Some people are just jucier than others

It has been two weeks since I was cut open and recovery is going pretty well. In the last week I’ve had a lot of big news and upgrades concerning my diagnosis and current state of being. My general outlook is staying positive, and that gets easier to hold on being able to move around more each day. On the grand scale of things, life isn’t really that exciting right now, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Anyhow, here’s the current state of affairs for what used to be my boobs.

About a week and a half after surgery I finally got my official diagnosis back from pathology. It still seems strange to me that you have surgery and THEN you get a diagnosis but then again I don’t have a fancy medical degree, just a few weeks as a camp nurse.  So my official staging of cancer is:

Stage 1B and Grade 3.

Of course my diagnosis would rhyme.

The Stage 1B comes from the size and the spread of the cancer. The fact that the number is small is a very good thing. The 1 indicates that the size of the tumor is less than 2 centimeters. Mine clocked in at 1.3cm, about the size of a small marble. It was close to the muscle under the breast tissue but was removed with completely clean margins. The clean margins mean that in spite of the close proximity to the muscle tissue, there were no cancer cells on or next to the muscle tissue. This is really good and indicates that all of the cancer was removed from the breast area!

The B part in the staging comes from the lymph nodes they removed. Remember when they injected my boob with that blue radioactive dye? I sure do! The first part of the surgery was removing the sentinel nodes. Those were the first ones that picked up the radioactive dye and would also be the first ones the cancer would move to if it were to metastasize (spread to other parts in the body).  I was told most people have 1 or two nodes taken out, and with my fantastically healthy youth body I might have 4 or 5 pick up the radioactive dye. I completely shattered the curve and had 8 removed. Of those 8 lymph nodes, 1 came back came back with a micro-metastasis. In that one node there was a speck of cancer that was smaller than 1 millimeter (incredibly small, or microscopic if you will). Since it was only 1 out of the 8 and it was so small it was considered immeasurable by rating standards, my doctors aren’t too terribly concerned about it. Thankfully I won’t have to undergo another surgery to have all of the lymph nodes removed, and even better, I won’t have to endure radiation after the rest of my treatments! Since there was still a small amount of cancer found in the node, it was classified 1B instead of 1A.

The Grade 3 that the tumor received is based on how aggressive it is. The tumor gets graded based off of how fast the cancer cells are dividing, and also how much they look like normal cells in the body. 1 is normal looking cells that are slowly reproducing. 3 is very abnormal cells that are quickly producing. I’ve been told this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just to be aware that it is what it is.

All and all it was considered a very successful operation and the diagnosis was about as good as anyone could hope for.  Yes it was and still is painful and all around not fun, but I just cannot possibly relay how happy I am that everything has worked out as well as it has. I cannot imagine what would be happening with my body if I had waited 6 months after my ultra sound to see if this bump just went away. Honestly I can’t imagine having surgery even a month later than I had it. With how fast my cancer cells were turning over, my little micro-metastasis could have been a full blown tumor in the lymph nodes, or could have traveled anywhere in the body. As far as our science, technology, and general knowledge has taken us in the past few years, there is still no way of knowing where it could have traveled to in the body. I fully realize that my pathway of treatment isn’t exactly a walk in the park but considering how hard things could be I feel so thankful everyday that I caught this thing when I did. It was and still is terrifying but at least things are getting better than silently getting worse.

Since surgery I’ve had a few follow up appointments with my various doctors. I had a fantastically eventful trip to see my oncologist, in which I almost passed out and vomited on the table. I had been feeling a little better going into the appointment. I managed to actually dress myself that morning and walked all the way from the car to her office without much issue. Once in the exam room, my parents and Kris were all sitting in nice backed chairs, while I got to hang out on the exam table. One of the things I really like about Dr. T is that she is very knowledgeable and willing to sit for an obscene amount of time during appointments talking about any and every concern you might have. Since we were talking about my upcoming chemotherapy (which I’m getting more info on tomorrow so I won’t be going into detail on that today except to say that yes I am having it…. Boooooo), everyone had different questions they wanted answered. My parents had about 50 more questions than I did, and while they asked away, I slowly wilted away. I finally asked Kris if I could trade him seats so I could slouch back a little, but it was too late. At that point the whole room was spinning and I got very sick to my stomach. I got incredibly hot and sweaty, was moved back to the exam table, and hung out with my head in a bucket until a nurse arrived. If I have to get some weird vomity fainting spell, at least I did it in a hospital. The nurse hung out with me, and checked my blood pressure until I was able to slide myself into a wheelchair. I then got another glorious exit from a hospital building from a wonderful man in scrubs.

The doctor wasn’t 100% sure what caused the illness, but it is believed that it was a combo of over exerting myself (yes, walking from car to elevator to office is over exertion in my current state. Side note, I really miss running), and a hot flash! “But Amelia, aren’t hot flashes for old ladies going through menopause?” Well guess who is 28 and going through medically induced menopause?! One of my other visits last week was to get a shot in the pudgy part of my belly to shut down my ovaries. Some of the fun side effects of going through medically induced menopause are intense hot flashes, mood swings, and PMS like bloating. While it isn’t what I would call fun, it is helping my ovaries stay safe during chemotherapy. These shots keep happening once a month through the course of chemo, and will stop after treatments to see if my body’s reproductive system will wake back up.

The best visit that I’ve had so far was with my reconstructive surgeon. I saw Dr. L about a week and a half after surgery and he was so pleased with the progress my body had made in that time. In fact I was healing so well, he took out my drains and put saline into my tissue spacers for the first time all in one appointment!

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I would like to talk a little bit about surgical drains. For those of you lucky enough to have never experienced these strange body attachments, I am very jealous. Surgical drains (or just drains) are used by doctors when large pieces of tissue are removed from the body. The body will produce a lot of fluid in that site (blood, lymphatic fluid, pus), and the fluid can cause an abscess or cause other problems at the surgical site. To prevent this, doctors will place a drain at the site to help eliminate the fluid until the body can regulate it safely on its own. The drains that I had were called J.P. drains. Just below my armpit, coming out a hole in my body, was a long strip of rubbery tubing that ended in something that looked like a clear rubber hand grenade.  I was fortunate to only have two drains, one on each side (a lot of people going through bilateral mastectomy will have 4, so dodged a bullet there.) Internally, the tubing goes up and around the surgery site and kind of looped around a few times. The internal tubing has a bunch of little holes in it much like those garden hoses that spray water out of multiple tiny points. 2 or 3 times a day, either the nurse, unfortunate boyfriend, or mom would have to empty out all the fluid and track how much was being collected and how opaque the fluid was (clear and less red is good). To empty out the drain, you have to strip the tubing by pinching and squeezing the tube toward the grenade. It’s the worst tube of gogurt of all time. Once stripped, there is a little stopper on the top that can be pulled out, and all the fluid emptied through. Before resealing the stopper, you squeeze the little grenade ball then seal it to great a gentle suction on the tubing. The whole thing is insane and it felt like I grew squid tentacles out of my sides. Those damn things also added extra lumps into my very foreign torso which was not visually fun at all. The worst part however was being in pain any time the drains moved and not being able to sit comfortably without strategically placed pillows. Oh and to hold them in place so they didn’t move or tug, I got to wear something called a softee. It is an old man wife beater with internal pockets. The look was just bad, and the drains were awful.  They are, in fact, the worst.

This little filly is about as graphic as I want to get with visuals. My drains were much closer to the one circling her boob, not the one dangling from her armpit. I had one on each side and the exit point from my body was more on the side of my torso than side of my boob. Enjoy!

Before surgery, I was told most people have their drains in anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks, and that it’s not uncommon to have them in up to 4 weeks. Imagine the elation I felt when after only a week and a half Dr. L informed me that I could get them taken out! I got propped up on another exam table, but this one was more like a dental chair since it had hydraulics to gently move my back to a more horizontal position. Dr. L and his awesome nurse assistant (I can’t remember her name but she looks like like Jasline from America’s Next Top Model so in my head, that’s her name) went to work. I was told to just take a few deep breaths and hold my mom’s hand since “you will feel a burning pain while we remove the drains, but it will pass.” What I didn’t realize was on each side, there was about a foot and a half of tubing snaking around my body to collect fluid. I got to feel every inch of that bitch coming out the small hole on my sides. According to my mom, who watched the whole thing white as a ghost, when it was being pulled out, you could actually see the tubing snaking around under my skin. How delightful. Later when I asked why my drains were able to come out so soon, Dr L casually replied “Well, some people are just juicer than others.” I love talking to that man.

After the drains were removed and gone from my life forever, I got my first experience with filling up the tissue spacers. If you remember, the second part of my surgery was placing what is basically some hearty sacks with magnets in them to help expand the breast tissue. Dr. L locates the magnets, which are the port into the spacers, with a magnet on a little chain (super hi tech and awesome). After the magnet find the one inside of me, he marks the spot and uses a little needle to get through to the inside, and starts filling me up. I got 120cc in each side this time and there is finally a little definition to my chest now! Trying to describe them, I referred to them once as “bloobs” and the name has stuck. It feels like I have two half inflated waterbeds in my chest right now and its incredibly weird. It isn’t painful having them inflated; I don’t have much feeling in my chest right now anyway. I can feel the spacers in my body though. It’s kind of like having a bra that is riding up or off to the side just a little, but there’s no way to fix it. It’s, more bothersome than painful most of the time. It is still just very disorienting looking at my reflection and not seeing anything on my chest. My body still feels off, and I know it’s getting better but it’s still incredibly weird.  Once every two weeks I get to go in for more saline, so after a few months I should be ready for the real implants.

Tomorrow I’m going in to meet with Dr. D, my primary surgeon for some general follow up and (hopefully) to get cleared to drive again! I have another appointment tomorrow afternoon to meet with a chemotherapy nurse and find out exactly what to expect from my impending treatments. From what I know right now, I will be in chemo for 16 weeks (8 treatments, each 2 weeks apart) the first of which is scheduled for Thursday, February 6^th. Hopefully I’ll have more to share soon.

Quick Recap

*Final Diagnosis was good (stage 1B)

*Drains are the worst

*My bloobs are slowly growing

*Recovery is a long lethargic road