Friday, May 29, 2009

Once more unto the breach, my friends, once more!

Surgery number five has come and gone -- once more unto the breach! I have never had two surgeries in a single week before, but this went smoothly nonetheless. At least in part I attribute this to the fact that once again, I was put out kindly (and warmly under my favorite OR warming pants -- I want a pair of those for home!) by my favorite sleep man Dr. A. I had requested him for Tuesday but got some other dude, but today I hadn't specifically requested him (had no opportunity since I didn't have to have another pre-surgical testing appointment) and was lucky enough to get him anyway. He is so nice, always laughs and chats with me, makes sure I'm warm and comfortable, and he always finds my veins on the first stick! When he started pushing meds, he said he's giving me a pina colada. What more could I want from a sleep man??? 

I'm rambling a bit, I know. Blame it on the meds they gave me. This time, they woke me up while I was still in the OR. So I talked to the surgeon and the sleep man and heard firsthand that everything went well. I even had to sit up on my own when they put on my "sexy" surgical bra, and then they made me scoot over onto the bed! This was more work than I've had to do for previous surgeries. I think the level of service there may have declined somewhat... but since they have a "no tipping" policy, I guess that doesn't really matter.

Anyway, here's what they did during surgery: Dr. K took out my tissue expander and exchanged it for a brand new one. There go another $4500 -- let's hope that the insurance company or someone else pays for it. Actually, my old tissue expander had issues. Apparently there were some folds in there where the softer plastic meets the harder plastic and the surgeon worried that the expander may not inflate properly (might that have been part of the problems that I have been experiencing???). Dr. K also reinforced the weak spot I had with more Strattice pig collagen and skipped the dead human collagen, for which I am very grateful. In other words, I am all fixed up now -- and hopefully done with the whole surgery business for the time being!

Now it's 6:30 p.m. and I've been home for approximately an hour and a half and I feel pretty good. Sorry ladies, not good enough to come join your party, but good enough to have eaten something, and to be surfing the web and posting to my blog. They gave me an antibiotic called gentamicin this time, in hopes that I will tolerate it better than the ventamycin. I keep checking for weird rashes, but so far (knock on wood three times!!!) no itch, no rash, no nothing. I hope it will stay that way. My only adverse effect so far is a blister on my tongue which they thought was from me biting my own tongue when they administered the general anesthesia, which paralyzes the muscles and may make people tense up and bite themselves. But for side effects, this isn't too bad as far as I'm concerned. 

I am determined to take the next two days very easy. For the fifth surgery, I should finally learn that I need to do that so that I don't feel as lousy on the second post-slicing day as I have been. Or as the bard might put it "In recovery there's nothing so becomes a woman as modest stillness and humility." However, when my war against TNBC begins in earnest next Thursday with my first round of chemo, I should take these next lines as inspiration: "but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger"(both quotes are from Shakespeare's Henry V, -- with a few liberties on my part). If all goes well, by Thursday I will be ready to welcome the poison into my body that will pounce on any cancer cells that remain inside me and shred them to bits so that they will never harm me again! Yay, one step closer to being done!!!

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