband was with me.  I felt completely and totally overwhelmed.  I pulled myself together and went inside.  In the waiting room, I was pretty calm but holding back tears.  When the nurse first called me back and put me in an exam room, she asked me all of the usual questions and then immediately started showing me how to empty the drains that I would have coming out of my body after the surgery.  It was all so clinical and impersonal, and suddenly being presented with the realities of the recovery from this surgery was very difficult.  I remember telling myself to not think too much about the drains or I would lose it.

After the drain instructions, the nurse left the room and I waited for the doctor.  She came in after just a few minutes and I liked her immediately.  I knew before the appointment that she was a young woman, and I found out later that she is my exact same age.  I am normally skeptical of doctors who are my age or younger (especially if they are going to be operating on me!) because I automatically think they don’t have a lot of experience.  However, I could tell right away that this was not the case here.  Not only was she compassionate and sensitive to my situation, she was extremely confident and made me feel like everything was going to be all right.  She even shed a few tears with me and shared her mother’s success story with cancer.

She began going through all of my reconstruction options with me.  I will spare you the details, but I easily decided that I wanted to do the type of reconstruction which involves tissue expanders to be inserted during the surgery, which are then slowly filled with fluid over a period of several months, and eventually replaced with normal implants during a second surgery.  We also discussed where she would make the incisions and the basic details of what she would be doing to me.  I am a very squeamish person when it comes to the human body, so I didn’t pry for details or ask a lot of technical questions.

Pretty soon I began asking about the timeline of everything, and she was answering like the surgery date had already been scheduled.  I had assumed that I would have to wait several weeks at a minimum to get on the schedule and when I asked her about it, she informed me that they (herself, as well as my general surgeon and the operating room staff) had already arranged for me to have the surgery the following Wednesday!  I was in disbelief.  Like I mentioned earlier, patience is not something that comes easy for me and to only have to wait 4 days was such a huge blessing!  Once, again, I could clearly see God walking one step ahead of me.  Better yet, my husband was flying in that evening and was scheduled to go back Sunday afternoon.  All we had to do was push his return flight home out a few weeks and that was easy to do!  In an instant, everything fell into place.  I left the appointment feeling much calmer than when I arrived.  My husband would be home in a few hours and would be by my side throughout the whole ordeal.  I was ready to move forward.

Later that day, my husband called to tell me he was on his way to the airport and that he had some great news.  When he told his boss that he would be gone 2 weeks for my surgery (his boss has been so supportive and had told him all along that he could take as much time as he needed and to not worry about it), he told him that he wouldn’t even have to use his vacation time but just to “work from home” as much as he could.  I was ecstatic!  As you can imagine since I have a blog dedicated to vacationing, his vacation days are very important to me and I had assumed that he would have to use a ton of them to be with me for the surgery and recovery.  I couldn’t believe it.  Finally some good news in the midst of so much sadness.  The girls and I picked him up from the airport that evening and suddenly I felt so calm and optimistic.  Just having him by my side, instead of across the country, made a huge difference in my outlook.  I suddenly felt no fear, just peace and confidence that everything would be all right.

I don’t remember many specifics about the next 4 days except that I wasn’t scared or nervous.  I made arrangements for the girls to stay with my parents during the surgery and for 2 days after.  I went out to dinner 2 nights in a row with girlfriends who wanted to spend time with me before the surgery.  I made sure that I had everything I needed for the hospital stay and bought a few last minute items and packed my bag for the hospital.

The day before my surgery, I had to go to the hospital for a procedure that would locate the first lymph node in the series leaving my breast so that they could remove it during the surgery and check it for cancer.  To do this, I had to get 4 huge shots in my breast which burned like crazy.  I think it was worse than the biopsies had been.  Thankfully, the node showed up on the camera just as it should have (apparently this isn’t always the case) and I was good to go.  I was so grateful that the procedure went perfectly and was fully confident that God was in control and providing for my every need.

Something really neat happened on the way to the hospital that day that I would like to share.  At this point, our house had been for sale for 2 months (remember we thought we would be moving to a different state about this time), and we had instructed our realtor to take our house off the market temporarily the morning of my surgery, which was the following morning after this took place.  It would be too hard to keep the house “show ready” and leave at a moment’s notice for a showing while I was recovering from surgery.  So, as we were leaving the house for the procedure, I noticed that the house was a total wreck.  Seriously, it looked like a bomb had gone off.  I asked my husband if we should straighten up just in case anyone called for a showing that afternoon while we were gone, which was the last day that it would be on the market for a while.  He insisted that we didn’t need to, that no one had looked at the house in at least 4 weeks (which was true) so certainly no one was going to call in the next few hours.  Wrong.  As we were pulling into the hospital parking lot, my phone rang.  It was a realtor asking to show our house in 2 hours.  Oh no.  I told him that he was welcome to show it, but explained the situation to him and apologized for the mess in advance.  He was so kind and understanding it almost brought me to tears.  He explained to me that his wife had breast cancer a few years prior and told me about her treatment and that she is perfectly healthy today.  He wished me luck with my journey, and told me that his clients have foster children and at one point had NINE kids so he was sure they would not be phased by the mess.  At the end of the call, he asked me for my name and told me that he would pray for me after we hung up.  How awesome is that???  I felt like he may have been an angel sent by God to give me the peace and encouragement I needed just as I walked into the hospital to begin this difficult journey.  Walking into that hospital that day, I finally felt confident and encouraged.

My surgery was scheduled for 1:00 pm the following day and I was told to get to the hospital at 11:15.  We dropped the girls off at my parents house that morning and went to the hospital.  We checked in and got settled into the pre-op room and began the wait.  One of my dear friends, my sister, my mother-in-law and my pastor came to be with me until I went to the operating room.  We talked, laughed and prayed.  I am still to this day amazed that I was not nervous or scared.  I had so many people praying for me and I know without a doubt that is why I had such a feeling of peace.  The anesthesiologist came to see me, as did my general surgeon and plastic surgeon.  Markers were used to draw on my body and we were ready to go.

When it was time, the nurse wheeled my bed to the operating room and I remember it all very clearly.  The operating room didn’t seem as cold as last time.  I moved myself from the bed I was on to the skinny operating table as instructed.  I remember asking for a wedge pillow to put under my knees, as if it would even matter in a few minutes whether I was comfortable or not.  One of the nurses was sort of introducing me to everyone in the room, but I could only see their eyes because of the surgical masks they were wearing, and some of the people were behind me and I couldn’t see them at all, they were just voices saying hello.  It was so weird to be “meeting” the people that were about to see me naked and sliced open for 6-8 hours.  Pretty soon someone put the gas mask over my face and then it began….

 My husband tells me that during the surgery, a nurse from the operating room called him exactly every hour to give him an update.  Once the general surgeon was done with his part, he came out to tell my husband that everything had gone well.  When the plastic surgeon was finished, she came to tell him the same thing.  Everything had gone smoothly and I can’t remember exactly how long the operation was, but I think it was around 6 hours.

I have no recollection of first few hours after the surgery, and the next thing I knew I was already out of the recovery area and into my own room and it was late.  I think it was probably sometime in the middle of the night.  My first thought when I woke up was that it was painful to breathe.   The only thing that made it bearable was to take quick, shallow breaths.  I remember being in a lot of pain, saying so, and overhearing some conversations between my husband and the nurses about pain meds and IVs.  At some point in the night, it was determined that it would be a good idea for me to get out of bed and use the bathroom.  I had a catheter during the surgery, but it was also removed during surgery and now I was on my own.  Let me tell you, getting out of that bed was one of the most difficult things I can remember doing in my entire life.  Trying to sit all the way up and get my legs over the side of the bed was so, so hard and painful.  It must have taken at least 5 minutes, and this was with my husband and at least 1 nurse doing everything they could to help me.  I still don’t know how I finally managed to do it.  Then, once I was sitting on the side of the bed, I had to figure out how to stand up, walk a few feet to the bathroom, turn around, pull up my gown and sit down to go.  It was about this time that I finally realized how traumatic this surgery was to my body and just how difficult the recovery would be.

During the next 24 hours I had steady improvement.  We got the pain under control but I was so incredibly sleepy that unless someone was talking to me or I was trying to eat, I just slept.  I was determined to get out of bed, use the bathroom and walk the hallways (while holding onto my husband for dear life and pushing my IV pole) every few hours.  They also brought me a breathing contraption that I had to blow into regularly to inflate my lungs and prevent me from getting pneumonia.  Apparently this surgery causes parts of your lungs to collapse, which explains the difficulty I was having taking deep breaths.  At some point that day, my surgeon came to check on me and said that I looked great.  She had me sit up (still not easy!), and she removed the bandages which had been wrapped around my chest and looked at the incisions.  I didn’t yet feel comfortable looking down to see the damage, so I didn’t.  She told me that during the surgery, she was actually able to fill the tissue expanders with some fluid and so I already had small breasts. She said that the amount of fluid that she put in would probably save me about 2 weeks during the reconstruction process.  Yeah!  Instead of putting the bandages back on me, she very carefully helped me put on a surgical bra.  At this point I had 2 drains coming out of each side of my body (if you are not familiar with surgical drains, I will spare you the details because there is really nothing about them that isn’t disgusting) that the nurse safety pinned to the bra.  That would stay that way for the next week.

As the day progressed, I started thinking about whether or not I wanted to go home that day or stay for a second night.  Most women only stay 1 night, but some stay 2.  The thought of getting into a car and driving home that day was unbearable, so I decided to stay a second night.  By the next morning I felt much better and the pain was still under control, so we left the hospital in the early afternoon.  The car ride home actually wasn’t that bad.  Once we were home, I headed straight for my bed, which would be my home base for about a week.

Up Next:  The Recovery and Reconstruction

ETA:  We were actually able to go on our cruise which was 5 weeks post-mastectomy.  You can read the trip report here.