Keeping You All Abreast

Hello Everyone,
Thanks to all you of you who posted prayers and good wishes. It was nice to come home to.
I was discharged from the hospital Saturday early afternoon after spending the night Friday night, after going through five hours of surgery on Friday morning. I don't think the bulk of the event hit me until last Thursday evening, after I scrubbed my body with the required Herbclens (the soap you see filling dispensers along all hospital walls and exam rooms) to lower the risk of infection during surgery and crawled in to bed, the last night sleeping with my body as I was born, whole and complete. That fact, and the impending pain had been weighing heavy on my mind.
So, surgery--the thing about surgery is you have no recollection of it, being put out completely. One moment I was in my hospital room answering for the millionth time what my name and birthday was, getting the hospital ID bracelets on, the gown, the socks, meeting my nurses and putting my belongings in to labeled hospital bags and of course getting the required IV stuck in to my hand. So sick of IVs. Then I was waking up with this enormous pressure on my chest feeling like a chainsaw had hacked at me through my underarms and I was put back together with sticks and leaves. I thought I would feel pain on my breasts. But here's the thing. I didn't have breasts to feel pain through. The pain is actually under your arms where the lymph nodes have been taken away. I also was hooked up. Hooked up to oxygen. Hooked up to an IV. Hooked up to these leg cuffs that went on and off to keep my circulation going. It was either have them on, or walk six times around the hospital floor every hour. Considering I couldn't see how I was going to get up just to pee, I had to accept the cuffs. I wasn't aware of my removed breasts until the nurses came to help me up to go to the bathroom and I glimpsed down in to the drape of my gown and saw only two large peices of gauze sealed down with plastic tape instead of what I usually saw, which was, my breasts. You can see how they 'spared' the skin and nipple' which is why it's called skin sparing surgery. Basically my breasts look like the breasts of a woman who had a small chest, but nursed like twenty babies throughout her life. They look like skin envelopes. Envelopes the doctor will fill up later with saline and then silicone. The other big adjustment is the bulbs. I have one sutured in under each breast to collect fluid through thin tubes under my skin. They work by suction to draw out all the excess fluid my body is producing in response to the trauma. For now, my body can't absorb it on its own. Until it can, I have to have these bulbs hanging off me like some sort of alien parasitical appendage. Greg was taught how to empty them and so far, it's been OK. He's been great with the nursing care, even when I turn in to a whiny three year old (which of course is only in his presence, poor guy). We record the amount of fluid. I hope they are under 30cc/day soon because that means they get to come out. They pin to whatever loose fitting shirt I am wearing (another good thing about going through cancer and a baby at the same time--I have lots of nice loose fitting maternity shirts lying around that I don't care if they get blood splattered).
So, happy mother's day to me. I celebrated it without one of the few part of my body that defines woman as mothers. Ugh I am being so dramatic, but I see these little ironies every where I turn. My entire family came over to distract and to help, the sisters, Dan, the aunties, my dad and his girlfriend Patty. The neighbors stopped by and I really had no problem opening up my robe and showing them where my breasts once were because really, it's not me on my chest, but the handy work of two surgeons. It's like my body is a project site and everyone wants to see how it's coming along. Once complete, maybe I will be more modest.
So here's the GREAT news. My surgeon found no cancer in my breasts. She felt no cancer either and even better--there was no cancer in my lymph nodes, even the sentinel lymph node which is the first node in the strand and most definitely would have had cancer in it if there was cancer moving throughout my body. She still took seven nodes which accounts for the pain and I suppose she has her reasons. Here's the wonderful thing. We can be sure I am done with breast cancer forever. First of all, because I don't have breasts to get cancer in. But also, because she found no disease in the nodes and the breasts, we are sure that the chemotherapy treatment I got REALLY worked. It killed that stuff 100%. We never would have known this if I went the usual route of cancer treatment which is surgery first and then treatment. By getting surgery first we take out the markers that tell us if the chemo worked. You just have to hope. My mom had her surgery first, a lumpectomy where they found seven diseased nodes, and then chemo and radiation. But without that tumor and her nodes to look at later, how were they to know the cancer was really gone in her body--that chemo and radiation had worked and wasn't just lying dormant and waiting to come out later?
The best news that is possible came out of this surgery. We are still waiting for the actual pathology report, so keep your fingers crossed.
I just need to get these boobs blown up a a bit. I feel kind of imbalanced. And I want to hold my baby. Last night she woke up four times after sleeping two months straight through the night. You have to think she knows what's going on. Even though she is surrounded by her loving aunts, great-aunts, uncle and dad, she still must sense that something is off in the routine of her little life because something is seriously off in the routine of my life.
Today my friend Amber came over with her daughter Ruby. Ruby had open heart surgery when she was three months old due to a VSD. She has little scars where her tubes once were. Soon her and I will be comparing our scars. My aunt Karen is also here doling out her usual funny stories about my family, wisdom and jokes. And of course Hannah. My amazing sister Hannah who wraps Sadie up in a blanket of love, talks and sings to her all while watering my garden, making me breakfast, tea, giving me a shower and cleaning my house. Thank GOD for sisters and mothers and aunts. Happy belated mother's day to everyone.
Love,
Rosalie
Does anyone have any need for some 36 DD bras?