Surgery is done, and my anxiety has eased tremendously. We got to the hospital at 6:00am for all the pre-op work. I got the usual surprise and questions when the nurses realized when I was diagnosed, but it gave me the opportunity to share pictures of Finn, which is always fun.
The surgeon came in to talk before the surgery and have me sign the consent form. She asked, as required, what we were going to do today. I told her she was going to get rid of the Titmonster and I was going to take a nap. The anesthesiologist came in while we were talking and said they'd just returned from France. My doctor was quick to clarify that there were four of them together in France, and said just the two of them could have been a very different story. She said she was jet-lagged, and at 3am yesterday morning she was making corn chowder, and at 3am this morning she was ironing. I asked her if I should be worried that she was jet-lagged and about to perform my surgery; she said no, since her body thought it was the middle of the afternoon and she was good. She also said she fortunately didn't have any surgeries this afternoon.
She came back in a moment later and said, "We have one more thing to do, the bullshit marking for the hospital. The real markings, the ones that mean something, we will do in the operating room. But the bullshit hospital makings have to be done, so, right breast?". And she initialed my boob as required.
When I was first diagnosed, my OB had warned me that the surgeon was excellent, the best around, but that she was very sarcastic and sometimes cursed. I was maybe a bit disappointed when she didn't curse in our first meeting. I was more than a little tickled about the "bullshit marking".
The surgeon said everything went the way it should have. She took out the tumor and margins, one cluster of lymph nodes, and my portacath. I will have the results of the biopsy early next week.
We were home by noon, and I've had only a little pain today. I took a pain pill around 4:00pm, because it was starting to get worse and I know enough to stay ahead of the pain. I was even feeling well enough (and hungry enough) to make dinner while Mom and Kevin worked in the yard and took care of Finn.
TMI Warning:
The doctor warned me that my pee would be a bright blue-green color, and she was right. Kevin told me I'd have to let him see my blue pee. It was cooler than when I had the red/pink pee from the Adriamycin chemo, mostly because it was a prettier color.
Holding Finn and putting him to bed wasn't as difficult as I feared, though I'm prepared for it to be worse tomorrow. We had to change the dressing over the lumpectomy incision, as Finn spit up all over and down my shirt while I was rocking him before bed, and it covered the incision. I also appreciate that the surgeon labeled each of the three incision dressings with a note saying Remove 9/8/16.
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