Supposedly now, my chances of survival skyrocket...
I guess if I was listening to the doctors and only doing what they said, I might feel differently.
I don't.
I haven't.
See almost a year ago, just after my Anniversary and just before Mother's Day, I was in the Hospital having a double mastectomy to get rid of ALL my breast tissue from having stage 2, triple-negative Breast Cancer. Nothing was celebrated the way I wanted, but then our lives had been turned upside down the beginning of April when a lumpectomy (surgery to remove a lump) revealed cancer.
I already told you how I felt then.
I believe I already told you that the morning after my surgery, I was scared and confused but to hurt to be outraged, I was taken to have a bone scan and a liver scan without my permission. The surgeon had given us a choice of while I was in the hospital, or coming back a few weeks later.
We had agreed on waiting a few weeks.
The thoughts being many, but lets do one major crazy to my body at a time!!
So then imagine!
Before my husband could come back the next morning, being woken from a drug & pain induced sleep to be asked, "Ready now?" by someone you've never seen that doesn't answer any questions and apparently only knows the words "ready now?", "down", and "yes?" in English!!
Where are you taking me?? - "down, yes?"
Where's my husband? Why isn't he here? Where are we going? - "yes, down, yes?"
See?? It was scary!!
It was not a fun ride. It was bumpy and painful and scary. I got a shot that made me feel like my blood was freezing. Rode back to my room, got more pain meds. Slept. Twice more this happened, same guy, same wake up, same bumpy, painful, scary ride. Once to lay on a frozen metal bed covered by a thin sheet, to be jostled through a ring that made me hot and sweaty over and over. The other time to be on a plastic bed and have what looked like a large trailer come down at me like it was going to smash me into a paper doll.
No answers to my questions.
Then I got to go back to my room and my husband was there waiting for me. When he asked where I was, they had answered him so he told me and then the nurse explained it...
The kids came to visit me later that day. I cried when they left.
The next morning as I was getting ready to leave, the surgeon called. He apologized for not coming in to see me but he had come down with a flu or something...
He told me that all the test results came back clean.
He said if he had to put a number on it, well my chance of it coming back would be around 2-3%.
He, of course, reminded me that my chances would be cut in half with Chemo.
Yes, I would go from 2-3% down to 1-1.5%!! Great!!
Except that in the same Drs offices I had read that every woman walking this Earth has a 3-5% chance of getting Breast Cancer.
So he just told me my chances are safer than that woman down there, crossing the street, or that one in her car, or... well, you get my point.
Meanwhile, from those who have been through Chemo... they have to live a year after Chemo without a relapse before they get news like that. Many don't. Many have to do it again. Many eventually die from Chemo killing all the good in their body and something "minor" turns into something major and they "die from complications"... I think they die from Chemo.
You won't change my mind.
All that to say, that for those of you who know about me but still hold tighter to the medical field, I am still here!
I have reached the **magic** 1 year mark.
More importantly for me, I had my final (and another final accidental) surgery to remove the
torture tissue expanders and replace them with my final size, silicone "foobies".
I am happy to be done, but still accepting where we had to stop for my final size.
Time to recover, recoup, and restart!!
