Surgery Experience at St. Joe's

We left the house this morning in plenty of time and watched the sun rise as we drove to the hospital.  Not being a morning person, this is a treat for me.  Loved the pink swirly clouds and the light road traffic.

My outpatient surgery was for contouring the transplanted flap/breast with liposuctioned fat cells, (taken using a needle and taking the cells from my hipbone area on each side), and creating a nipple.  The new nipple will be tattooed later in his office.

The surgery registration at St. Joe's is a breeze.  I have to congratulate them for the expediency and coordination of the staff.  The nursing staff do a great job of getting the patients prepped for surgery, then the anesthesiologist comes in and after that the surgeon.  Then the patient gets wheeled in to the operating room and things happen very quickly.  Before you know it, you're waking up in the recovery room.

I woke up with a slight panicky feeling because I felt like I couldn't breathe.  It had something to do with the tube still being in my throat and was trying to get to it.  Never had that happen before.  After that it was ok.  In the recovery room I began waking up, but I was so dead tired I had a rough time coming awake.  I knew I was supposed to wake up, but my eyes were so heavy it took me a long time to come to.  I started shaking my head to clear it and did everything I could to try to wake up.  I had a great nurse who I had a conversation with.  Her name is Betsy, and she told me about a near miss she had involving her car, accidentally putting it in reverse, and her 18-year old daughter nearly being behind the car when it surged backward and crashed against a tree.  Then another near-miss involving her mother, but in my brain fog, that story is gone to me.

When it came time to get dressed and ready to go, she brought me a beautiful "chemo graduate" blanket that had been made by the nurses to give out to the breast cancer patients.  She asked if I had ever received one, and when I said no, I hadn't, she brought one out.  It's so pretty!!  I thought that was such a sweet thing to do.  She also gave me lots of advice and encouragement.  I had been telling her about my arthritis and how it's impacting my life and she told me that she also has arthritis problems, and how important it is to keep "filling your tank," meaning keeping your life active and filled with friends and activities.

Jim brought me home, and I crashed for several hours.  It's all becoming a dreamlike fog to me now as I try to put it into words.  The surgical bandages will stay on for a week until my office appointment with him, when I'll see how the surgery turned out.  I'll let you know then ...

Surgery Tomorrow

It's 12:30 am and I'm wide awake - did a dumb thing and had a delicious cappuccino after dinner tonight.  Might as well take advantage of the awake time and make an entry in my blog.  At 4:30 am we're supposed to wake up and leave the house by 5:15 to be at the hospital by 6:00 am.  I'm having outpatient surgery to finish up the breast reconstruction saga brought on by my cancer diagnosis 3 years ago.  All is well - I have finished all the chemo, the mastectomy, the Herceptin infusions, the radiation, and the tram flap breast reconstruction, except for the contouring that I'm getting tomorrow.  The contouring is going to use liposuctioned fat cells from somewhere - don't know yet where - to even out the new "breast" that once was my abdomen.  That will be nice.  Then (cover your ears if you don't want to hear this) a nipple will be constructed, to be tattooed at a later date in the doctor's office.  I'm glad to see the end of the road on this journey.  Seems like it's been forever.  My experience was not bad at all - even though it was lengthy and involved.  I didn't realize at the time that my cancer was as aggressive and had spread through the breast as it did, but the treatments I had left me with the best possible final result - NED, or No Evidence of Disease.

Now for the final Nip/Tuck, and I'll be good to go!

Ming Poo's Ordeal

Our little Tonkinese cat, Ming Poo, has gotten herself in big trouble.  Yesterday she found one of my threaded needles on my magnetic pincushion.  She started trying to eat the thread.  When I saw her she had the thread and needle hanging out of her mouth with about 5 inches of thread attached.  The more I tried to catch her, the more she kept swallowing and the needle got closer and closer to her mouth.  She ran down the stairs, around the furniture, and I grabbed at her a few times, only to have her slip out of my grasp.  On the final grasp, the needle went down her throat.  I opened her mouth to see if I could see it, but it was gone.

I called the vet this morning and he told me to bring her right in.  He did an X-ray, and there it was, in her abdomen, assumedly in her intestine.  No choice, she had to have surgery.  He spent some time with me informing me of the various scenarios that might take place, but having the needle come out on its own wasn't a likely scenario.  I felt awful.  I tried advising him to keep her at his office and take another X-ray later on to see how it was progressing, but he said that wouldn't work, and if it perforated her intestines and a few days later she still had to have surgery, he'd send me to a specialist because it would involve lots of other issues.

He just called me, she's out of surgery and starting to wake up.  He located the needle in the intestine, but it wouldn't have made it to the next corner turn without becoming stuck.  It was turned with the pointed end facing out.  The needle was found without the thread, which may or may not cause another problem.  He will keep her for the afternoon and at 6:45 I have to go back and have her transferred next door to the Emergency 24-hour clinic for them to watch her overnight to see that she gets her pain medication, hydration, and see that she doesn't get tangled up in the tubing.

I feel really bad.  She's my little baby, even though she's 5 years old and 7.2 pounds.  Of all the cats, she's the one who doesn't go outside, for fear she would be eaten up or stolen.  She'll go up to anyone.  Needless to say, the vet bill is enormous.  I won't be asking to go on vacation this summer.