Update post surgery...

(As part of my celebration of and goodbye to my breasts and lymph nodes prior to surgery, a friend who is an amazing henna artist graciously 'tattooed' me... bringing peace, strength and beauty to a difficult letting go <3
thank you, Mary... )




...email sent Friday, May 6, 2011

Greetings from Maine , post surgery and in the midst of figuring out what comes next…

I think most everyone on this list received an email from my mom last week with a brief update regarding the initial pathology report – you can be certain an email from me at that point would have been barely readable… though perhaps entertaining:) Those of you near enough to visit who had the pleasure of spending time with me while I was “under the influence” of oxy-narcotics know all too well what I’m talking about. (btw, I can’t guarantee I remember all of those visits, so if you meant to come and didn’t feel free to claim you did and make up a good story to go along… )

Surgery went very well! – I feel like I went in early Monday morning calm, full of trust, and as ready as I could have been. One nurse noted my calmness and sense of humor with surprise, stating that if she were about to go into surgery she’d be “crying and freaking out” (not sure that’s textbook nursing, but at least she felt comfortable enough to share how she really felt… ). Just before heading in my breast surgeon’s nurse, who is trained in therapeutic touch, did a bit of energy work on me and said I felt completely strong and balanced – much more reassuring:)

The morning was also full of visits from surgeons, the anesthesiologist and a number of nurses… a great team all around!

The last few things I remember: injection… we are rolling down the hallway to the OR, on my right is a lovely picture of a dock heading out onto the ocean or a lake… looks beautiful; on my left the hallway turns – as we began turning left I ask “Wait, can’t we go that way?” pointing to the picture… through some big doors and the lights are crazy bright, there are what seem to be tons of people in scrubs and paper hats, big metal arms overhead, my anesthesiologist in his goofy purple hat, and…

“Jamie, Jamie…” – 3 ½ hours later, all done, and “awake” in the recovery room!

I can’t say I remember much of the rest of Monday, but I ate a giant bowl of tasty oatmeal, hung out with Mom, Papa, and Isis, experienced morphine for the first time, and thus recovery began.

I won’t bore you with details between then and Friday, they’re a bit fuzzy anyway.

Friday we got the path report – good news and bad news, but we’ll focus on the good… no lymph node involvement! Yay! As my mom wrote there were some whammies too though… aggressive strain, and evidence of cancerous cells traveling in my blood stream within the breast (meaning they have access to all the places blood flows… ick), and not so great margins (i.e. she couldn’t scoop much out around the cancer due to my being “a skinny broad”, leaving a heightened chance of cancer cells being left in the bits of breast tissue that are inevitably left behind along the chest wall (pectoral muscle) and under the skin). More good news, on paper it’s only a stage I cancer! Yay! But as she put it, there are “boring” stage I cancers, and “not so boring” stage I cancers… why would I have boring cancer?! Ugh…

So that brings us to this week – a week of ups and downs and lots of appointments. On the up side I weaned myself from the crazy pain killers and began to get my brain and cadence back. Definitely not completely myself yet, but getting there… sweet comment from my father “I kind of liked Jamie last week when she talked slowly and really had to think before she said anything…”.

Appointment number one was with the plastic surgeon – I had my drains removed… decidedly not a fun experience, but I got to go home and take a shower!!, and feel human again:)

Appointment number two was with my oncologist who introduced us to a couple incredibly valuable tools that brought sighs of relief all around. The first is a data base that the doc is able to plug your stats into and get a bar graph (based on data collected over many years from tens of thousands of women) showing your chances of dying from the cancer you have in the next 10 years. It sounds morbid, but wait… So with my data plugged in, walking away right now and not doing any more treatment I have an 81% survival rate… with hormone treatment for the next 5 years, it goes up to 88%, and with hormone treatment and chemotherapy (assuming I’d need it), it goes up to 93%. (btw, roughly 2% of the remaining 7% takes into account the chance of death by some other cause… leaving only a 5% chance – that’s good news, really!) The second resource is a relatively new test called Oncotype DX where they are able to analyze the DNA from a cancerous tumor and assess the risk of recurrence. Again, it is empirically based data gathered over time and is graphable and pretty cut and dry. (being a science geek of sorts, I like that) A score is returned to you and you fall within 3 categories – low, medium, or high risk. If a low risk score is returned studies have shown that chemotherapy is of no benefit (i.e. the risks are greater than the benefits)… so the hope is that a low score comes back and I can avoid chemo and keep my hair!!... however, if the score comes back medium or high risk the news is still not all bad – the recommendation would be 4 to 6 treatments of a “second generation” chemo (mid-level horribleness). I should know in 7 to 10 days.

Finally, today we met with my radiation oncologist, and radiation will be a definite part of my future (damn bad margins)… and will either be this summer or in the fall depending on the chemo outcome. The prediction is that being “young”, healthy and fit that I shouldn’t have complications or side effects to speak of.

Whew, I hope I didn’t put anyone to sleep with all of that… on a more personal note we are all hanging in there! I’ve had my melt downs and certainly miss my “old life”… but am also trying to see this down time as something positive, and know that an end is in sight and this will all be a (shitty) blip on the radar at some point in the not too distant future. Isis is holding up extraordinarily well, just brought home a glowing progress report in her last trimester before middle school, and is dancing and hanging out with friends with gusto. She’s also been very gentle with me and I think “gets” what is happening on a deeper level than probably any of us know. Mom and Papa are amazing, I wouldn’t be able to do this without them – and I know it is even harder for them at times than it is for me. We also have wonderful friends bringing food and transporting Isis and offering many other services that I am sure to take them up on as I transition back to my own house in the next couple weeks…

Thank you all for your positive energy, warm thoughts, love, prayers, ceremonies, phone calls, cards, care packages, visits… every bit has helped me remain positive and heal… I love you all!

Peace, love, and health…

xoxo

Jamie