Hello again,

Well today, I’m going to continue on with sharing my story about my recent battle with breast cancer.  Hopefully, somewhere in my ramblings you will find something you can relate to or maybe draw some hope from.  As always, your comments are appreciated and welcomed.  God bless.

 

The day of my surgery was 08-04-2006, so it’s been just about two years !! Time flys when you’re having fun !  Anyway, I woke up nice and early, had to be at the hospital very early in the morning.  My parents came with me and my husband showed up a bit before I went in for the surgery itself.  I was scheduled for a needle localization with wire insertion by ultrasound guidance prior to the surgery.  They mark the tumor with the surgical wire, to let the surgeon find it easily.  Just like the biopsy, it didn’t hurt.

Also, since they had to check my lymph nodes, I had to have my lymph nodes “marked” to help find those as they aren’t easy to see.  They used a radioactive med. and injected it in 6 sites around the nipple, the med. would then flow through the nodes and up the chain of nodes, marking them for the surgeon to see.  The only bad part was that this hurt some because they couldn’t use Lidocaine. 

Then it was off to pre-op, some friends came in to see me off.  Along came the anesthesiologist with a syringe of stuff…..and I didn’t remember anything until I woke up in the recovery room.  They moved me to my room after that.

Since I had 7 nodes removed, the first was infected with cancer cells, the rest were not,  I had a drain into my axilla, (armpit area) to drain fluid that the absent nodes could not.

I stayed overnight and went home the next day.  Very mild pain in my book, but others I’ve talked to said it can be higher.  At a follow up appointment 4 days later, they removed the drain, which felt soooooo good, as I’d started to heal around it and it was irritating !! 

The week after, I had my 1st appointment with my Oncologist.  I’d researched the hell out of my pathology results, so I went prepared to say the least.  I knew I’d need chemo, because of the node involvement.  The appointment went fine, all my questions were answered.  She wanted to start the chemo about a week later so I decided to get an infusa-port for ease of getting my doses.  The procedure was relatively easy, just outpatient, in and out in a few hours time.  I figured I’d rather have the device used than get frequent pokes into my arm for IVs and Lab draws.  It ended up on the left side of my chest, just above my left breast.

My first chemo treatment was on 8-28-2006, it wasn’t too bad, I fully expected to feel horribly sick and terrible.  I really didn’t.  I was surprised.  It took about 4-5 hours and then I went home.  I still wasn’t sick yet, and still didn’t really feel bad at all, until the next day that is ! That next day I felt like I had been ran over by a Mac truck a few times !

Chemo helps but here’s a few pointers that may help:  1.  Drink lots of water, at least 64 oz. each day, more will flush the poisons/toxins out sooner.  2.  take stool softeners everyday if needed, my first round of chemo stopped my intestines like I swallowed concrete !! Trust me, that sucks.  3.  Take nausea meds. EVEN if you don’t feel nauseated, it can hit quick and then it’s too late.  4.  Frequent snacks/grazing can help nausea a lot.  5.  Never….ever….ever…ever……EVER !!!! give yourself an enema during chemo.  I was sooooo constipated and hadn’t gone for over 5 days, none of my info. from the Oncologist said not to, but it’s a HUGE No-No !!! It caused an even bigger drop in my White Blood Cell count and led to a 5 day hospitalization in isolation so my WBC’s could recover. 

Thats it for today, I will cover more in the coming days.  As always, I hope this helps.  Thanks for reading and sharing.

God bless you and yours,

Meredith – RNC  ( I’m running for President, in case you hadn’t read that post : ))