Which Super Power Will I Get?

I had my early morning meeting with the plastic surgeon that went pretty much how I expected, but not now I had secretly hoped for. I knew that radiation could throw a wrench in the easier breast reconstruction. In order to be able to keep my body from rejecting the implant and running into further complications with the stitches I have to have a more intensive surgery. Radiation does too much damage to the tissue – so they have to add something else to add blood flow to get it all to work correctly.

I will be having a Latissmus flap reconstruction similar to my Aunt Lalove’s reconstruction. The will take a muscle from my back and burrow it around into my breast (leaving the back of the muscle attached), and place it in front of where they put an implant. They will also borrow some skin from my back (and leave a straight line scar on my back along my bra strap line). The use the skin for the incision area as the radiated skin won’t stretch or heal properly. All of this is used to keep the blood flow to the front of the breast (which is important to keep your nipple healthy and happy). Essentially, the easier happier recovery from reconstruction is toast, and my likelihood of symmetry is also less. This is pretty much my only option is I don’t have much tissue lying around to make new boobies, and I need tissue to get it to work properly. I was pretty bummed to hear the news, but I knew from my aunt’s experience that this would be the case once radiation was added to the mix.

This was on the door to the room that they injected me with radioactive tracers.

It is commonly known that radioactive materials are well associated with the development of super powers and heroes. They can now make comic books about me, injected with radioactive dye and BAM super powers. Not sure if I get flight or the xray eyes, but I will be sure to let you know when they develop!

I was able to get in to my PET/CT scan a little earlier in the day than I was originally scheduled because an appointment was canceled. This process involves being taken to a room where they inject you with radioactive sugar. A good explanation of how the PET/CT scan works lists that how it shows tumors is that:

Metabolically active organs or tumors consume sugar at high rates, and as the tagged sugar starts to decay, it emits positrons. These positrons then collide with electrons, giving off gamma rays, and a computer converts the gamma rays into images. These images indicate metabolic “hot spots,” often indicating rapidly growing tumors (because cancerous cells generally consume more sugar/energy than other organs or tumors).

This makes spots that the doctors can see to locate metastatic tumors. I kind of want to see the pictures when they have them available. They look kind of cool. After the injection I had to sit quietly in a room for 70 minutes and drink two huge “fruit smoothie” barium sulfate beverages. The placed me in the CT scan and I had to lay completely still for over 25 minutes. All of the not eating and fancy smoothies has left me sitting home feeling a little funky.

I believe they will call or set up an appointment to discuss the results. In the meantime, I am seriously waiting for my super powers so I can know what color of cape I need to buy (maybe Laura will sew it for me).

Speaking of Laura, my happy for the week is that Laura finished the quilt she made out of my wedding dress! She came in Monday with a beautifully wrapped package, I was super excited to see how beautiful it came out. She is one super talented seamstress!

The wrapped package.

The quilt made out of my wedding dress!

What the wedding dress used to look like.

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Author: Mandi

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