Monday, June 18 – Surgery here I come

As I have previously mentioned, I was accepted into a study at Stanford.  The study is to try and determine what influences breast cancer treatment decisions, and counsel doctors and surgeons out there providing the initial treatment recommendations on what they can do to help support women in making the best treatment decisions.  Specifically this is to address the high percentage of woman who are opting for bilateral mastectomies rather than acceptable treatments of lumpectomy or single mastectomy when there are no factors that would call for this radical surgery.

Last week we headed back to the San Francisco Bay Area to stay once again with my parents for a few days while I met with the researchers at Stanford to complete the portion of the study that needed to be done there.  There was questionnaires, forms, decision making tests, risk taking tests, and to cap it off was the functional MRI while you went through visual and response mapping.  

Then for the first three days this week is the saliva collecting. There are certain times of the day I need to collect the saliva, and freeze it. Once I have completed three days of collection three times a day, I FedEx it all back to the Stanford research team. I was highly disappointed when I found out the saliva collection was to saturate a cotton “plug” in your mouth and not me spitting into a container. For some reason I was really looking forward to spitting into a collection tube.

 

We drove up to my parent’s house last Wednesday, with my first 1/2 day at Stanford on Thursday, the same day as my Mom’s lumpectomy. It was nice spending more time with my parents than we had the previous week. And we treated my Dad (and Mom #2) to dinner on Saturday night for Father’s Day. I think I gained 10 pounds while we were there eating out every night!

My neuropathy feels like its getting worse. I know it’s not really, but trying to do more seems to make it feel worse. I do have an appointment scheduled with the neurologist in a couple weeks. Plus, I have surgery tomorrow to close up the cavity in the boob so I can finish this whole healing thing and get on with my life. Once I am cleared from that surgery to immerse in water I plan on joining the local gym with a pool and start swimming daily. I am really hoping getting back in shape will help me feel better about myself.

Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Not that I am looking forward to another surgery, but I am ready for this surgery.  I know it is what is going to get me moving to the next steps. I am not overly anxious about this surgery, but I am wondering what changes this will make to the right boob. Hubby said Dr. Goldberg said she might try and pull it a little tighter to help lift it a bit so it doesn’t pull and sag so much to the right. I was telling my mother I have never had my breasts “fold” over at the chest wall. They sagged a bit, but not to the point that the breast tissue folded over onto my ribs/torso. My right breast when it is not in a bra/tank does just that. It folds over and touches my torso. It feels really weird as I’ve never experienced this before and it only happens on the one side. Where it folds over is on the right side of the breast as well, towards my armpit because that is where my breast is the fullest. Maybe after tomorrow it will not sag as much. This doesn’t fix the left boob with the flat bottom, but I’m not going to worry about this anymore. Or at least try not to worry about it. It’s one of those things that stares me in the face every day, kind of hard for me to miss.

I am continuing in the lecture series as well, and feel like I am working towards better acceptance of my new me now. One thing I keep mentally obsessing about is my hair. With my hot flashes being a constant irritant to me, and hair making me feel hotter, and my hair getting a little longer now, I’m really feeling uncomfortable with it. I actually liked not having any hair. Shaving my head was always something I entertained doing. I hesitated due to Hubby’s lack of hair and didn’t want to be insensitive to his inability to grow a full head of hair. We discussed this on our drive up north and again this morning, the fact that I really don’t know what I want to do with my new hair and really don’t want to deal with it right now. I am over the baby softness of my hair, and I am just not ready to make any decisions as to how I want it to look in the future. It’s becoming a nuisance to me right now. We have agreed he will help me shave my head this week. His shaver is not charged, so we couldn’t do it today, and tomorrow is surgery, so later this week. My self identity and worth has never included my hair. Evidently is does include my boobs, but not my hair.

Yes, hot flashes continue to be a bane to my current existence.

Part of the lecture series was to list 10 tiny changes I can work on. I didn’t really have time last week, so I will start working on that this week. 10 tiny changes. I can do that.

I have found that some of the things I was exposed to during the study at Stanford have left me feeling a little emotionally raw. I am sad, and the slightest little bump to my emotions makes me want to cry.  The recent articles detailing what is happening at our nation’s borders brought me to angry frustrated tears. And if I think about or hear further information on what is continuing to happen I am ready to shed more of those bitter tears. A noted pediatrician visited a child detention center and found no human contact is allowed with the detained children. So not only are we taking away the only emotional support this young children have ever known, we are denying them any comfort after we have ripped them away from their parents. There are those that think this is justified, but to me nothing can justify this abuse of children. Even when a mother from Honduras was told that if she went to an entry point and requested asylum her child would be taken from her and she would be placed under arrest, she told the reporter telling her this, she was still going to do this as it would be better than going back to the death threats she had been receiving from the local gangs. And then there is the story that one woman in a detention facility relayed to a lawyer there to try and assist her in her deportation case that her breastfeeding child was ripped from her arms. Homeland Security denies they are separating babies from mothers, but why would a woman in tears tell this to a lawyer trying to help her and not know where her baby is now? I believe the distraught mother over Homeland Security. I am heartbroken. I thought we were better than this. Pediatricians, Psychiatrists and Psychologists all agree this constitutes child abuse. And I am not talking about the unaccompanied minors that have traveled to the US to escape the violence in their home countries.

I feel so much sorrow. Sorrow for my country and how inhumane it is acting at this point, and sorrow for me, my losses over the past 9 months. I am working on my own losses and getting past that, but the news lately is just compounding my grief. I know I will get through this, but I feel like it’s a step back from where I was emotionally just last week.

On a good note, The Toothless Wonder Cat was very quick to forgive us for leaving for so long. Of course Kitty Crack (Roast Beef) and copious amounts of petting and brushing helped with the forgiveness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life is getting past the grief