1 week to go

So a week from now I will probably be taking my night before shower with my special soap the plastic surgeon gave me.  This is probably going to be the longest week ever!  And maybe the shortest when it's done (funny how that works).

I had my hospital preop and my breast surgeon preop today.  I found out all the details  OH Shoot, i just realized I forgot a question I meant to ask.  Is it even worth asking if it doesn't make a difference?  Hmmm maybe I'll email her.... ANYWAY, I guess I found out almost all the details.

Monday afternoon I will go into the hospital to "Nuc Meds" to get radioactive dye injected into each of my breasts.  I will then hang out for a couple hours while the dye travels it's way through my breast tissue to my lymph nodes to identify "The Sentinel Node(s)".  They will then do some scans to insure the injections did their job.

Tuesday morning, I will go to the rear entrance (ER entrance) of the hospital at 7am and use my "Express Admit" aka "Hall Pass" to go up to the second floor and get things started for my surgery time of 9am. 

Basically what I was told by the nurse at preop is that a nurse will come in and have me change my clothes and ask me a bunch of questions, then anesthesia will come in and give me an IV and ask me a bunch of questions, at some point my surgeons will come in and draw on me and see how i'm doing, then I'll get something in my IV to relax me, we'll go to the operating room and get me situated on the table and next thing I know I'll be waking up 8 hours later with nurses asking me a bunch of questions.  I'll spend an hour in recovery and then be taken to my room where my family can join me. 

Not sure how I feel about having to be awake going into the operating room... Now that I'm really concentrating on it I do have some vague memory of it now with my other general anesthesia surgeries.. kind of creepy.

So the for the 8 hours of surgery - I really have 7 1/2 if everything takes exactly how long they said it would.  So 45 minutes for sentinel node biopsy for each side (1 1/2 hours total).  Then 1 1/2 hours per breast for the mastectomy (3 hours).  And 1 1/2 hours per breast for expander placement reconstruction (3 hours).

There was a moment in the hospital today that I was a little concerned... The preop nurse was looking through my stuff and said "okay so on Tuesday we're going to be doing bilateral reconstructive surgery with expander placement with Dr. W?".  and I thought a minute and realized they had only ever to that point mentioned the plastic surgeon.  so I said "after I have a bilateral mastectomy with Dr. P...."  and she looks surprised and looks at the paper and says "Oh what, you're doing both at the same time??"   "yes....."  Then she found the other surgery paperwork and all was good.  Had me a little worried though for a minute (thank goodness for preop - I'd prefer to avoid that kind of confusion on surgery day!)

My hormones are out of whack... probably the stress.  It feels like boobs are aching in anticipating of this.  They are incredibly sore.  A friend pointed out today that after next week I won't have this problem anymore!  Way to find the silver lining!   That works for me.  I just need to get through this week without losing my mind.

Countdown Clocks and my MRI

I have countdown clocks.  Such as the one on my blog saying 18 days until surgery!  (18 days!!) I have 2 more on my phone - 101 days until Christmas!  AND  115 Days until 30!  It's quite strange watching the days tick away.  I clearly remember having 300 days until my 30th birthday, and watching each one and wondering if I'd feel some sense of urgency when it was down to just 100..  I'm close.  But really it will be just one more day down.  Maybe I should then change it to days until I'm 31.

So we've made a couple steps towards finalizing things for the procedure.  I found out at work who would be covering for me.  It is FAR from ideal.  And I could probably write for an hour on how upset I am about it and why, but like I've been saying - it is what it is.  We just need to make the best of it.  Atleast we found out now and can start training and making arrangements instead of doing it all last minute like I was beginning to fear (though based on who it is, we really could have known a month ago, and had things a little more in order....BUT OH WELL).

I also had my MRI yesterday.  Okay.. MRIs are weird.  The guy who checked me in and really walked me through the procedure was the same guy who did it all at my MRI last year.  He is extremely friendly and chatty and easy to talk to which probably helps his case when he's kind of an older guy who has to get your boobs situated properly in the machine without freaking you out. 

I wore scrubs for this adventure.  But the funny thing is they make you keep your shoes on atleast until you mount the machine.  So since I was coming from work and going back to work afterwards, I was wearing my oversized hospital issued blue scrubs and my black peep toe high heels.

He set me up with an IV, placed a giant scrub cap/hair net thing on my head, and squished some ear plugs in my ears.  Then I got all situated on this table where I had to lay face down with my arms above my head and my boobs dangling freely...  (awkward...)  He put a big warm blanket over me which made me feel a little better.  Then he messed with my IV a bunch which wasn't very pleasant, slid my table back into the machine and then he left, and I had to lay perfectly still while this machine around me buzzed, and beeped and knocked.  They have it fixed with a mirror so that even though I was laying face down I could see straight out in front of me (where the top of my head was pointed).  I think that helps with the claustrophobia.  The time is really only broken up by the imaging person speaking every once in awhile "you'll hear knocking for five minutes now, be very still",  then five minutes later "There will be silence for 2 minutes now, please remain still".  This went on for atleast 20-30 minutes before the guy came back in and injected my IV with the contrast dye and told me only 5 minutes, then 6 minutes left!  Not sure why he didn't say 11 minutes...

My skin is very impressionable, so after laying face down with a folded towel between my face and the head rest, I had major towel imprints and lines all over my face!  They were mostly gone by time I got to work, but I'm sure I looked pretty funny at the hospital.

Then it was maybe 3 hours later and my surgeons office called.  I had a moment of fear/panic of course where I thought "oh my gosh it must be bad for them to rush the results like that!"  but no.. she said they got the results and "everything looks stable, there are no new lesions" and they would discuss it in more detail at my preop!  So thats good news, and just further reinforcement of how awesome my hospital and doctors are.  

Next week is preop with the Plastic Surgeon, I expect it to be informative.  I'm bringing my husband, we can really get to the details of the reconstruction, what I can expect there now that I have the clearance I need from all the other doctors! 

Swinging back the other way!

So right now I'm feeling good about my decision again.  I kind of feel like a swinging pendulum (on a clock).  Its not that I feel completely different on either side.  I still have the same thoughts and concerns, it's just a matter of which are stronger feelings at any given point in time.

I added a countdown clock to the blog.  I was feeling like October 4th is really close, but really to see when I added the countdown it's still 80 days away, made me feel a little better!!  Plus when I called to ask the plastic surgeons office a question, I told the lady on the phone who I was and she said, "oh yes, you're the one scheduled way out there".... yes I guess I am? I also got a call from the pre-op scheduler saying it's too early to actually schedule the hospital pre-op appointments so she'll be calling me back in a few weeks.

I also got a call from the breast surgeon on Wednesday.  I really love that she calls me directly and speaks to me personally rather than having a nurse or assistant call.  She was just wanting me schedule my MRI for September instead of July so that it is closer to the time of surgery.  She indicated that this way if the MRI was completely clear she'd be okay with not doing the sentinel node biopsy if I didn't want to.  I've already decided to go ahead and do it though, so that doesn't really make a difference.  But this will also provide an opportunity to meet with her again a week prior to surgery to review the MRI results and ask any other questions I have.  I feel like I should have a lot of questions still, but I don't really know what they are.  I'm kind of feeling like between my appointment with her the last week of September and my pre-op appointment with the plastic surgeon September 19th, I should have all my questions answered. 

The breast surgeon also offered to fill out my FMLA paperwork if I got the recommendation for recovery time from the plastic surgeon.  They're going to recommend up to 6 weeks.  I hope to get that all filled out and submitted by the end of this month, so we can start planning at work what they're going to do while I'm gone.  I'm hoping we can get my recently "reduced" employee to come in at least on a temporary basis since she's already trained (and I really wish she still worked with us anyway).  On a monthly delivery system like we have that means they'll basically have to go through one full cycle, prepare and start the next and be prepared for the third before I get back, if I'm gone for the full 6 weeks.  I'm fairly confident though that If we set things In place like I would recommend they would be okay.  Plus this should be around the time of a new software implementation that should (in theory) make some of that easier.