Surgery Day

I was jazzed for surgery day! When we left the house, I told my mom and Dory that I felt like I was off to a sporting competition. The last three months have been an emotional roller coaster, and I’ve certainly had my low points. On surgery day though, I felt healthy, strong, confident and ready to kick cancer’s ass!  

I checked in at 10 am and headed into pre-op. I changed into a hospital gown and had my blood work done. At 11 am, Rex from nuclear medicine stopped by. I met him two days prior during the seed placement procedure. While lying in a hospital bed, he wheeled me into the elevator, and we headed to the basement of the hospital and entered a secure room through a door plastered with signs warning of radioactivity. 

This was the strangest part of my medical journey thus far. I was lying on a hospital bed in the middle of what felt like a very random room in a basement—it wasn’t an exam room. There were coats hanging on the rack near the door. There were two desks with computers and binders. There was some sort of imaging machine behind me. And Rex and I were just shooting the breeze talking about different rivers in Montana while we waited for the radiologist to arrive.  

The message that we were ready didn’t get to the radiologist the first time Rex called, so after waiting about half an hour, he put a second call in and within minutes the radiologist arrived. The radiologist administered four shots to numb the area followed by four shots to inject the dye that would assist the surgeon in locating my lymph nodes during surgery. Eight shots in total were administered to each breast. Rex assisted by unbuttoning and rebuttoning my gown, applying a bandage after the shots, and then wheeling me back up to the pre-op area. 

After returning from the basement, my surgeon came by to discuss the procedure. I couldn’t have had more trust in her and was beyond grateful for her poise, confidence, and skill. After a quick visit by the anesthesiologist, we were off to the operating room. Two nurses greeted me in the OR and helped prepare me for the procedure by transferring me to the surgery table and hooking me up to all of the monitors. Despite the confidence I had going into the procedure, I had a moment where the weight of everything a cancer diagnosis brings hit me hard. The nurse saw the panicked look on my face and gently held my hand as I drifted off to sleep.  

I was in surgery for about four hours. The surgeon called my mom and Dory to give them the preliminary results...the right mass and a single right axillary sentinel node were removed. The sentinel node is the first lymph node to which cancer cells are most likely to spread from a primary tumor. The sentinel node tested negative on preliminary review for cancer, which is good news!  

The left breast mass in question was also removed and continued to test benign, so no left axillary sentinel lymph node biopsy was performed. Again, good news! The official pathology report will take up to five days, so in the meantime we’ll cross our fingers that the preliminary reports are accurate.  

I rested for a few hours post-surgery and drank A LOT of water—I was so thirsty. That came back to bite me once I got back home, however. I wasn’t in any pain from the surgery, but I vomited several times throughout the night from the anesthesia.  

I’m writing this blog post two days post-surgery and I’m feeling fine. Minimal pain, a bit tired, but otherwise more than ready to get on with the next stage of treatment.