Sorry it's taken so long for me to check in, but the past couple of weeks have definitely been challenging. As you saw in Peggy's last update, my surgery went well. It was a very long day with a couple of hiccups, but as far as the surgery itself, that went smoothly, thank goodness. Oddly enough they sent me home the same night, which was a little strange but in a way it was kind of good because at least I could be in my own home and away from risk of secondary infection from being in the hospital. It was rough though... I'm not going to lie about that. I did have some issues breathing that night and feel like it would have been helpful to be in the hospital for that sort of thing, but I guess this is the new protocol for patients who are able to tolerate the pain fairly well. Who knew?!

 

Anyway, it has now been exactly two weeks since my surgery. I hit a rough patch a few days into my recovery and either had a reaction to too many meds, or some food poisoning or something, but whatever the case I was pretty miserable. Fortunately that part is over and I can continue healing, which I feel is going pretty well so far, and my surgeons do too. I still have a couple of drains in which is no fun at all, but it's part of the procedure and what you need to heal well, so I'll continue being a good little patient and follow rules. (Doesn't mean I won't grumble a little bit here and there haha.)

 

I had my first fill yesterday, which was a very interesting experience. Basically they swapped out the air that was in my expanders since surgery and replaced it with saline which I will have in there until the time comes for me to be cleared for reconstruction. While it feels a little bit better in some ways than the air, I'm very very sore, so I feel like I've taken a couple steps backward in terms of pain management. But all things considered, that part is going well. It just hurts that's all. 

 

I did also get my pathology results last week and like my surgeon said, it was kind of a mixed bag. The good news is that there was nothing in the other breast, so no surprise cancer to deal with there. I'm still happy with my decision to have had both removed because I didn't want to take that chance of having it come back in the other breast. The tumor in the affected breast shrunk dramatically with all the chemo that I went through during the spring. It went down from 4.8 cm to .7 cm! So that's a huge improvement! Not a complete response to chemo, but a very positive one.

 

The yucky news is that of the 7 lymph nodes that were removed, three of them still came back positive for cancer. That news was very rough on me, especially because I had been so hopeful that I would be in the clear after surgery so that I could move forward with my next treatment, which is radiation. Unfortunately because of what they found, it means that I have to do chemo again. I'm not quite sure if it's going to be as heavy duty as it was before, and I certainly hope not. But that is for my team of doctors to determine and I should be finding out that information in the next couple of weeks. I do still need to have radiation afterwards as planned, but they do need to make sure that they are aggressive when it comes to attacking any possible micro cancer cells that may linger, especially because the lymphatic system likes to share stuff. And we don't want that!

 

Like I said earlier, that news was very difficult for me to hear and process, because I've already been through so much. But I am determined to beat this and I will do what I have to do. I just needed time to feel the emotions that went along with something like that, and time to be able to refocus on the positive. Because truth be told, even if I have to do chemo again, I have made so much progress already and I don't want to forget that. I am in good hands with my medical team, and I am confident they will choose the best solution for me so that I can be here for many years to come.

 

I'll stop here so that this doesn't get too long. Maybe in the next couple days I'll post another update regarding help that I am going to need after this weekend, as I'm not going to have any helpers 24/7 after this week and will definitely need help from anyone who would like to come by! But I will do that in a separate post.

 

For now, I just wanted to say thank you again for all of your prayers and love and support, and I look forward to seeing those of you who will be stopping by to help or just visit. I would love some visitors! So if you have some time just shoot me an email or a text and let me know and maybe we can work something out!

 

Anyway, I hope you're all having a great week! I'll check in with you soon!

 

Love,

Kimberly