Full surgery story

I'm still in plenty of pain, but nothing that I haven't had before with csections.

I woke up very early Tuesday morning with a little girl that couldn't go to sleep. So dh got up with her and went and helped her lay down. He stayed there for a while and came back to sleep around 2am. I was half awake and a little while later, I felt a really funny feeling in my chest area and lungs. I couldn't breathe right and didn't know if it was some weird anxiety thing or if it was indigestion or something like that. So I sat up and it slowed down so I tried to lay down again. It came back and it was worse. It was at the base of my ribs, just underneath the tip of them. I didn't know if it was my heart or what. I couldn't talk without wheezing and naturally when I told the doctor on the nurseline for my doctor's office, they said to immediately go in to the ER. My inlaws came over and stayed while dh drove me to Vancouver to SWMC. Adventist is down the street but we haven't felt completely comfortable there before. Honestly, it was closer to my family and if anything was wrong, I'd rather be closer to them. I was feeling fine and kind of bothered that Jason wouldn't let me drive myself there. I felt like a big fraud and had nothing wrong with me since the pain went away.

We got to the ER around 3am and soon enough I was back in a room. They tried to stick me with a needle to get bloodwork and the first time, the vein slipped away and digging for it didn't seem to help. Same with the second time. The third time they did it in my hand and that hurt like nothing else. So much burning! Anyways, they got their blood after digging in my hand for it like the other two times. I ended up having to be taken for a chest xray, ultrasound, and more bloodwork.

I was joking with them that I knew it was for nothing and probably just an anxiety attack. They said they wanted to be careful and not miss anything. Guess having cancer before makes my doctors cautious. They don't want to miss a thing. Dr. Shotness came in and told me it could be gallstones and possibly my gallbladder was inflamed. My pancreas enzymes were elevated but my liver was fine. The surgeon was on the fence about me doing it that day. But Jason and I both agreed that since he was on vacation, C was on sprink break, that it was a good time to do it. So they immediately found me a bed upstairs and within an hour, I was admitted to have my gallbladder taken out.

It was a nice cozy little room in a remolded area of the hospital and thank heavens, it was all to myself. I didn't know when my surgery was going to happen, it depended on the surgeon's schedule. He came up and visited with me and said he would fit me in when he could and it probably wouldn't happen till late afternoon or evening. Bishop Peacock was working in Vancouver, so we snagged him on lunch break and he came and helped give me a blessing.

Around 12:30pm or so, we get word that they had an open spot on the schedule and would take me in. I was so pleased! I was bored, starving, and I hated waiting. Turns out another surgeon had some free time and would do the surgery instead of Dr. Dally like we thought. Worked out even better, it was Dr. Kilway, the surgeon who diagnosed me with cancer and did my mastectomy. I was happy to see him and he answered every question Jason and I had about the surgery. I remember getting some calming down drugs before going into the OR because I knew my anxiety level was through the roof. That helped a lot. I got in the OR around 1:20pm and I didn't remember anything else until I woke up in recovery. It was hard to swallow then, like my throat was paralyzed halfway. Normal stuff.

Usually I struggle to keep my eyes open after waking up. After about 15 minutes, I was much better and could work to keep them from dropping all the time like before. I could feel that it was an easier recovery. Jason was waiting for me in my room and he stayed with me for awhile after that. So I was grateful for that. I was worried about the girls, but in the morning time when I was waiting for a room upstairs, he had gone home and taken the girls and his mom to her house so that they were taken care of all day.

Holy crap, I'm starting to hurt. I'm off to lay down.

I had surgery yesterday; competely unexpected

I came home today and the shoulder pain is incredibly bad. Of course it happened after I left the hospital.

Anyways, I'm hurting right now, and I won't be on long. I went to the ER around 3amish Tuesday morning. I woke up not being able to breathe very well and it felt like I had something sitting on the lower part of my chest. It came and went 3 times getting less painful or intense each time. I was really scared to go to sleep and I was privately worried I had some type of heart problem. I was sure I would be told I just had an anxiety attack or indigestion and it would be a waste of time. Nope, turns out I had gallstones and my gallbladder was inflamed. I guess they had been there awhile and never gave me any pain before.

More to the story, but right now my neck and shoulder hurt so bad it's hard to sit here upright. Jason took me to SWMC in Vancouver since all my doctors are there and I've had all my other previous surgeries there. I just felt more comfortable there. They treated me so well and plus, it was closer to my parents. More later. I went in at 3am Tuesday morning, had surgery by 1:30pm, came home around 11:30am on Wednesday morning.

Breast cancer sucks!

I'm mad and angry and want to scream and I want to sit down and cry. I mostly want to do the crying part. I hate breast cancer and I especially hate it for the younger women who get it who have children and babies and these kids could potentially never know their moms because this horrible gosh awful SHITTY disease is killing them. I'm on a bulletin board with the Young Survival Coalition and there is a wonderful kind smart sassy woman on there dying of breast cancer. She has just DAYS to live. She wrote a post awhile ago to comfort the new women that were coming there and scared. Her screen name is Mama Cathy and even though she is about the same age as I am, it felt like she was a mama to so many of us. This is what she wrote and I doubt she ever thought it would be about her.

Mama Cathy, I love you to pieces. You are so loved by the women of the YSC boar. Words fail me to describe how you mean to us and what you have done for so many women.

It's happening again.

Every once in a while the board goes through a really tough time. Our hearts break for our sisters whose cancers are spreading at frightening rates. We see their selfless, innocent posts that detail the cancer taking over. How they feel, what they're thinking. What they need. The struggle, the powelessness, the strength and courage.

I just wanted to pull all you newbies in close and let you know that we've all been there and you are probably absolutely freaking out right now. Chemo has beaten you up, you feel like a shadow of who you used to be. Tired, depressed and overwhlemed. You may even feel guilty because you are not only sad for these beautiful women, but you are sad FOR YOU.

You see yourself in every one of these women that becomes so very sick and then loses the battle.It's normal to feel this way and it's OK. We understand and so do they. Your mother may not, your husband may not. your friends may not, but we do.And there's nothing wrong with feeling sad and getting angry.

But please remember that the odds are that YOU are going to get better. YOU are going to get your hair back and start to feel well again. YOU are going to get back to the life that you want to lead.

So if you are checking the boards incessently right now, reading the latest post, then sobbing and then going back for more.....been there too. You are grieving....this disease is not fair....it's disgusting and ugly and perverse. And it's so much more unfair to certain sisters than others. And there's nothing fair about that.So grieve for them. Grieve for you. And then remember that you will get better.

Love,cathy

Add another doctor to the list

I'm going to a chiropractor now. I've seen him before and it didn't last long. My insurance will only pay for so much. And also, my frontal area couldn't handle being face down while someone puts a knee in my back. It was just too tender and plus all the drugs I had during my cancer fun masked a lot of the symptoms.

I've had lower back pain off and on for many years. I even had xrays done last year because it was still bothering me. Naturally after you get cancer, any ache and pain means major testing. They said it was nothing and I let it go. Still bothered me, but since it didn't show anything and the doctors didn't take it seriously, there was little I could do.

So I finally go to the chiropractor last week. The lowest two vertebra, L4 and L5 are kind of crunched together in a weird triangular shape in connection with my right hip. It's caused my right leg to be a bit shorter and it hurts my lower back and it sucks. The doc said that in that little area inside, if you looked, you would see that it's red and swollen in there from being put in that position for so long. He wants to do 3 months of treatments and exercises. I can do the exercises fine, they cost nothing. My insurance will only cover 2 weeks of twice weekly visits.

The first visit was fine. I go there, lay face down and he puts electrodes on my right lower back and hip area and a heating pad on top of that. It felt wonderful. Then the sadistic monster adjusts my back and it hurt worse than ever until the next visit. I made sure he knew it too. He just said that my back is resistent to change since it's been seized up like that for years. The next two visits including the one today were not too bad at all. My back hurts a bit less, but then I haven't done anything really strenuous either, so who knows if it's really healing or not.

Just cause I'm being a dork

I was trying to see if I could take a decent picture of myself. As you can tell, it didn't turn out well. Actually, I look and feel like this when I'm stressed out and not handling life well.

TA-DAH!!!

I have new teeth! Okay, not really, but I can actually see them now with my braces off. My front tooth is in the process of being fixed, so ignore that. This has been the hardest two years of my life. So glad this part is over. Thank you Dr. Rosenbarger for taking me on and allowing me to enjoy my smile for the first time in 34 years. Thank you Dr. Lam for letting me cry in your dentist chair and giving me the referral to see Dr. Rosenbarger. You changed my life.

Last chapter for Jacksonville

I was going to try and do this wonderful blog about my trip and every little detail that I did. I'm forgetting most of it anyways by now.

The best parts of the trip were when we didn't have any classes. C's teacher at school has a mother in law going through breast cancer. She asked me since I was going if I could get her any information that I could about it. So when we registered and got our nametags, I had dh grab a bag and we went to all the exhibitors that we could. Every table when I picked up something, I had dh grab it too. Any free pens or papers or information I thought would benefit the mother in law, I made sure we got two copies; one for me and one for her.

I met more women from our bulletin board. It was great fun matching up names and pictures to the women I knew just from their posts about breast cancer. In a way it's like going to another church group or ward. You know that no matter what, you have that common bond that you immediately have even if you've never met anyone from that group before. Luckily for me, I knew quite a few women from the last year. This time around, I made sure I chatted more and enjoyed their company instead of hanging in the back being afraid.

I was thrilled to see Danica there. I met her last year and was too shy to talk to her. She shouldn't have even come this year. She developed chemo induced leukimia and had just spent 3 weeks in the hospital getting a different type of chemo and having all sorts of drugs put in her. I'm very in awe of her fighting spirit and I'm so happy that I was able to see her in person. I met up with my friends Kat, Cynthia, Michelle, Theresa, and so many other amazing women including Bethany and Tammy Lou aka The Titty Fairy as she called herself.

My favorite time of the whole conference was Friday night. It was after the first boring class and welcome reception. Dh and I didn't have a lot to do. He was content to stay up in our room, so I went downstairs and tried to see if I could find anyone. A group of about 4 women were in the bar that were from our group, so I sat down, got a Pepsi and joined them. Throughout the evening, more and more people would join us. I think we ended up with about 25 women trying to cram our chairs together to sit together and chat. There were a few drinks there, but no one was out to get drunk. Just laughing and having a fabulous time. Forgetting for awhile that the reason we were there and enjoying each other's company was the fact that we all had breast cancer. I heard the funniest diagnosis story and tears were coming out of my eyes I was laughing so hard. Everyone else was too. No one else would think it was funny, but when you've been where we are, you take it where you can get it.

Saturday was fine. Classes sucked. We slept in and it was heavenly. That king size bed was awesome! First time Jason and I have slept in a bed where we weren't crowded together because of a sick kid or someone throwing themselves on the other in our sleep. We barely touched! We had room! I missed my babies, but they were having a great time with grandma.

Sometime in the afternoon, I forget when, we went for a walk to the Jacksonville Landing again. Jason didn't take me to Hooters, maybe he thought it would be in bad taste. I thought it was so stinking funny. Me in Florida for a breast cancer conference and we would eat at Hooters of all places! Dang it. Too bad it didn't work out.

We ended up at the American Cafe. We didn't want a huge meal, so we had dessert. We split something called a Smores Sundae. It was a giant bowl of ice cream with graham cracker crumbs, with vanilla ice cream, and marshmallow topping on top. It was apparent that it had been toasted some how and was dripping and crispy brown on top. On top of that was chocolate syrup drizzled over it. DAMN!!!! That was the best dessert I've ever had. I would go back to Florida again just for that dessert. (now that I think of it, I believe we went on Friday night)

The last class was Breast Reconstruction. A woman doctor from San Francisco taught it. She didn't mince words and told us what certain procedures did and what benefits and cons were associated with each. She told us flat out why she didn't do some and why she did others. She was the first doctor I met that seemed to be doing it for more than cosmetic reasons. She was there to help women recover themselves after or during breast cancer. Thank the heavens above!! Too bad she lives in San Francisco. She gave great advice. There was a Q&A period after class and I was able to ask her about if there were any surgeons she could recommend in the Portland area that did the type of surgery she did and that I wanted to have done. She thought for a minute and said that there weren't. She is a microsurgeon and very few surgeons want to go through the extra special training it takes to do that.

Thanks to her class, I've decided that I want to get a DIEP flap procedure done. The way she does it, she doesn't use any muscles like a normal TRAM flap would. No abdominal muscles or latissius muscles. I wouldn't have to sacrifice that and I'm glad. I need all the muscles I have since there aren't that many. lol More to come on this later.

So our return flight left at 6am out of Jacksonville. We would have to be at the airport at 4 am. Which means leaving for the airport around 3:15 or so. Which means getting up at 2:30AM to get dressed and ready. That's all fine and dandy, except that I stayed up to watch the most boring Academy Awards ever and that didn't end until 12:30pm on the east coast. Which is where I was. Dumbest move ever.

Good thing we got up when we did. Not only did our taxi not show up like we had scheduled, but the one that did show up hit traffic. He managed to go around it and we got to the airport just fine. Cinnabon was closed and I was so hungry that I got a dry nasty one from the cheapie little mart across the gate from where we were waiting. But while I was there, I saw my friend Danica being pushed down the way by another YSC gal. I was able to give her a hug and wish her well on her journey. That put a big smile on my face.

The trip to Denver was fairly uneventful. It's dang hard to sleep on a loud noisy plane sitting up, so I didn't. We prepared to rush across the concourse when we got to Denver like we had to last time. Thank heavens it was only 2 gates over. I had time to hit the bathroom and get a magazine while dh got a sandwich from Quiznos for us to share. We were only supposed to have 30 minutes on the ground in Denver before the next plane took off. They were a bit slow getting everyone figured out and that's what gave us the time to do what we needed.

The nice thing about this flight is that this was the only one where we were sitting next to each other. The bad part was when there was a loudspeaker announcement asking if there were any nurses or doctors aboard. Thankfully there were and went back to the lady who was having some trouble. About 10 minutes after that happened, we started to descend. Then the pilot gets on the loudspeaker and explains that we have to have an emergency medical divert in Salt Lake City because the lady that was ill, had to get medical attention beyond what they were able to get her on the plane.

So we land and the paramedics get on board. They take their time, get the lady on a wheelchair and eventually wheel her off the plane with an IV hanging above her head. We were on the ground a good 45 minutes while all this happened. I believe that they pulled her luggage off the plane so that she had all her things. Then we were on our way and made it to Portland. We go to collect our luggage and it appears that one of my bags didn't make it. Great. Somehow when we were in SLC, they took one of my bags off the plane while retrieving the other ladies stuff and didn't put it back on. So it was flying via Delta airlines later that day and we would pick it up later.

When Jason's mom and L came to pick us up, I was so glad to see my baby. I sat in the back with her and she kept touching my hand and patting it and wanting to hold it. She would stare at me and tell me she missed me and wanted to go home. I needed to hear that. I didn't think she would miss me at all. I'm glad to know she still loves me best!

Jacksonville, part 2

We sat on that couch in the lobby for hours. I never really did sleep out there, but I wasn't fully aware of the time passing either. At one point, I was stretched out on the couch with my feet in Jason's lap. I hear him call my name and I open my eyes, and there is my friend Michelle! She came with her husband Jonathan and she lives in South Carolina. She and I met last year at the conference and I just adore her. She had a bilateral mastectomy in October and so when I jumped up to give her a hug, I was very gentle. It was great to see her there. As the morning went on, I would recognize more people as they came through and would give a shout out to them.

Finally we got our room around 11am. We dragged our sorry rear ends up to our room and collapsed. We literally dropped our bags on the ground, got our clothes off and fell into bed within 5 minutes of being in the room. We slept good and hard for about 2.5 hours before waking up. I'm already blanking out on the first class we had, I believe it was on research advocacy. I guess it was good. Most of the classes were really lame. They were giving us information we already had! So the good news was that we had really researched information out when we all found out we had breast cancer. The bad thing was, was that we were all really bored.

Jason and I actually didn't go to the first class. We got up and walked out onto the riverfront and walked to Jacksonville Landing. It was a small outdoor mall of sorts about 4 blocks away. It was really humid compared to Portland. Hard to get used to at first. We wandered all over and ate there before finally going back and getting our nametags and bags. They let us in the exhibitor's hall and we got to check everything out. We now have our supply of pens, pads of paper, and candies for the year. lol Some of the booths had some great information, others definitely did not. But it was nice to see everything.