Everything went off without a hitch, for the most part, on Friday. When I went to have a radioactive seed placed prior to surgery, the radiologist misread my case note and placed the seed in the tumor of my breast instead of the lymph node. She apologized and said she thought I was having a lumpectomy which was obviously not the case. To correct the mistake, I just needed to have another seed placed in the lymph node I previously had biopsied. Thankfully the mistake was caught before I went in for surgery. And, they did use a geiger counter to find the seed once placed, weird. I thought my surgeon was joking when he said that, but I have seen proof now. During surgery, my surgeon removed both the seeds, so no need to worry about me still being radioactive! Although I didn't get to talk with the surgeons after my surgery, my family did and it sounds like everything went as planned, which I am ecstatic about.
My general surgeon only had to remove a minimal amount of lymph nodes (4 or 5). YAY! He took frozen samples of the sentinel lymph node and the lymph node which I had biopsied previously, and both were negative for cancer cells upon preliminary examination. We won't know for sure until the pathology report comes back, but this news is such a relief for me! I finally feel like maybe the chemo did its job and there is finally some hope that I can beat this! My plastic surgeon was able to place the implants right away and said everything looked really good. I am still all bandaged up and everything is completely numb from a long acting local anesthetic, but I hope they look good! We will see if I get up some bravery to look, or I may just wait until my follow up on Wednesday.
I also had my port removed, which is exciting. Another step closer to having all of this behind me. I discharged from the hospital Saturday morning, and I was very happy to be home in my own bed. It is REALLY hard to sleep in hospitals! The overnight staff was really great though, I appreciated that.
Andy and my parents are taking good care of me. I am trying to stay on top of the pain, because it gets pretty sore and really hard to get up when I don't. I have been sleeping, sleeping, and taking some naps on top of it all.
I will post more updates as I can, but for now, I am resting and waiting for my post-op appointments, and pathology report next week.
Left: All marked up ready for surgery. Right: Post-surgery. All wrapped up and drains in.
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