Thursday, August 1, 2013:
Hello Everyone,
I hope you are having a good week. Mine has been great. I got to see all three of my 5 Doctors this week! After all, it's not like I had anything 'pressing' to do. Hahaha. I will get to see my 4th Doctor next week and my 5th Doctor the week after. My, oh my. So, to catch you up on things, my surgery went well and I saw Dr. Kays on Monday. He is the plastic surgeon. He said I was healing wonderfully with very little bruising, no oozing and very little swelling. I still had the drain tube in and I was putting out too much fluid for him to remove it at the time. The drainage had to be less than 20ml per 12 hour period and I was putting out 60ml on Monday. He also put a hold on my physical therapy until a later date as yet to be determined. He did not want to risk me pulling out any stitches. Wednesday I got to see Dr. Papazikos. He will be my radiologist. I will require 6 weeks of radiation going 5 days a week. He explained what he would be doing and the why's and how's. That won't happen until I heal from the surgery which is about 4 more weeks or so. It's all a crap shoot if you ask me, as far as when things will happen. So, I will see him later on in the month. Today, I went to see Dr. Bebb, my surgeon. He was very happy with how things were going with me. I received the pathology results last week and we talked more about that. Bottom line is there was no cancer anywhere in my breast tissue that he removed. He removed 12 lymph nodes because that is all I had in that area. Of the 12 nodes, 6 had cancer. The largest size of cancer found was 3mm. Which is pretty small. He said that the chemo did a great job of getting rid of my cancer and the lymph nodes do not have a very good blood supply going to them and therefore did not get as high a dose of the chemo as the rest of my body. But, the radiation I will be having will be zapping all the places that tiny molecules of the cancer may be hiding. They will be shooting all of my right breast and the area directly above up to my clavicle where more nodes are located. I asked why those lymph nodes could not be removed and he said it would cause extreme morbidity (whatever that may mean). When I go for all the prep things I have to do prior to radiation I will be having another CT scan. I really don't like having those things because of the mass amounts of radiation I get when I have it. On the other hand, I look at all the radiation I will be blasted with and figure, what the heck!? I don't have much choice. The CT scan is just to make sure where all my organs are and they will use it to calculate distances, angles and whatnot for the radiation beams. I am done with Dr. Bebb for 6 months and he will be the one scheduling my mammograms from here on out. After seeing Dr. Bebb, Wayne and I went back to see Dr. Kays. I had only been putting out 20ml of fluid for the past couple of days and I had him remove the drainage tube. I was expecting it to hurt but I didn't feel a thing. I am glad to get that out of me. It was constantly pinching me and was always sore. I now have an open hole in my side that he said would heal on it's own without any stitches.
I have the best husband in the world. Throughout this whole ordeal Wayne has been with me to every doctor's appointment, every treatment and everything in between. He has been chief cook and bottle washer, maid, housekeeper, grocery shopper and anything else I needed. God blessed me when he gave me Wayne! He is a mountain of strength and I love him so much. Thank you, Wayne. Thanks to all my friends and family that call, send messages, cards, flowers and well wishes. I love you dearly.
I won't have much to report for probably a week or two. I go see my Oncologist, Dr. Arb next week and back to see Dr. Kays. Not sure when he will let me start physical therapy. Honestly, I have full range of motion in my right arm and don't think I need it but I will go at least once to see what sort of exercises they want me to do. Maybe they can get rid of my 'bingo arms'!!! Hahahaha! (If you don't know what that is you can google bingo wings)
Later and have a nice weekend.
Glenda
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