Hello to all of you who have been kind enough to keep an eye on my blog. I apologize for not having written in quite a long time. Here it is the middle of April and I’m just now getting with it. I believe I have been going through some mental struggles and have not been able to pull my thoughts together. I have been processing in my head all of the things I wanted to share, but haven’t been able to focus to get them written down. The first thing I have to say is I am extremely happy to be alive and to be writing this! I must take a minute to thank my wonderful husband, who has been my nurse, hairdresser, cook, housecleaner, therapist, and pretty much everything else that one could think of over this very challenging time in my life. I know I have not gone through anything different than so many others have gone through. I have been blessed with the outcome of my surgery(s) and all; not to mention how wonderful my friends, family and co-workers have been. My heart has been warmed and my soul touched by all of the care and kindness from so many. My humble heart-felt thank you to all of you!
Now, having said that, I will begin catching up and filling in some blanks from the last 5+ months – from MY perspective. I know Rod updated my progress on the ‘Hubby’s Notes’ tab of my blog, and I am thankful for that! But, there were so many things going on with me that I would like to share and even ‘talk out’ here so maybe others can know they are not alone in what they are or may go through at some point in their lives.
I will not make it very far today, mainly I wanted to let everyone know I am back and will try to write updates to my blog at least once a week. I have been back to work and some days I am so exhausted, all I want to do is eat dinner and go to sleep. I have had a problem with one of my breasts not healing since the first surgery in November. As my Doctor explained it, the use of the stomach muscle and the fatty tissue from my belly to reconstruct my breasts was successful, however, the blood flow to the area is sometimes not as good as they would like. I, for some reason, have had a problem with one breast getting infections. I went to seem my Doctor several times in February for the same thing over and over. I know he was getting a little frustrated because he was not able to solve the problem. He is such a perfectionist that he was bewildered that I was having problems. The end of February when I saw him, I was also very tired and feeling like I was coming down with something. He immediately became concerned that I was fighting an infection and that it may be spreading throughout my body. He immediately scheduled surgery for me two days later. This surgery was to remove some tissue that had died back and become infected. It was a horrible infection and was making me weak. After that surgery I felt much better. I had a drain in my breast to help it drain out fluid for over the next week. Things seemed to be coming along – my Doctor removed the drain and stitched the wound closed. Things looked pretty good and seemed to finally be healing – until two days before I was to have my stitches removed. It was a Saturday night and we paid a visit to the Emergency Room because my stitches were inflamed and leaking a nasty, smelly fluid. My Doctor was out of town that weekend so I had to see someone else. I’m sure he is a wonderful surgeon as well, but I felt like we had to convince him he needed to meet us at the Hospital. It was frustrating for me, for both of us, because we had been going through so many months of my not healing, infections and fatigue so for him to hesitate in having us go on over to the hospital was a little frustrating. As it happened, he wound removing my stitches and cleaning out the wound – removing some more dead and infected tissue. It seemed like for the entire month of March I was on one or two antibiotics. I began eating yogurt religiously. (Chobani Greek Yogurt is fantastic, by the way!) I was beginning to feel like I was never going to heal! I had thoughts in my head of not having any more surgery and letting my breasts stay as they are. On one hand, they are not pretty – I have no nipples since they were removed when I had the mastectomy, and they are not even at all. But, the thought of getting healed and then having a surgery and going through the healing process again is not appealing at this time. I am sure I will change my mind once I am healed, but right now the thought of not going forward with the cosmetic part of the repair is heavy on my mind.
Having said all of that, I am feeling tired and am going to close for now. I will be picking topics that have been on my mind and writing about them over the next few weeks. I think this topic, the lack of healing, has been the first thing I’ve written about because it has been an ongoing issue, and so is a big deal in my life right now. As a side note, one other thing I have been fighting for quite a while is anemia. This has been going on since before the cancer was found, but kind of took a back seat. In February my oncologist did some blood tests and found I was extremely iron deficient. She scheduled an iron infusion for me the beginning of the month. It was an interesting day, I was at the cancer center and there were many people having chemo therapy and other kinds of treatment. All of the people were so friendly. Some were sleeping, most had someone with them to wait while they were hooked up to their IV’s. It was a sobering day, for sure. I was so afraid of having to have chemo after my cancer was removed. When my Oncologist told me I did not have to have chemo, but, instead would be taking a daily dose of Tamoxafin for the next 5 years, I was thrilled. So far, I seem to be tolerating it very well. I go back to see her in May so will go over tests for how that drug is doing as well as checking out the blood tests to see how my iron is going. I do feel better since the infusion, but with all of the infections my body has been struggling to heal so it has been difficult to tell just how much of a difference it has made. I must say, I have always been athletic and pretty healthy. This ordeal has really been an eye-opener to me as it has really knocked me off my feet, and I am not use to that! The hardest thing for me is to slow down and allow myself to be sick and to rest when I need to rest and to heal. My husband gets very frustrated with me when I push myself to exhaustion and then don’t understand why I’m run down. I am learning, but apparently I am a slow learner. I know he would like to smack me on the back of the head as my favorite Agent Gibbs on NCIS does to his team. Ah, those Marines all do the head slap!
I am heading off for now; enjoy Spring-time, the new beginnings and each and every day as the gift that it is in Life! Every day is beautiful, and should be experienced completely and with wonder.