Thursday, November 1, 2012

And Then There Were None!

Well as you know the next faze of my treatment was a mastectomy. The type of surgery you have depends on a lot of things. Part of it depends on the type of cancer you have and what stage, part of it on all the other factors like whether or not you are BRCA1 and part of just depends on your personal preference. Even before we knew what the doctors would recommend Shawn and I knew that a bilateral mastectomy was what we wanted. Being in my 20's and having three young girls we knew we wanted to do everything we could to raise my chances of a long life.

I'll be honest the worst part about the mastectomy was waking up from anesthesia. I opted to do my surgery as a same day outpatient surgery. My amazing surgeon told me up front that most people couldn't handle that and that after the surgery if I decided it was too much I could stay but if I really wanted to go home that day she would let me. It took a couple hours to get up and going after and I did puke a couple of times but I went home and I'm glad I did. I was so much more comfortable at home than I would have been in the hospital plus I had my amazing husband to help with my drains.

I'll be honest. I tried to prepare myself for this by looking at pictures online. I felt like I was mentally prepared before hand but I just never really knew how I would feel once it was done. As it turns out I was fine with it. I was actually relieved to have them gone. After all they were trying to kill me. The following picture was taken as soon as the anesthesia had worn off enough that I could get up and around without wanting to throw up.  
 When the time came to take off the bandages I was a little scared. Mostly because I was afraid what Shawn would think. He insisted on taking them off for me. He knows me well enough to know that I can't take off a band-aid myself much less all of this. He took off all the bandages and he never blinked. He was amazing!

The biggest hassle about having a mastectomy was the drains. They are gross and  I was always afraid I might rip them out. You have to get creative to find ways to keep them attached but out of the way. Most of the time they were pinned inside my shirt but other times I had to get more creative. When it came time to shower I had to find a way to keep them from pulling out that didn't involve me trying to juggle them. My FRTI lanyards came in very handy for this. LOL
I wish we had my nice new camera at this point because we could have had a lot of fun taking pictures of what came out of those drains! But more iphone pictures will have to do.
All in all this was probably the easiest part of my treatments. I realize that's not the case for many women but for me it wasn't bad at all. I'll post pictures of everything after it healed a couple of blogs from now. The next phase was the worst for me.

2 comments:

  1. I can't believe you went home the same day! You are so blessed to have such a wonderful husband who has been there, been such an awesome caretaker and your biggest supporter. You have no idea how lucky you are. You are such a courageous young woman. I know it's not necessary to post every time you blog, but you truly amaze and inspire this old lady.

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  2. I certainly don't recommend going home the same day for most but for some its the right thing to do. There are people trying to outlaw that and require you to stay. I think that's taking things too far. Yes my husband is so awesome. He is my rock and I couldn't have done any of this without him.

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