I’m a little over two weeks out from surgery. It’s been…a million things, and all those things are still flying around inside my head and hard to sort. I think I’ll write a future post filled with the details for those who might be interested, BRCA mutants like me. For now, though, here’s how the last two weeks have generally gone for me:
First, it was harder than I thought it would be. At one point, as I walked hunched over from my bathroom to my bed four days after surgery, I said to my sister, “I can’t fucking believe I chose to do this.”
It wasn’t the nicest thing to say to my sister, because she is following me with the same surgery next month.
Seven years ago, I had an emergency c-section—the slicing open of my abdomen after it had been constricting on and off during 13 hours of labor. That was pretty painful. My abdomen was extremely sore and bruised and it was hard to pull myself up to sitting for about three weeks.
In my head, I’d compared this surgery to that and I was oh-so-wrong. A double mastectomy is like having Alex Rodriguez take a swing at your chest with a metal bat. Seven times.
I knew the surgeon would open the breast, scoop out the cancer-susceptible flesh, and insert an expander—a sort of placeholder, since I’d chosen not to do full reconstruction at the time of the surgery.
What for some reason I did not know is that the expander is placed under the muscle. I’m fairly small-boned and small-chested, which meant the surgeon had a difficult time pulling the muscle out enough to insert the expander. My surgery ended up taking about two hours longer than usual. I can only imagine, fortunately, the slicing and pulling that was required. No wonder Alex Rodriguez came to mind afterward. (There has been almost no pain from the hysterectomy.)
After the Surgery
I’m hesitant to rip apart nurses because nurses are in my family and, mostly, nurses rock. However, 75% of the nurses working on the 3rd floor of Unnamed Hospital in Highland Park, Illinois from November 4-7 did not rock.
By, “they did not rock”, I mean:
- I was allowed to remain in severe pain the entire first night of my stay. They had me on no medication save the morphine button in my hand, which I was allowed to push every ten minutes. But since it was, you know, 2am and the previous day I’d had major surgery, it was hard to stay awake to push the damn button. Whenever I did wake, in severe pain, I was told, “You’ve got to push the button to stay on top of the pain.” When my husband and I got angry enough, the nurse finally called the surgeon to get me more medicine.
- Unfortunately, the same story continued the next day with a different nurse. The new medicine was prescribed to be given every six hours. But by hour four, I was in a good amount of pain. I was told, “Sorry, you need to wait two more hours.” After two rounds of this, again when we got angry enough, she called the surgeon.
- One nurse put on gloves, typed on a computer, then came and inspected my incisions with the same gloves.
- I told that same nurse that despite the catheter, I had the very uncomfortable feeling that I needed to pee extremely bad. She sort of shrugged and said sometimes that happens. So I endured the sharp pain in my bladder for an hour until the nurse came back, this time with another nurse. I told that nurse of the problem, she looked at the catheter, discovered it had a kink in it that was stopping all the fluid being pumped into me through an IV from exiting my body, and fixed the problem.
But possibly the most troublesome thing about the last two weeks is that I awoke from surgery with worse vision in my left eye, accompanied by severe headaches and slight nausea about every other day. We’re not sure if this is caused by the lack of hormones, the medications (I’ve tried a few), or the surgery itself. TBD.
All of this sounds like a lot of bitching. Some days, I am pissed. But most days, I’m happy to have the surgery over with. I’m thankful I had the choice to take a big step to prevent me from getting cancer. I feel grateful for the notes and flowers and pumpkin breads and soups and cookies that have been sent to my house.
And I feel deep love from my family. My whole family has been helpful—mom, dad, stepdad, sister, brother, in-laws, aunts, uncles. But there are always standouts, right? The two standouts in my story are my mother and my husband.
My mom has been at my house almost every day. I was out of my mind for awhile on all the narcotics, but now that I’m more with it, one of the pleasurable side effects of major surgery is that I can sort of feel like a child again. She doesn’t let me get up from my comfy chair. She takes the kids to school. She makes me breakfast. Of course, I have to chat an awful lot with her, but that’s been nice, too. (Love you, Mom.)
Every day for two weeks, my husband cleaned my drains, administered my several medications, helped me shower, brought me everything I needed, reached for all the things I couldn’t, woke with me in the night when necessary, and took care of all of our children’s needs at night and in the mornings and during some parts of the day, too, as he also worked from the dining room table. He did all of this without complaining to me one time. Not once. He never huffed or snorted or rolled his eyes or breathed deeply. He didn’t pause in rising to help me up, in retrieving Chapstick, or bringing water. It turns out there’s a lot you can’t do after a double mastectomy, and he did all of it for me.
I’m trying to think of a joke to make because that’s what we do–if it gets too serious and emotional, my family jokes. But I can’t think of one. So just a big thank you and I love you to Alex, who turned out to be the best nurse.
True STORIES. 