Thursday, October 30, 2008

I am a survivor!!!

For now at least. So I had my surgery yesterday. This time everything was on time and there wasn't much waiting. For extra bonus, she finished up with me early and I came to life less than an hour after she started (versus 3.5 hours)and I seem to have much less after effects than I did last time.

The dual wire placement was a bitch though. One of the wires needed to be put close to my chest wall and it was hard stretching my breast/chest wall out between the plates they use to position it while they take multiple mammograms. I had to stay in this awkward position for almost a half hour. They try to insert as much lidocaine into my breast but they missed a major sector. When they put the wire guiding tool into this, it hurt like you would not believe-like a drill on an exposed dental nerve. Also one of the techs or nurse had to hold me closely into place had really funky breath that made me feel even sicker. They put these wires in so the surgeon knows where to begin and end her cutting as everything looks the same once she's inside. The microcalcifications only show up on x-ray.

The anaesthesiologist was cute and British (from Dorset like Tess of the D'urbervilles-a book that stresses again how life is not fair). I told him how his job was easy-just look up what they did last time.
Oh it doesn't work that way. Each time we have a different situation. For instance your blood pressure is way, way up.
They took it right before torturing me. It went down later. I am caffeinated this time though. Black coffee.
Now I was standing in line this morning for some myself at some fancy coffee place and the fellow in front of me was going on and on how he wanted frappa, cappa, carmel, whipped cream something or other and I thought to myself, how unmanly. Was your 'black' coffee anything like that?
No girly coffee for me-it was black-no cream, frappa, mild or anything else that would be in my stomach.
Did you have any problems with pain last time?
Well my throat really hurt from when you guys rammed that breathing tube down..
We don't 'ram' it down. We carefully place it.

After a few more questions, he said he would just do what they did last time.Later his resident showed up complete with a baby bump and acne. Do they let teenagers into medical school these days?

I decided to pay attention more this time as last time I seemed to have amnesia but after moving on to the table, I seemed to disappear again without warning. I think I remember the mask and thinking it was suffocating but that's it. When I awoke, I was by myself. It appeared I was in the pre-op area again but noticed a clock on the wall. The pre-op area annoyingly is clock-free. I was in a little bit of pain but not nearly as much as before. After an hour, they let me go home. I am trying to lay off the viocodins though I did take one before bed so I would sleep. I am trying to avoid taking laxatives. My throat is almost all healed. I just wanted to eat warm, slippery stuff. I was so hungry. Allegedly my wound is about 1-2 inches longer but I haven't taken off my swaddling to check it out. Dr. Dl will call me Monday to tell me if everything is out. She is giving it a 95% chance this time but I reminded her that I am not going through this again anytime soon. If is needed, maybe after chemo.


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