Preparing for Surgery
After waffling back and forth for 2 months, my doctor informed me that I had to make a decision! I just could not decide what to do?? My doctor wanted me to have a total mastectomy, but I was totally against it. I had been reading and researching all of my options, and I just did not see WHY I needed to have both of my breasts removed. I did not even see the reason to have my affected breast removed. In my research, I had found out that having a total mastectomy did not increase my chances of survival over having a less redical lumpectomy. I will go into more detail about this later under “Breast Cancer Facts”. But for now, I will skip that. When he told me I had to make a decision, I decided that I was going to go with a partial lumpectomy. That means that I would have surgery on the affected breast only, and have the cancer and all of the cells (as many as possible) removed. The majority of my breast would be left intact, including the aureola/nipple. I knew that breast would be smaller than my other breast, but I was hoping there would not be a huge difference. I also agreed to have the lymph nodes removed under my right arm. The doctor thought possibly 2 to 4 lymph nodes would need to be removed. I called my doctor, told him what I was consenting to, and he set the surgery in motion.
Nothing is ever easy for me. I developed pulmonary embolisms (blood clots) in my left leg and in my lungs back in 2010. I spent 8 months in and out of the hospital trying to stabilize my condition. I had to have 4 surgeries to put in and remove 2 blood clot filters. I was put on warfarin for the rest of my life. Warfarin complicates matters when you have to have surgery. Because of the blood clotting issue, I had to merge off of warfarin and start Lovenox shots. I had to give myself 2 shots a day in the fatty tissue of my stomach. I had to test my blood every other day until it reached a certain level. Unfortunately, there is no set amount of days for this to happen. In my case, it took over 2 weeks to reach that magic number. That meant 28+ shots in my stomach! My entire stomach was black and blue from the injections. These shots have to be coordinated with the surgery date. This made matters somewhat complicated, as the surgery date is pretty well set in stone. However, I was not ready as my blood levels were not correct when the first surgery date was set. We had to reschedule the surgery, and thankfully, the second date worked out. Finally, surgery was set for June 5th, 2014.
I had to schedule blood work and also had to schedule an appointment the day before the surgery to have tiny threads put in my cancerous breast to guide the surgeon in the removal of the tumor. This test is called ___________.??? When I showed up, I put on a gown. I was then taken to a room where the nurse placed 3 tiny permanent dark blue marks on my cancerous breast. Next, a doctor came in and numbed the area. After a few minutes, he returned and with a long needle, inserted it into each of the areas where the 3 dots were. Each insertion placed a “marker” so the surgeon would know exactly where the tumor was located. I was warned that this could be quite painful. However, for me, it did hurt tremendously, but only for a couple of seconds at each location. I just bit on my fingers to distract the pain, and it seemed to work for me. The whole procedure took less than 20 minutes. I dressed, we went home, and prepared to be back at the hospital at noon the next day.
Surgery Day
I was worried about pain from the procedure I had just had, but a little Tylenol and I had very little pain. Now I had the next hurdle to climb. Tomorrow was surgery day. I had finally accepted the fact that this was my life. I did have breast cancer and I was going to have surgery. However, I felt somewhat relieved that I had made the decision I had made, and that it was the right decision for me. I was not too stressed the afternoon before the surgery. But when it came time to go to bed, I was pretty stressed. I had worked myself into a frenzy! Surgery always scares me as there is no guarantee that one will survive the surgery. I tried everything to get to sleep, but sleep eluded me. I could not get to sleep for the life of me. I did finally pass out about 5:00A.M. and slept until about 9:45A.M. I had to get up and get ready to go to the hospital. My surgery was scheduled for 12:30P.M. I had to be there an hour before surgery to fill out all of the paperwork and be processed.
We arrived at the hospital at 11:30A.M. and started the process. The waiting room was filled with 5 or 6 other patients, and it turned out most of them were supposed to have surgery before me! Oooops! Looks like there is a problem.
