Surgery is over

Thursday, July 8th was a long day. I had to check-in at 7 am for my lumpectomy which was scheduled for noon. The early check-in was due to some things that had to be done beforehand. First I had to go to the breast radiology people so that they could do two things. The first was to insert a wire into my breast to guide the surgeon to the tumor (how glad I am that I didn't realize they needed to do that earlier; I would have obsessed about it). The second was to inject nuclear material in my breast to map the sentinel nodes. I may not have known how many pain receptors there were in a breast but I sure found out quickly. The radiologist injected some Lidocaine beforehand but it wasn't enough. At least at the dentist I get nitrous oxide so that if I hurt, I don't care. The medical team was very supportive emotionally but I wish the procedure didn't hurt so darn much! Then I found out that they would need to do a mammogram (sandwich my breast between two panes of plastic and snap an x-ray) of my already painful breast. I had a grumpy mammographer who was made even grumpier by the fact that she would have to position me awkwardly for the picture. We got it done and she was going to do another view when I said I needed to sit down. Things started going black on me. They brought in a nurse and my husband. Thank goodness the one picture was so clear that they didn't need another. They gave me oxygen and sent me down to nuclear medicine on a gurney instead of a wheelchair.

Nuclear medicine didn't hurt at all. I just had to stay still for five minutes at a time while they scanned the nuclear material in my breast for the node mapping. Then it was back up to pre-op where my husband and I would wait for the anesthesiologist, the anesthetist, and the surgeon to talk to us.

The surgery itself was the easy part. I got onto this warm table with warm blankets, got strapped in, listened to the staff joking around, and the next thing I knew I was in the recovery room. My breast hurt and I was sleepy. They gave me drugs for the pain. They understood about breast nerve endings. After recovery I was re-united with my loving family while I rested up and ate a blueberry muffin and did all the other stuff one needs to do to get released from the hospital.

My daughter came home with us and made the family phone calls. Both Mr. D and I were too stressed to want to talk to anybody. It had been a long day!