#50 T-7 Sleeps

My boobs have 7 days to exist. This time next week I'll be in the recovery room at Juravinski Hospital.

Yesterday I had my pre-op appointment. Due to Covid it was all done over the phone. First I spoke to the pre-op nurse who took down my info, allergies and advised me that I needed to be at the hospital at 6:15am Wednesday. My surgery is the first one of the day at 8:00am. I am to arrive alone with minimal possessions. I am supposed to bring some slip on shoes and a robe and that's about it. They can not guarantee the safety of my stuff because there won't be anyone there to watch or hold it, but if I want to communicate with anyone or watch anything or entertain myself I need my phone. I'm bringing it.

They will start the IV first, and prep me for surgery and then I'll be able to text whoever to say catch you on the flipside. Then they start the anesthetic through the IV, and then they put an oxygen mask on me, and then I'm out. When I'm out I'll be put on a ventilator which will breathe for me, I don't love the idea of this and to be honest, just thinking about the surgery makes me so anxious I need to take a gaba.

During the surgery, the surgeon will remove my right and left breasts, and all of the lymph nodes from under my right arm. She will place 3 drains under my skin and through the incisions which will collect blood and fluid that will drain out of my body for weeks. I will have to negotiate life with these 3 drains hanging from the incision that will be the entire way across my chest and up and under my right armpit. I will be given opiates after surgery for pain which apparently is often quite severe, and then I will stay in the recovery area for the night.

No one is allowed to visit or come and see me, to hold my hand or to help me for the rest of the day and the night. I am on my own with the nurses and other patients in the recovery area. They will call Jason to say I'm out of surgery and that hopefully all went well. I don't even get a hospital room, she told me that it's unlikely I'd have a very good sleep and I'll be happy to leave the next morning at 6:30-7:00am which is when Jason needs to be there to get me.

Half of me agrees with this but the other half of me feels like it's too soon to be sent home after such a major surgery. Again, I get anxious thinking about it. She said they would discuss home care with me after the surgery....that should be interesting. I'm sure I'll be hopped up on whatever and not with it. No one there to take notes or advocate for me. I worry that I'll need a drink or my pillow fixed and no one will be there.

She told me that some people experience some nausea and adverse reactions to the anesthesia but they will give me some anti-nauseants to try to combat that. She told me I wouldn't be able to drink anything but clear fluids and they provide apple juice or ginger ale and depending on how I do, I may be able to eat.

I will NOT be drinking sugar laden beverages and will bring my own clear fluid to consume. I will NOT be eating hospital food and will bring my own in my bag. I've already told the nurse I don't eat egg or wheat or dairy. That pretty much takes care of most things hospitals serve, except sugar, which I will also refuse. I think I'll probably bring some organic clear juice and maybe a few fizzy waters, and some lozenges because they told me a sore throat is common due to the tubes being down there.

I'll also be bringing some laxatives because all the meds have a constipating effect. The last thing I need is to go home needing ANY assistance wiping my butt. Without being too graphic let me just say I'm aiming for a "one wiper" poop. We installed a bidet months ago and I plan on using it to avoid having Jason involved in that department in anyway. As it is I'll need his help with pretty much everything so I want to spare him the bathroom routine at the very least.

Anyway, After the nurse hung up I felt instantly SUPER anxious. I thought about waking up without my breasts, with a huge incisions and no lymphatic system on my dominant arm. I worried about the pain and I worried about dying in surgery...which I know is VERY unlikely. Regardless, the mind goes there. I reassure myself though, with the thought that finally this lump I've been living with for 6 months will be out of my body, that the lymph nodes that were cancerous will be gone. The hope is that is as far as the cancer has spread, but we won't know. When I feel my breast I can feel a lump that is bigger than the one I found in November. It's possible that it's just dead cells and an immune response to the chemo having killed the cancer. There are stories of people who think they have giant tumors and they turn out to be just dead cells. They send the removed mass and clump of nodes away to be tested, someone has a job that literally consists of picking through extracted clumps of lymph and testing nodes. They will determine if the chemo killed the cancer, if it killed all of it they called it a "Pathologic complete response (pCR)". If it didn't kill it all, but it killed some they call it a "partial pathological response" and if it didn't really do much they say it was a "limited pathological response". These results take 3 weeks after surgery to come back. The results of them influence my survival rates and likelihood of the cancer either having spread or coming back. This is around about when I am scheduled to start radiation depending on how I'm healing. These are next steps. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Next phone call was from the anesthesiologist. She went over much of the same, asked me about all the supplements I took and advised me to stop taking all of them. She told me I could continue the lorazepam if I have anxiety and also told me that I could take some sleep aids but no herbal medicine, no vitamins or supplements as quite a few thin the blood. She told me that it might not be her that is the anesthesiologist that oversees my surgery but regardless she has the information recorded. It felt very impersonal, but I guess that's the way it has to be due to the current pandemic and saved me a trip to the hospital.

She then told me that next Tuesday at 9am I have to go downtown for a Covid test and then I have to go home and strictly isolate and await the results.

For the next week I am fasting until around 1 or 2pm and only eating a small snack lunch and one healthy dinner and not much else. I want to keep the work my body is doing digesting minimal and my bowels moving well before the big day. On Sunday I will do a full fasting day and then Monday and Tuesday I will drink broth and eat just a plant based diet, keeping things very light with fresh pressed juices 3x a day and minimal solid food.

At nighttime I get pretty anxious and the last few nights I've had a hard time going to sleep. It's not that I want to keep my breasts, they serve no purpose anymore but to disseminate disease. I just don't know if I'm ready for my new body, to be sliced and scarred and in pain and unable to do things for myself.

I have high hopes that I'll be moving around and improving every day. I have already booked a "tissue and wound healing IV" at the Naturopathic Cancer Clinic for next Friday. The IV delivers powerful nutrients directly to cells to speed healing and recovery. I'll go for these every few days until I am healed.

When I think ahead to the surgery, when I get past the actual event of it, and look to the next day and the day after...I try to imagine the cancer totally gone. I imagine them telling me they got it all and there's no trace of it left. I imagine my hair coming back and my strength slowly returning to my body. I imagine riding my bike again and feeling the sun on my face in the summer.

I don't want to spend time entertaining thoughts of my death, and I haven't written those letters to my kids yet. I have a surgery that will go well, I have hope to be cured and I don't want to put any energy into imagining my death. I know that day will come for me, as for all of us and the best thing I can do for the next week is to enjoy my kids, my partner and my life. I imagine myself healing and free of this lump which has caused me so much anguish over the past 6 months. I am working on looking forward to a new future. I am grateful to be having the surgery. And I'm happy I'm the first one in while the surgeon is fresh. LOL.

My Shaman is sending his helping spirits to be there with me during my surgery, so I guess I'm not really going to be alone. I have my own guiding and healing spirits that will be there too...so I guess I shouldn't say I'm not allowed ANY visitors during surgery. Just none we can see. And I'm not likely going to mention that I have my spirits in the room for fear they'll think I've gone mad. Some people don't believe there is more to us than our physical being. I'm not one of them. I know there is so much more to me than just what is here in the material world.

Point being, we are never alone. Maybe we may feel alone or scared, but we are never really alone. There is an invisible positive force that binds us to each other and all things. Especially in these strange and difficult times, when many people feel scared and anxious, it's always good to remember, as I try to do each night that the world is a friendly place and our lives are filled with beauty each day. It's up to us to try to see it, whether it's a tree covered in tiny leaf buds, or a tulip pushing through the dirt, a smile from one of your kids, or a warm bath. Maybe it's a well cooked meal or a funny TV show. There's so much good.

I feel this way about my upcoming surgery, sure it's scary and I'll be by myself physically, but within me lives a world of good and around me will reflect that as long as I keep it in my heart and mind. Regardless of where I go or what they take from me.