Lymphatic Non-Invasion

Monday was my latest appointment with my surgeon. We were going to learn the pathology report from my surgery. Joe and I obviously planned this appointment time (3:30 pm) with little sleep and a post surgical allergic reaction brain as there was no way Joe could work, come get me, and get to the appointment on time. We have great friends though who helped us out with our current situation. With great anticipation and fear, I went into the appointment with Jeanne. Jeanne had asked on the ride to the appointment what the expected conversations would be in the appointment. I had told her that I expected the pathology report, drains, driving, and incision site healing were to be discussed. Jeanne knew that at every appointment before this one I had been given news that was difficult to deal with, so I think she was preparing herself for the possibility of this happening again today but we were both hopeful. The doctor came in and started in on the pathology:
1. I had 2 tumors in the left breast about 2.2 cm apart from one another: one was 4 cm large and non-cancerous (benign) and the other was 1.3 cm large and cancerous. The one we could feel was the larger one not the cancerous one.
2. The margins were negative
3. The small tumor had just begun to establish lymph vessels and recruit blood vessels
4. The lymph node taken from my left side was NEGATIVE!
5. There was no cancer found in the right breast
All of these things show that we caught this early! Being able to feel the larger tumor probably changed the entire treatment process for me and possibly saved my life as if it had established a blood supply the cancer cells could have started to metastasize. I will not need radiation at all just chemotherapy and Herceptin treatments. I wanted to jump up and down and celebrate when he said there was no lymphatic involvement.

The rest of the appointment was interesting just because it was obvious that my doctor has me pegged for the not overly compliant patient and overly excited to get back to my normal life patient. He kept asking if I was overdoing it with my arms. I kept saying no and honestly I haven't been trying to do much with my arms. He also asked if I had been walking!!! I asked about driving but I realize that I am not ready to drive my standard car yet. Joe has also said he is not sure about me driving myself anywhere safely at this point. When I asked, my doctor said we would discuss it again next week. The bummer points were that the drains are in for another week and I still am not cleared to try the range of motion activities. The lymph node being negative for cancer though far outweighs the little negatives that we found out on Monday!

A Few Things I have learned... so far

I have learned many things about life and myself so far. Here are a few of the highlights:
1. After the flood in August and my diagnosis, I realize that people are good! I am so overwhelmed by the love, support, and help that my family and friends have been giving us. I can honestly say that when Joe gets home from work, he heats up the dinner that someone has brought over so we can sit for the next 30 minutes and talk to each other and then he cleans me, my drains, helps me get my clothes ready for the next day, and then he takes a shower, helps me get into bed and goes to sleep. I cherish this 30 min with him when we are just equals and if he had to cook every night for us as well as do everything else, we would never just be with each other. Joe is also thankful for those who have come and taken me somewhere. He gets to just clean the house without having to cater to me and try to do laundry and take care of the house. I thank everyone who has helped up!
2. Slowing down my mind which went at super speed before may be beneficial. I can say that I am more relaxed now that I was before cancer surgery.
3. I have always been a person who will say yes to a lot of things but now I know that I can say no. At this moment, I am the most important person in my life. This thought process is what will allow me to make the best decisions for me during this healing process.
4. I am stronger than I even knew! This makes me more motivated to make sure I am doing what I need to do to make sure that I am focusing on myself this next year during the cancer treatments.
5. I am grateful for everyone around me. I am grateful for an early diagnosis. I am more willing to be forgiving because of this. The negative energy is not worth being surrounded with. I am happy to be thinking positive thoughts and hope positive energy is around me.
6. I LOVE to RUN!!!! Oh, how much I miss running and biking! I feel like we took away my best friend and I know that they will return but not at the strength or comfort level that I had once experienced. I have not taken any runs or bike rides for granted after I was diagnosed. Even on bad days, at least I had the capacity to run and it showed me that I was alive. Walking is great but it isn't the same.

There are more to come!

Reading, reading, and more reading

I have been doing a lot of reading on the ways to make sure cancer doesn't come back. I have finished the book Crazy, Sexy Cancer Tips by Kris Carr (another NY native) and am currently reading AntiCancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber. I watched the movie Forks over Knives too. Along with all of the other informational packets that the doctors have given to me and the research I have done on-line, I am struggling with what type of diet I should be maintaining. I feel like I have maintained a healthy diet prior to being diagnosed with cancer including 5 years when I was a vegetarian but I still got cancer. I am not exactly interested in becoming a vegan (and I can tell you that my husband is NOT becoming a vegan) but there seems to be a lot of research that shows that vegan diets are the best at preventing cancer from returning. On the other hand, materials that are being given out by doctors offices are telling people they need to eat a high protein diet - which from my scientific background I disagree with completely. One piece of material that I was given actually said "Do not eat fresh fruits and vegetables the week after your chemo treatment." I questioned this immediately as I eat tons of fresh fruit and veggies as part of a whole foods, mostly plant based diet. I was told that as long as I cleaned them well and knew that I knew where they came from, I should be fine. I am also struggling to plan my chemo diet. The information given to me is very contradictory. I know I will figure this out as I am going through the process but I also would like to be able to plan for it as well. I am using a cook book that was given to me by my friend Jeanne called The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen to find a few recipes that will help me through chemo. I know that I may be atypical in that I am obsessed with my diet and exercise but I would think that there would be a general consensus on what people should eat but that would be too easy. Plus, I know that people with estrogen and progesterone positive cancers should stay away from estrogen promoters like soy products and possibly flax. Did you know how many things have soy in them? Read the food labels! It's in everything! I have requested to speak to a nutritionist but my insurance company has not approved my request yet. I am disappointed about this. I have read that many cancer centers around the country give patients a complementary nutritionist appointment but this is something that is lacking in the St. Peter's program (although my doctors are fantastic, the wellness side of their program isn't well developed). I am still looking for answers at this time.

The Fog has lifted

I had to re-read my last two posts because I knew that I wrote them but I couldn't think of what I wrote. After the bandages were removed on Monday morning, I had to continue taking Benadryl for the next 4 days so there was a lot of foggy feeling and dizziness. But I am finally off of it! My hives are pretty much gone. My severe headache that was with me for most of the week is currently under control. Between the hives and the headache, I couldn't focus, had trouble sleeping, and had problems interacting with people around me. Getting these things under control has made my life much, much better. My doctors response to my hives was "You just don't have much of a tolerance for narcotics." I guess this is a good thing. The drains did not come out this week though. I hate the drains! I can't wait for them to be gone. I understand their importance but I know that after they are gone, I will get better faster. I am finally stopping the nasty sweating of the excretion of all of the drugs they gave me during surgery. I am also losing the weird water weight and bloating that made me feel puffy for the first week after surgery. Now that I am only on my normal asthma and allergy meds I am getting back to "normal". I'm still struggling with finding a comfortable position while sleeping so my sleep is not great on a regular basis. I am also still struggling with food since I am unable to cook and we aren't eating what we normally ate before. I was not cleared to start the range of motion exercises yet but hope that I will be on Monday. I am doing a lot with my left arm although I am not nearly 50% range of motion yet and, due to the placement of the port and some referred pain from it, my right arm is at about 30% range of motion. I can't wait to have something to work toward in doing the range of motion exercises.

I have been walking a lot. I started walking around the block immediately after surgery and then on Thursday I felt great and went for a 4 mile walk! I think walking is helping me heal. There are stats that say that the body heals eight times faster with exercise. I am realizing that walking gets me nowhere near the exercise "high" that running and biking give me but it is helping me immeasurably none-the-less. I am so excited to run again. I think that getting back to my running will ultimately allow me to feel "normal" again. I was lucky that I spent the week with my father who was more than willing to go out and walk as far as I wanted to at any time I wanted to go.

I did have a moment of mental weakness this week. On Monday, after I got my first look at my new body, was wearing a pair of black running pants, the cotton vest that holds my drains, and a sweatshirt of my husbands, and my hair looked like I was Ralph Macchio from the Karate Kid, I looked at myself in the mirror and just cried. At that moment, I realized that if I dressed like I was a sick person, I was feeling like a sick person and I hated that. I didn't like that I looked like a young boy - there is nothing healing, healthy, or uplifting about being a 33 yr old woman and feeling helpless and feeling like I lost something. I vowed to figure out what I could wear to look like a woman and look healthy again. Since then, I have found shirts in my wardrobe that have larger neck holes and have warn them so I feel better. I also started wearing my wedding rings again as my hands are no longer swollen so they fit again! I am committed to looking great when I am capable to enhance my self-esteem.

This surgery was much harder than I thought it would be. I know I had reactions that were atypical but I thought I would have more mental capabilities in the week after than I did. I feel like life is moving at a sloths pace but, as my cousin pointed out, you don't go from working and training for an Ironman to sitting around trying to recover from surgery without it feeling like life has slowed down. I didn't realize how much Joe and I worked and trained until he went back to work, training, and coaching on Tuesday and was gone for 12 hrs. This was my life until March 15th too. I understand that I have to step back and take my life at a slower pace. I believe I will get used to this soon and get into a rhythm that I didn't have before but which will be best for me. Of course this week was not typical for Joe either. Although he worked 4 of the 5 days at school, he came home early without working out or coaching 2 days because of me on Monday and on Wednesday because he got a stomach bug (yuck). He goes back to "normal" starting next week. I am hoping that next week, I won't have to be supervised all of the time which will help me find my rhythm as well. I have at least 3 weeks to just heal now before chemo starts. That is what I shall concentrate on now.

4 days post surgery

Thursday was surgery, Friday I was basically pushed out of the hospital even though I was still puking and having a pretty severe headache. Friday, Joe and I learned to deal with my current situation with drains. Saturday, I was nauseous, extremely nauseous. My thoughts went to what if chemo is like this, I will not survive the year - that is how bad it was. Very quickly we learned that the hydrocodone was making me sick to my stomach and quite possibly giving me hives. We had a decent afternoon though with little thought of throwing up since I was not consumed with hives and itching. Benadryl became my best friend at this point. In the middle of the night Joe decided that washing the hive area again may help and we figured out that where the betadine was put on my body I was having a reaction and close to the tape that is around my surgical wounds was very irritated. Once we washed it again, gave me benadryl and put some anti-itch cream on the hives and I finally got to sleep.

Today. I woke up at around 8 am with itching and tingling around my chest and my back. I stayed awake until 1 eating two meals then took an hour nap and now I am writing. My head is still a bit fuzzy due to all of the medications I have been taking but I am feeling slightly more human. Today I did realize that I am completely dependent on my husband which makes me sad. I am one of the most independent people I know and now I can't even wash my own face. Washing my face and hair feels like it should be done every hour because I feel like I am excreting the anesthesia through my skin which is creating this oily feeling on my skin. I am still walking around the block - we measured it 0.66 miles in 13 min 13 sec today - but depending on my head depends on how much I enjoy being outside. I am dieing to go for a run and it's only been 4 days since surgery - how am I going to last 3 more weeks. This unusually warm weather allows me to sit in the recliner and think "You should go outside" and I am just too fuzzy sometimes to make my move to go out. I am so grateful that friends and family have brought over food for us as I don't know how Joe would take care of me, take care of himself, and do everything else. I didn't expect to be this helpless but the anesthesia really did my body no good. Tomorrow the bandages come off and maybe I can start the range of motion activities. Maybe one drain will come out too which would speed up healing. It can only get better the further from surgery I get!