The Surgery

Wednesday, Sept.21: I am going to a hospital about 45 minutes away from my house because that is where the surgeon is Chief of General Surgery. It is a new hospital, kind of small and ranked the top womens hospital in the Las Vegas area. They waste no time in getting things started. They take me and Robert back to my own little recovery room and start with the IV-- I have no visable veins and it took the nurse several times to get a vein. They take me to a small room with a mammogram machine. There, they take a mammogram making sure they have the mass in a certain place so they can put the wire in it. But what I didn't know was once they put my breast in the mammogram, they never take it out for a LONG time! So once they get the film and see that it is positioned ok, they go get the radiologist. He comes in to inject novacaine, numbs everything up and then puts a wire from the outside of the breast in through the tumor. I am still in the mammogram machine. So, he thinks he got it in the middle, but they have to take another xray, develop it and have the radiologist make sure that it is centered. This takes about another 20 minutes...in the mammogram machine...with a wire sticking out of my breast. The lady doing the mammogram said that the person before me got so upset and nervous during the procedure that her blood pressure rose too high and they had to cancel surgery. This is not going to happen to me because there is no way I am doing that again! So fortunatly for me the first time is a charm and I get to get out of the machine. Now I head to the radiologists room were the inject a tracer into the breast 4 times. The first 3 didn't hurt but the last one was painful enough to cover for all of them. Then, they tape a plastic cup over the wire so it doesn't get moved. I look like Maddonna in her pointed bra era. Now I go lay under a scan machine so they can trace the dye to the lymph node. They said that it could take 5 minutes or an hour. Just depends on the person. Well, lucky me gets to lay in the machine for an hour and a half because mine doesn't move at all. It is getting close to my scheduled surgery time so they go ahead and send me back to my room. I like to say that my surgeon was a woman, my nurse was a woman and my anesthesiolosist was a woman (although she looked more like a 12 year old asian girl). The radiologist was a man and that is the only thing that didn't go right that day!! So I go back to my room and Robert is there. He has some news. Allison got kicked out of school for dress code violation and is here in the hospital. My dad and Dian had to go pick her up.Even after Robert tells the school the situation they will not let her stay. Now, you know that Allison is a good student and I saw her before she went to school so she is not in trouble. She has a hole in her jeans above her knees and they are making her go home for that. But what is even funnier is that her shirt is actually a mini dress..if she would have thought to take her pants off, the mini dress actually was long enough to pass dress code. We had a good laugh thinking she should have just taken her pants off right there in the office to show the absurdidty of the situation. And of course, now Allison is here so Jason is going to be mad that he is at school. The surgeon, nurse, anesthesiologist all come in the room and give me the stuff to knock me out for surgery. I am going to try to put pics in of Allison and Robert. I don't even remember those pics being taken. I head off for surgery that lasts about an hour and a half. When I came to I felt very good. I awoke in the room with Robert. Kinda went in and out for a while and then felt awake enough and asked if I could go home. At some point the surgeon came in and told me that they did find cancer in the sentinal node so they took more out but I don't remember much else. Darn, I was really thinking that it was not in the lymph node. We headed home about 5 pm. I honestly felt ok. Much better than I imagined. I had a perscription for Lortab every 4 hours and I had a drain under my arm because of the lumph nodes being taken out. Robert fixed me some soup and crackers. Dad and Dian stayed with the kids after school and took them for dinner. They came home as I was eating dinner. I stayed up with them and felt pretty good. Robert took care of me and my drain all weekend. I only had one day that was bad. I thought it would be a good idea to take some milk of magnesia of 5 in the morning--it was not. I threw up anything that touched my lips. Luckily I got better as the day went on. Robert stayed home from work Wed, Thurs, and Fri. We are very fortunate that Robert's boss is so nice and compassionate. Robert told him that he would use his vacation or sick days and his boss said no, not to worry, just take care of me. Very nice.