I think I am going to have to abandon the musical-themed titles after this one. My dad, who has one of best senses of humor of anyone I know, can’t take it when I speak crassly about everything that is happening. It’s like he wants me to abandon all defense mechanisms and bare true feelings. I’m not sure I can do that, but I can probably come up with more tastefully titled blog posts.
I’m sitting up in my bed surrounded by a nest of pillows. The windows are wide open and the spring breeze flows through the room and carries with it the faint smell of lilacs. The mastectomy is done, but when I look down on my chest things look similar to how they did before because the surgeon put air filled spacers into the cavities she created by removing the tissue. It’s only when I look in the mirror that I can tell how mangled everything is- the sides if my chest where my top of my arms sit are totally caved in, I assume from removing the lymph nodes. I wasn’t sure if I was going to want to look at all. I also assumed that everything was wrapped and taped and wrapped again so after surgery, when I was helped out of the gown to get dressed to go home, I looked down without giving it a second thought and there were my strangely high-sitting breasts, with surgical tape covering the incisions across the center and edges that looked like the sides of mountains that had just experienced huge landslides. It didn’t bother me like I thought it would, maybe because I was so glad to have the cancer (hopefully) gone and the (first) surgery over with.

The worst part of the mastectomy was not having jeremy there before or after. They did let him come back just before they discharged me so he could hear the instructions but that was it. Before surgery I was lying in the pre-op place and people were very kindly and very cheerily (except the anistesiologist, he was kind of an ass and said “ok honey” and patted my hand when I told him what I did and did not want) coming in and out and asking questions and I was nodding and smiling and being cheery right back even though it felt like a very odd way to behave. Then my friend Carol , an amazing woman and surgeon, popped her head in the curtains . I knew she was going to try and stop by before her own surgery but wasn’t sure she would make it. As soon as I saw her face my tears started to flow. “I’m scared.” I crygulped. She held my hand and told me that made perfect sense and that I was going to be fine. Soon after she left they put me to sleep.

The sleeping was easier than the waking- I woke up feeling nauseous and in pain and apparently wasn’t doing a stellar job of breathing because people were putting tubes up my nose and talking about oxygen saturation. “She looks pretty puney”, I heard my surgeon say. “She can stay the night inpatient if she doesn’t improve”. This was music to my ears as I had no idea how I could go home while feeling so crappy. A few hours and new meds later I was much better. Jeremy got me home and settled, the kids came back from Stacey’s (I didn’t want them to see me when i first got home in case I was in a lot of pain) and we watched an episode of Lost, just like we had the night before.

The past few days have been quiet and relatively pain free. Our people have made us feel so loved and cared for- I am overwhelmed by their kindness and generosity. I have a few more days of quiet before I go back to the hospital Wednesday morning for the first reconstruction surgery. This is a bigger procedure than the mastectomy so I will be in the hospital for 3-4 nights. I am already starting to feel anxious about it, and about being in the hospital without being able to have visitors, but I know that it will come and go and, weather it is smooth sailing or miserable, it will end and I will be back in my pillow nest, with my people, without my cancer.

Jeremy and I just before discharge- I remember thinking I was smiling really big….