Surrendering to Surgery

November 2018

I called the office of the first surgeon I saw in June 2018 to arrange for a surgical consultation for the mastectomy. When I spoke to the surgeon’s nurse, she noticed from my file that I had first consulted this doctor three years earlier and wanted to know what I had done in the meantime as far as treatment. I very reluctantly told her that I had only been using holistic, alternative therapies. I heard her mutter under her breath “This always happens” and she then informed me that she didn’t know if the surgeon would even see me. She instructed me to get a referral from my primary care physician and we would see what happens after that. I immediately called my primary care physician (PCP) whose office staff informed me that my PCP was no longer acting as a PCP or accepting insurance!!!! Nice time to tell me that! I never received any notification from this office informing me of this change!! The office person told me, however, that he would go ahead and make the referral to the surgeon for the mastectomy. After several days went by it was apparent that my former PCP’s office had definitely not made a referral on my behalf. I was left with no choice but to immediately locate a new PCP to get the referral I needed.

Fortunately, I was able to secure an appointment with a new PCP within two days. When my new PCP saw the tumor, he immediately called both surgeons’ offices to secure appointments for me. One of the surgeon’s offices that he called, set up an appointment for me the following week. The other surgeon’s office (the one with the surly nurse) told him that they would call me to arrange an appointment. They never called or answered any of my communications or request for records to be forwarded to the other surgeon.

The surgeon that I did see was absolutely wonderful. I had also consulted with him back in June of 2016; but thankfully he never berated me for not following through with his recommendations at that time. Instead, he merely said “You need a mastectomy; let’s get it scheduled as soon as possible”. I was so relieved and thrilled that I immediately agreed. I had my pre-op testing done the following day with surgery scheduled for five days later. I was eager to get the surgery behind me and elated to know that the pain would finally be gone. I was surprised to learn that I would only be kept overnight, assuming that surgery of this type would require a longer hospital stay.

Upon checking into the hospital, I was taken to a suite where my breast was injected with a radioactive isotope to locate the sentinel node. This was extremely painful because I already had a lot of pain due to the size of the tumor (which was now larger than than the size of my fist!). I reminded myself, however, that soon the pain of this tumor would be a thing of the past and that saw me through this phase of the surgical procedure. Next, I had imaging done to locate the sentinel node, so the surgeon would know exactly know which one to remove and test for cancerous cells. In all, four lymph nodes were removed for testing. The sentinel node contained a very small amount of cancer calls and the other three nodes tested clear of cancer.

I was then transported to a room for pre-op monitoring. The waiting was the hardest part as I was eager to get everything over with. I was finally wheeled into the operating room and was assisted onto the very narrow operating table. My big fear before surgery is that I will not be completely knocked out and that the doctor will start cutting before I am under the anesthesia. Clearly this didn’t happen as sometime later I woke up in the Recovery Unit. I was totally disoriented and couldn’t figure out for awhile where I was or why I was there. Soon enough I remembered why I was there and realized that I was in considerable pain and was quite nauseous. I reported this to the recovery nurse and she promptly gave me a shot of morphine. For the nausea she gave me a peppermint oil inhaler which worked surprising well to calm my nauseousness. The morphine was miraculous in ridding me of the pain! In fact, that one shot of morphine kept me pain-free for 24 hours! I felt absolutely great as I was transported to my hospital room! I was even able to use the bathroom unassisted. Several hours later I was able to walk the halls of my hospital floor to promote circulation in my legs. It’s hard to convey just how happy and relieved I was to have this surgery behind me. My spirits were soaring and I felt a sense of release and excitement for my future. Surprisingly, the thought of being “disfigured” by this surgery didn’t bother me in the least and I had/have no intention of doing reconstructive surgery. If I were in my 30’s or 40’s I might feel differently about that, but at 67 it was not something that was important to me. I was to learn later from the woman that fitted me for my mastectomy bras that only 30% of women who have mastectomies go on to undergo reconstructive surgery. Besides, another surgery was the last thing I wanted at this point.

Upon returning home, I was assigned a visiting nurse who came to my home twice a week for several weeks to check on my drain, as well as my recovery in general. The hardest part of those first weeks of recovery was the drain sticking out of my side. It made it impossible to sleep on that side and I had to keep the bulb at the end of the tubing which caught the fluids pinned to my underwear so that it didn’t hang down and cause me pain. I also had to measure the fluids that were collected in the bulb a couple of times a day. When the drainage reached a pre-determined minimal amount, the drain was finally removed. Oh happy day!

I met with my surgeon a week after the surgery, then two weeks later and then a month later. He was pleased with the way the incision was healing and over time he removed all of the staples holding the incision together. Of course, each time I met with him he strongly encouraged me to start chemotherapy as soon as possible. His regular refrain was “Nobody ever dies from breast cancer that stays in the breast”. I understood his concern, but given the results I had with low-dose chemotherapy (IPT) there was no way I was ever doing regular chemotherapy. He wasn’t happy with my decision, but said he wouldn’t beat me over the head about it. I never did think it was possible or wise to try to poison the body back to health. That line of reasoning never made sense to me. Especially when chemotherapy has a mere 2-3% success rate with solid tumors over 5 years.

I was feeling especially good as the weeks went on. Granted, I was not exactly following an anti-cancer diet at this point (far from it!), but I was trying to regain some of the weight I had lost when I was a raw vegan. Since I was in such a celebratory mood, I was eating just about anything that appealed to me, which in hindsight was extremely unwise. Yet it felt mentally and emotionally uplifting to be somewhat “normal” once again by indulging in those foods that those around me were eating, especially since it was the holiday season. I was even feeling well enough to fly to Western New York with my daughter, son-in-law and grandson to visit my mother, brother and sister for several days over Christmas. This was so wonderful because I had not been able to visit my family up North for almost 2.5 years due to the various protocols that I was following that made it impossible to travel. I was especially happy that I was no longer in pain so I didn’t need to take the 800 mg of Advil twice a day. In fact, I was feeling so good that for the first time in many years, I felt I wanted to be a part of the New Year’s Eve celebration in our Florida community.