A Very Big Breast Day

THUMBS UP!!! Surgery went as well as it possibly could have. That's Dr. Good Karma (and Hands!) giving the thumbs-up post-surgery (also holding the Jaboulet 2005 Parallele 45 Cote du Rhone we gave him as a thank you for all his good care). He located the sentinel node, removed it successfully and voila! The report came back that it was cancer free. Woo-hoo!!! So the lumpectomy proceeded and by 1:30 I was waking up (I remember absolutely nothing of the surgery--which is how I hoped it would happen).

Took a little while to get recovered enough to leave the recovery room and the guy next to me seemed to be taking priority (well, to be fair to the nurses, the dude was demanding priority!). Chris and I spent a couple of hours listening (no matter how hard we tried not to) to a rather loud and extensive diatribe from next-curtain-over patitent Roger about how unfair it was that they wouldn't let him leave until he peed and he couldn't pee (I'll spare you the details but clearly his surgery was "down there"); that was followed by the many things that "normally" make him pee and his demands for the same (to wit: walking, the elevator in their home, coffee, and running water). So while I quietly lay there counting the moments until Starbucks was possible, the nurses offered this guy everything from cranberry juice to apple juice (eventually he asked them to mix the two!!) to coffee while he strolled up and down the room in his high fashion gown discussing his urinary progress!!! But then my incision started to ooze and well, that got the nurses attention. Apparently I bleed a lot. That's mostly what my delay was--took awhile to get the incisions (yep, two--one for the lymph node and one for the cancer that is no more) to stop bleeding. And ironically, I really needed to use the little girls room (and yes, it was blue. Tidy-Bowl blue!)

Eventually we were released. I'm sure Chris was as relieved as I was since I at least got a nap and he, poor baby, was up at 5:30 a.m. with me and roaming hospital waiting rooms for the day (except for a nice break when Emily picked him up for lunch--thanks Emily!). My plans for Starbucks however were foiled by the stairs between me and the Starbucks in the hospital. I wasn't up for that. I tried to settle for a Dr. Pepper and chicken noodle soup at the cafeteria, but quickly found myself in the bathroom almost, but not quite, well...getting nauseous. So the Dr. Pepper was slowly sipped and the saltine crackers were savored. Not really up to the standards we had set last night, but I really needed to get rid of the "no caffeine in 24 hours" headache.

Finally, back at the hotel at last, I took off my cute pink hoodie and....well, let's just say the incision was oozing again (saturated is the word they use. TMI?). We may not be seeing that pink hoodie again. Chris to the rescue though. He got the ice pack in place, put me to bed (I zonked out. Best nap in a long time), called Dr. Karam and about an hour later Dr. Karam showed up in our hotel room! He fixed me up, changed out everything, gave me a full report on the surgery (all good!) and rode off into the sunset (with his wine--the picture was taken in the hotel room. Yep, he does house calls too!!).

All is good now. I haven't even had to take the Vicodin. Tylenol seems to be working fine. Chris gave up Lost for Sex and the City reruns, we've had a room service dinner and I'm back to my delusion of a long weekend away at a great hotel. Oh, and cancer has left the boobie!!

Thanks for all the well wishes and thoughts and prayers, and calls and emails and Facebook comments, and blog comments... it was nice to see when I got back to the room. Tomorrow I'll tell you more about the medical parts. I have plenty o' stories! Did you know there are a lot of sick people in a medical center??