July 2, 2008

Surgery was yesterday morning and things went great.  There were no cancer cells found in the sentinel node, so it looks like no chemo or radiation will be required.  How cool is that?!?!!  I say "looks like" because that's my diagnosis, not that of my oncologist.  I haven't yet spoken to him, but I had an appointment set up with him anyway on July 17th, so I’ll talk to him then.  Email isn’t his favorite means of communication, so I’ll probably call him today to give him a heads up on my condition.  I’m not positive that he automatically received all my recent test results, etc. and he may not know about my surgery.

I am not sure that the anesthesiologist gave me any anti-nausea meds yesterday like he did when I had the biopsy surgery.  For sure he didn’t put the patch thing on my neck.  Judging from how little of my food and fluids I kept down yesterday after surgery, I’d say there wasn’t anything in my IV either.  I can say this for sure:  most surgeries would be a walk in the park if it weren’t for the side effects of being put in a temporary coma from those nasty anesthesia drugs.  I think I only have one personal friend who does that for a living; Jerry, the next time I see you I’ll have to tell you that it’s time to invent some other way to sedate surgery patients!!

The only other bad part of this is that as far as getting my bandages and drain thing removed, I’m afraid that I’m going to fall prey to the holiday weekend.  Normally patients would go in three or four days post-surgery to get checked and get all that stuff taken care of, but guess what…Friday is the 4th of July and then it’s the weekend.  Monday is a surgery day for my surgeon, so I have to wait until Tuesday to go in!!!  And I can’t take a real shower until after the removal, so I’m going to be at the mercy of my kids to get my hair washed.  But the surgical site is doing fine—no real pain.  As I mentioned, if it weren’t for the anesthesia hangover, I’d be doing pretty well.  So I’ll sit here and eat my crackers and drink my water and hope that later this morningI can graduate to the DQ strawberry shake that’s waiting for me in the freezer.  So far so good with crackers, so I am optimistic!!