Home From The Hospital
You can be jealous of my surgical hat, it is cool.
Surgery is over! You never really know what to expect when having a surgery like this one, as everyone seems to react to it fairly differently. I am not going to lie, it hurt. It hurt less than I expected though, so that was the good part.
Before surgery they draw all over you with a pen to mark the location of where your breasts sit on your body, where your collarbone is etc. Huntsman keeps a leaderboard for all surgeries going on so that family in the waiting room knows what stage you are in in your surgery based on the color of the box and where it is on the board. I am the big pink box on the bottom (I think Mike took this picture because of how long my surgery was compared to the others).
Surgery leaderboard, I won!!!
It also looks like they schedule everything to get out by 5 PM. When I eventually made it to my room post surgery I found my family and a beautiful bouquet of pink roses from my stepdad. They were really beautiful.
Pink roses from Steve.
If you have never been to the Huntsman, they actually have really nice guest rooms and surprisingly comfortable beds. Unfortunately someone is in checking on you about every 60 minutes, so sleep is pretty much a lost cause. Mike stayed until about 4:00 AM the first night, but I finally talked him into going home to get some sleep (seriously, they don’t let you sleep).
The second day some family members were able to come out and say hi. My nieces and nephew had great timing as they got some free ice cream from the kitchen when they brought my smoothie (morphine makes me nauseous, so I wasn’t really up for eating anything solid until they switched me to a different pain medication).
Hanging with my homies.
Flowers from Michelle.
A big, but super pleasant surprise, was that Michelle came to visit me at the hospital! Michelle is the friend that I mentioned in my last post, she has the same doctors and has been a great emotional support through this adventure. She brought a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I was so surprised and excited to see her! It really made my day. She told me I have the first step down, I definitely have a few more to go.
The surgeon removed six lymph nodes. One was bad, one was questionable, and four additional ones in the area. So, I didn’t have to give up too many lymph nodes. We should hopefully have the final staging information next week.
Flowers from Mike.
Flowers from work.
Before surgery we were discussing how strange it seems to take someone who was in relatively good health and make them sick in order to make them better. I know it will all be worth it in the end..
