Breast Cancer Surgery
I wasn’t scared for one solitary moment Thursday. No butterflies fluttered their wings in my stomach, and I didn’t feel my breath catch in my throat as I checked into the hospital at 6:00am. This was the day I had been waiting for; thirty days to the day, and I was finally getting the surgery to have the breast cancer removed from both my breasts. Thirty days ago, August 17, 2020, I had a series of tests done, felt my world spin out of control, and did everything I could to hide from the diagnosis I now carry: Breast Cancer. I stopped hiding weeks ago. I have learned how to carry on, smile in spite of this diagnosis.
Thursday morning, at 7:00am I was sitting in a hospital bed in hideous yellow socks and looked away as the nurse stabbed the vein in my right hand and started my IV. Just another needle prick down, now I’m no longer afraid of having blood drawn or being stabbed with sharp objects, this is my future, this is my new normal.
A conversation with the surgeon to go over my latest MRI results the night prior to surgery confirmed that due to my dense breast tissue I would be having yearly contrast MRIs and more than likely many false positives requiring biopsies for the foreseeable future to rule out a recurrence. Only two weeks ago I was screaming no more MRIs or biopsies, but they are just part of my life now; nothing to fear, just another needle and then a metallic taste in my mouth.
7:30am and the Plastic Surgeon and Surgeon performing the lumpectomy examine my bare chest. I’m marked up and pondered over, triangles of flesh soon to be gone lined in purple marker, its remnants remain on my breasts ninety-six hours later. My left breast, where multifocal breast cancer resides right behind the nipple, and my right where a 3x5mm unifocal tumor grows, are the stars of today’s show, they’re painted up, and I’m ready to get the show on the road.
8:00am and we kiss through mask-covered mouths as the anesthesiologist pushes “happy juice” into my IV. I say, “I’ll see you in a little while, I love you” to my husband, as they wheel me out of the room and the lights on the ceiling rush overhead as I lay down and watch the world turn to a blur of light and sound. I vaguely remember the nurses helping me onto the operating table, the cool rush of air into the mask they place over my lips, and then I’m out. Six hours later, I find myself coughing and struggling to lift the heaviest eyelids in the world because, man do I need to go to the bathroom.
2:00pm and I slowly begin to wake from the deepest sleep of my life, my bladder full but my mind feels so empty and my throat is scratched and dry. The nurse helps me go to the bathroom, and I flop back down onto the bed and doze back off. Around 4:00, I’m being told I need to wake up and find myself once again speeding down the hall towards “home base” where I had left my husband hours before. The anesthesia was still holding on strong, and while still in a haze, I stuffed saltine crackers in my mouth and sipped on diet Ginger Ale. By now I was cognizant enough to remember that in order to get discharged I had to eat something and keep it down. So I ate and I drank and I did everything I could to fight the anesthesia so I could go home.
4:15pm and Jason rounded the corner. I smiled hard and he mirrors my smile. When he told me that it was after four, I was blown away. I thought the surgery would be done by noon and I’d be home by one. I guess I was wrong. I needed to get my butt in gear if I wanted to get out of here and home before it got dark. I convinced the nurses that I was ready to dress, slipped into my clothes, and had the IV pulled from my hand. At 5:00pm, I was whisked down the hall in a wheelchair and out the side door. I walked up to my apartment less than twelve hours after having left the building, only three hours after having major surgery. The first thing I did was flop into bed and throw on The Office.
Ninety-Six Hours Later
Not much has happened in the last four days. The majority of the time has been spent laying in bed, walking around my apartment, taking two sponge baths, doing schoolwork, and eating a lot of healthy food. I’m learning to accept that I’ll be taking several pills multiple times a day for pain relief, and my normal prescriptions (plus one for the ringworm I somehow contracted pre-surgery). Rather than balking at and turning my nose up at all of the pills that I loathe taking, I think of it as practice for when I undergo Chemotherapy in the near future. May as well get used to having heartburn and feeling kind of sick, right? It’s not forever, it’s just for now. That’s what I have to keep reminding myself. Stay grounded, stay in the present, because that’s all you can handle when you’re facing a cancer diagnosis. Just face right now.
Post-Surgery Pain
I’ve been extremely blessed and have had such minor pain thanks to Exparel being injected during surgery, that I’m currently sitting at the end of day four on zero pain medication. In the upcoming days the Exparel will wear off all of the way. It's starting right now, and I’m expecting some pain. So far, the majority of the pain has been a 1 on a scale of 1-10 and only lasts a few minutes and goes away if I recline and sit still. I’m taking it really slow, following all of the doctor’s orders, and taking in tons of protein. Pro tip from someone who has had two major surgeries now: follow the doctor’s orders.
Procedures Performed
I wavered between having two different types of procedures to remove the cancer but in the end I opted for a partial mastectomy, sentinel node biopsies, and reconstruction/reduction of both breasts.
An area about 6cm in largest dimension was removed from my left breast along with the nipple and areola. In total, the surgeons removed 280ccs of tissue from my left breast. They conducted a sentinel node biopsy through the same incision in my left breast. A much smaller area was removed from my right breast, where stage 1 unifocal IDC sat. Then, the plastic surgeon conducted a lift/reduction removing 225ccs of tissue to make my breasts symmetrical. The surgeon made a separate incision in my armpit and did a sentinel and axillary node biopsy on my right side. I lost around a pound of breast tissue in total, out of around 4.5 pounds.
Post-Surgery Thoughts and Next Steps
The scary part hasn’t started for me yet. Having the surgery hasn’t been what scares me from day one. It’s everything else after surgery that I’m terrified of. It’s getting the call that I am still HER2+ and will need Chemotherapy for a year. It’s finally facing my biggest fear in all of this: feeling sick and having no way of avoiding it. It’s shaving my head because I’m losing my hair. It’s finding out that the margins weren’t clean and I need another surgery, or that the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes, or worse, other parts of my body. Surgery isn’t the scary part of a cancer diagnosis. Everything else is.
Right now, I’m waiting to get the results of the biopsies of my lymph nodes and a confirmation that the margins are clean. If the lymph nodes show no signs of cancer and my margins are clean, I am officially given the title: “No Evidence of Disease.” Not cured, because you can’t cure cancer. I’ll always be at risk of it returning, even with Chemotherapy and Radiation, Mastectomies, and Node Dissections. That’s my burden that I bear along with so many other cancer patients. There are worse burdens, though, and with the right medical treatment, I can get my chance of recurrence as close to a zero percent as possible.
Yesterday I looked at my new breasts. I took a good look, I sized them up, and for the first time I was proud of what I saw in the mirror. I knew what I’d see, and I’ve accepted that I will never look the same as before surgery again. I’m also extremely lucky to have as much breast tissue as I still have post-surgery. I’ll likely be a C or possibly a D when all of the swelling goes down, and that’s nothing to be upset about. I’m no longer ashamed of or wishing I could hide my breasts because of all the unwanted attention they’ve got me over the years from men. Now, I can show them off and be proud of the scars they carry; scars that show I did something really hard and made it through. It took Breast Cancer to get me to finally love my boobs. To look down at them and feel proud of them for what they are now.
Now comes the hard part. And I’m not going to lie, I’m savoring every minute of not knowing the pathology because I can live in blissful ignorance for a few more days before having to face the really tough part of a cancer diagnosis. Every night I pray that God will protect my lymph nodes, that the cancer won’t have spread, that I will be HER2- across all of the pathology reports. I pray more than ever before, and then I remind myself to take it one day at a time. To slow the heck down. To face each day as its own entity because that’s all you can really do when you’re forced to process something as big as a cancer diagnosis. And most of all, I thank God for opening my eyes to what this life is really all about. I thank him for letting me see what’s really important, and for allowing me to be able to use this new experience to help other people navigate a cancer diagnosis.
