Post Lumpectomy: Day 1

Needless to say, I'm feeling significantly better than I did yesterday, but I still feel a lot worse than I expected. I know, I know, it has been less than 24 hours, I'm just a very impatient type of person and I have a hard time staying still. I'm still taking hydrocodone regularly, which is making me very sleepy, but it's better than throbbing pain. The worst pain is in my axilla/armpit area, which Dr. L warned me about. She said there are a lot of nerves in that area, and taking out the lymph nodes 'tends to piss the nerves off quite a bit.' She also said it was likely I would have worse bruising and a slightly slower recovery than normal because of the blood thinners, but that 'it's better than a PE' (pulmonary embolism). I'm sort of terrified to move my arm around. I really want to put my contacts in so I can feel human, but I'm not sure if lifting my arm up is a good idea. I just managed to get dressed, and I think that was enough arm movement for an hour.

Anyway.

What a looooong day yesterday was. My parents came over in the morning to get the kids off to school. My husband and I left the house around 7 AM for my 7:30 appointment, mostly because I wanted to leave before my son woke up, because I knew that would make it a lot harder to leave. My 7:30 appointment was with radiology to get an injection to help with the sentinel node biopsy. I got an injection of a radioactive tracer into my boob, right next to my nipple, around 8 AM. That was not fun, but as I told Dr. L later, it wasn't as bad as the Lovenox injections. After the injection, I had to wait around for almost two hours to let the tracer get absorbed. I knew this would be the case, but unfortunately, that waiting was in the waiting room, so I couldn't really take a nap as I had planned. (My husband managed, though.) I tried to read a book, but couldn't really get into it, so instead I spent my time being annoyed by and glaring at the noisy group of people next to me. Haha.

Around 9:30, we went back for the typical pre-op stuff: people confirming my identity and the surgery I was planning on having approximately ten kazillion times, vitals, medical history, etc. Since pretty much everyone I talked to seemed fascinated that I was on a blood thinner, I told the story of my hip surgery and DVT over and over, to the extent that I was sort of worried that people would forget I was in there for breast cancer. But it's true: I know I'm about 30 years younger than the typical person with a history of hip problems and DVT, so that makes the story interesting.

When the anesthesiologist came in to talk to me, he went over his gig in about 30 seconds. (There's not much to say except that he will put you to sleep and keep you asleep.) Then said he had read my chart and wanted to ask me about my hemoglobin E, if I didn't mind. It didn't have anything to do with the surgery, he was just curious. So we then had a 10-minute conversation about hemoglobin E. He was sort of like a kid in a candy store, or like a doctor who had wanted to go into hematology but instead got into an anesthesiology residency, haha.

I openly shared information with people, keeping in mind what my EMT instructor had told us: you will learn the most by talking to other people, and most people will talk to you. People with certain disorders will, for the most part, know more about their disorder than you do, and the parents of kids with certain disorders will very likely know more about their kid's disorder than you do. So you should educate yourself by asking them about it. What better thing did I have to do while sitting around waiting for surgery than to help educate people?

I was surprised they actually took me into the operating room fully conscious, which was kind of creepy. I actually got up and put myself onto the operating table. In the past (not that I have a long surgical history), I've always been knocked out before being in the OR, so I've never actually seen the inside of an OR before. After I positioned myself on the operating table, the anesthesiologist told me he was going to give me something that would knock me out in 10 seconds, and then the nurse stood over me and told me 'We're going to take good care of you' until I fell asleep. It was a nice touch, and I actually remember it.

After I woke up from the surgery, I remember them telling me to open my mouth, and feeling them take the airway adjunct out me. I think I only really remember this because one of the skills in my EMT class is inserting airway adjuncts, and they just seem so weird to me. They are big and bulky, and I just don't see how they help (but obviously they do). They are really easy to insert into dummies, and apparently just as easy to insert into real people. In fact, C, my friend from EMT class, who also works at the surgery center where I had my surgery, told me I would probably have an OPA (oropharyngeal airway) during surgery, and I told her it better be out of me before I woke up. LOL. (The contraindication for an OPA is that the patient is conscious.) Later C told me they had actually used an LMA (laryngeal mask airway), and they have to wait until you wake up to take it out, but you aren't supposed to remember it. Ha!

The next thing I remember is the post-op nurse asking me what my pain level was, and in my grogginess I made something up and told her between 5 and 6. So she gave me some fentanyl (I think?) through my IV. I actually felt okay until I tried to move, and moving my arm caused extreme pain. A few minutes later, she asked me what my pain level was. I said it was about the same, so then she gave me something stronger. (Dilaudid? It started with a d, that's pretty much what I remember.) After that, I felt okay, until I tried to actually move again. Later when she asked me my pain level, I said it was still around 5 or 6, but I didn't have the energy to explain that I actually thought it was better, it's just that it had actually been worse than a 5 or 6 to begin with. So she gave me two hydrocodones, and after that things got pretty fuzzy for a while. LOL.

Eventually I came out of the fuzz, and C came over and we talked about the EMT practical exams and various things, and after about an hour and a half, I was ready to leave. Getting dressed was the biggest challenge, and set off the excruciating pain from moving my arm. In my pre-op phone appointment, the nurse had mentioned that wearing a button-up shirt might be a good idea, but I don't have any comfortable button-up shirts I would want to hang out in all day, or that I would want contaminated by a hospital environment, so I ignored that advice and went with a t-shirt and zip-up sweat shirt. At least I was pretty comfortable for the rest of the day.

I got home and tried to sleep, but I was still spinning from all the pain meds, so it was a weird type of half sleep. Eventually I tried to watch a movie, but I wasn't awake enough to understand what was going on. My mom came over and brought some soup, and I eventually stayed awake long enough to eat some, and it helped a lot, because I hadn't eaten anything in about 20 hours at that point. Then a friend came by with a pizza, which was super nice. (My family enjoyed it while I dozed off.) After the kids were in bed, my husband and I decided to wind down by watching a movie (the same movie I had tried to watch earlier), and it was pretty stupid, so I actually fell asleep for a little bit. I slept on and off throughout the night and woke up around 4:30 with terrible pain. So I took a pain pill and actually did sleep really well after that for a few hours.

I dozed on and off all morning, and in between dozing had some more soup, tried to answer a few work-related e-mails, and write this. Just before lunch, a friend came by with some soft camisoles for me to wear and stool softener. LOL. (She reminded me that stool softener is an important thing that they may or may not tell you about, but after two C-sections and another surgery, she would never forget how necessary it is, haha.) We visited for a while, and now I think I'm ready for another nap. But my pain does feel a lot better, so I think I'm going to try not taking any meds for a while. I'd like to be lucid for at least a little while.

Overall, I'm feeling a lot better than even this morning, and am hopeful I can continue on this recovery trajectory.