Life is better without nausea!

I had almost forgotten how much nicer life is without nausea! Ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, my memory is not quite that shortlived (yet?) ,but I am certainly glad that this awful nausea is finally abating. Being so constantly nauseated I couldn't even sleep certainly wasn't fun. But it started getting better last night, which meant I slept some more, and between that and skipping the final prednisone tablet I was supposed to take (hush, don't tell the ER doctors! It's our little secret...), my stomach is getting closer to its normal state. Yay!

As I suspected, however, the site where my IV line was inserted didn't fare so well, though. I have a nice little case of thrombophlebitis again. There is a thick thrombus in the vein in the back of my hand now, and a secondary one has started to develop further down that same vein. They are tender, but hopefully the warm compresses will be able to help them dissolve before they do too much harm. I guess my veins just don't like having chemicals pushed into them (even if it is a "pina colada" pushed by my favorite sleep man). That mediport had better work, because I don't think my peripheral veins could tolerate chemo.

It was a beautiful and sunny day today so that we could have lunch and dinner out on the deck, overlooking the back yard and all its flowers. We also went for a walk with the dog again, and this time all four of us had the energy to walk the much longer route the dog prefers to the short once-around-the-block that was all I could manage yesterday. After these surgeries, I always feel the need to get walking and exercising again, so that I can get my strength back. So hopefully I am officially done with the slicing and dicing for the time being. Yes, my reconstruction is not yet finished, I know, but it will have to wait until I have enjoyed all of my cocktail hours, and then some. Plus, there may be some frying (i.e. radiation) in my post-cocktail hour future, which would further postpone reconstruction by six months or so. So barring any further complications, I should be able to slow down my breakneck speed of surgeries somewhat.

I am glad I let my boob man revise the tissue expander, though. This implant feels much  more comfortable already. Plus, I had had issues under my arm (oddly in an area that they didn't even operate on) where I had some swelling and had lost sensation. Now that I am not as nauseated any more, I have noticed that sensation in that particular area of my body has returned, which I am very happy about!!! Plus, the incision doesn't even hurt that much -- actually the chemo port often bothers me more than the more recent revision incision. So overall I am really happy with the results of this week's surgical adventures. All's well that ends well, right?! And life definitely is better without nausea...

Things that I am particularly grateful for today include: hours spent with my mom, who will soon have to return on home; that the nausea is abating; the sweet yet spicy aroma of my favorite Scentimental rose.

On the slow road to recovery

I needn't have worried about forcing myself to take it easy today. A serious case of post-surgery nausea took care of that for me. It started last night, and together with the effects of the antibiotic levaquin, which keeps me awake, got bad enough that I couldn't sleep all night long. So naturally, today was a slow recovery day for me as I battled more nausea. I can really feel this time that it is the second surgery for the week, and the fifth surgery in two and a half months. Turns out these things do not really get much easier the more often I do them... go figure.

Luckily, I managed to sneak some sleep into some not quite so nauseous time this afternoon. I've also been extra careful about what I eat, since I got really hungry  yesterday and probably ate more than I should have. So hopefully the nausea will have less of a hold on me tonight so that I can get some more much-needed rest. 

Today, my mom finished sewing two more chemo headcoverings for me. I also have fabric and sewing patterns for a bunch more, so I will be ready for chemo and its side effects. I just hope that they'll be able to control the nausea better during the chemo than they did after this last surgery... But I keep reminding myself that overall, things could be much worse. 

This evening I even had the energy to take a slow stroll around the block with DH, my mom, and the dog. It was really nice to see all those flowers in bloom. We also took a nice tour of our back yard and admired the many flowers that are springing up there in their early summer glory. One of my favorite roses called "Scentimental" is blooming already, and I enjoyed its spicy scent as I ambled by. I've always really enjoyed our back yard and all its flowers, but this year I am making sure to really stop to smell the roses. 

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!!!

Here I go yet again...

Another night, another surgery for which I need to get ready. It is the second one for this week. When the ambulatory surgery center called to confirm my arrival time for tomorrow, they could barely believe that I will have to go under the knife again so soon. At least there were no extra blood draws to contend with, I just need to arrive at the center two hours before my surgery so they can fill out the paperwork for the procedure.

Hopefully the revision surgery will take care of the pesky tissue expander fold sticking out so that the rest of my reconstruction can progress smoothly. I had two instances when I felt a really nasty stabbing pain, one after each time I got pumped up.  Each time it was the kind of pain that takes you breath away in a bad way, so I am assuming those were the moments when something came loose. When I looked at the problematic area this morning, it really seemed worse than it was two weeks ago when I last saw my boob man. So it is important to get this fixed. I am just getting tired of getting cut up all the time, and having the resulting healing pains and limitations to my range of motion, and all the other stuff that comes in the aftermath of surgery. So I'm trying to work on that whole serenity thing again tonight. 

It has been a slow and tired day for me, as it is the second day after my port insertion. Once again, I feel worse on day two after the surgery than the first day. How odd is that? Maybe because of the drugs the ER doctor prescribed for my rash I couldn't sleep very well and managed to get only four hours of shuteye last night.  I am sure that this did not help me feel any better, either. So in a way I am glad that I did not have to start chemo today, of all days, but that I could spend the day resting and healing some more. 

I got to take off my surgical dressing on the port insertion scar today. It looks like the scar is about two inches long, with the port (which is about the size of a quarter) inserted approximately 2.5 inches below my clavicle. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be any infection nor bruising from that surgery. It is just too bad that Dr. R said they shouldn't use the port to administer anesthesia, as I am afraid that my late surgery time (1:30 p.m.) and the necessarily long fast resulting from it will make my veins hide even more than usual. So I will have to make sure to eat a bunch more stuff before midnight and to keep hydrating very well so that the nurses will have a chance of getting an IV line into me tomorrow.

What's another little surgery, right? Just to keep track of things, I have added a counter of chemo rounds to go, surgeries, and ER visits to the right sidebar of this blog. Given that these events keep piling up in greater numbers than anticipated, I felt the need to keep an official count. Scroll down and take a look at them if you will and let me know what you think.

I'll try to stay up late tonight and then sleep in tomorrow morning in an effort to make my NPO time more tolerable. I hate smelling coffee on surgery mornings and breakfast, all the while knowing that I cannot even have a sip of water (other than the one sole sip I get to down the obligatory pre-surgery pepcid...). As you can probably tell, I am not big on the whole fasting thing. Can somebody invent surgery without fasting, please?!!! I get really cranky when hypoglycemic, and my veins shrink away when that happens...

Anyway, I took a little nap this afternoon to preserve my strength. In the morning and the afternoon I even managed to tidy the house a bit and work my way through part of the paperwork that has been piling up everywhere (most of it is related to the poor state of my health -- yet another reason why I am starting to think that being sick is basically a full-time job). So overall, it has been a slow but nonetheless sort of productive day for me. 

Well, I am almost ready for surgery number five! Let's hope my boob man has managed to overcome his jetlag from his European travels, and that he will be able to fix up my foobie and contain it within its proper boundaries.

The dominoes are falling...

The port is in, but the dominoes keep falling because I will need to have a revision surgery for the tissue expander. Part of the Strattice that is supposed to be covering the expander at the bottom is not holding up as well as it should, which means that a fold of the half-inflated tissue expander is pressing against the surgery scar. 

This means that on Friday at 1:30 p.m.  I'll have to go under again to have the problem fixed (I will be so starved and dehydrated after fasting since midnight that finding a usable vein is going to be a major digging expedition!!!). Surgery number five in two and a half months, here I come! It is supposed to take no more than an hour. My boob man said he may want to use Alloderm on me this time, which is human-derived epidermis. However, when he first told me that he used to use Alloderm, he said he switched to Strattice because he found several of his patients had allergic reactions to the preservative in the Alloderm.

Now, as you may remember, an allergic reaction sent me to the ER just yesterday. So I am not excited about the prospect of yet another allergic reaction... I'd like to stick with the pork, please, since I'm pretty sure I'm not allergic to that.

Apparently, one of the culprits for my allergic reaction yesterday was the antibiotic vancomycin, which can cause allergic reactions, both when infused too fast, but also when administered in conjunction with anesthetics (see this link for more information). I know for a fact that they did not put in my IV line until I was on the operating table. I only had saline on my IV line when I woke up -- and the surgery took less than an hour. So I'm thinking they both infused the drug too fast, and in conjunction with drugs that are known to increase infusion-related adverse events. And voila, here comes the allergic reaction of "lobster woman." Boy, I think I'll accumulate a lot of medical knowledge before this is all over...

In any case, this additional surgery is messing up the rest of my carefully planned medical schedule for the month. Obviously, with surgery on Friday, chemo on Thursday is out of the question. So I had to call to have it moved up one week, which both my boob man and my poison man agree should be long enough to permit me to heal sufficiently before getting my cocktails. Hence the new cocktail hour date is Thursday June 4 , 2009, a day after my mom flies back home. Oddly, they made my appointment for 2 p.m. However, my first round of AC chemo supposedly takes approximately six hours, as they will have to pre-medicate me with all kinds of additional stuff. So I suppose I won't be done until 8 p.m. then, which seems mighty late for closing hours, though perhaps not for cocktail hour... In any case, they assured me they would not leave before I'm done. Let's hope... but I'd better bring some good music, movies, books, FOOD, and -- of course, DH!!! On Friday the 5th, I'll then have to go back to the cancer center to get my Neulasta shot.

Thus all the dominoes fell, but undaunted (well, not quite -- I'll admit I was a little daunted at first...), I put them back up into their new places. What's a little more surgery after all...?

Tonight I had dinner with my friends no-l, 1l, and 2l, as well as DH and my mom. It was a nice little get-together that I particularly enjoyed, since no-l and 1-l will be moving up North at the end of the month for their sabbatical year. There will be an official goodbye party on Friday, which I will unfortunately have to skip due to the slicing and dicing I will undergo earlier that day. So this was my official little goodbye party with them.

I received another gift, though, this time from 2l, who got all creative. She got a little transparent egg carton and made little blue and pink pom-pom embies with little eyes, and some even with glasses (since I have bad eyes, and DH has some issues too), plus all with individual hearts. It's a dozen, of course, with gender parity, and all the cute little ones are sitting in their egg carton waiting to be hatched. How cute is that!!! They will have to sit next to the glass rooster I gave DH for our anniversary... It just makes me smile to look at them, and reminds me of the good things waiting for me once this not-so nice part is over...