The next day my shoulder felt as though I had been digging the garden several times over for the previous week! Still a concerted amount of shoulder shrugging, pretending to comb my hair, assisted lifts and other sundry physiotherapy exercises soon sorted that out, and within a couple of days I could move my left arm relatively freely.
The next 10 days or so were spent going with the flow. Doing nothing and sleeping! My most favourite activities. J The only real “pain” was the drain which although was not actually painful meant that I could only sleep on my back or right hand side. Generally I sleep on my front or left hand side, so you can see why it was such a nuisance.
The dressing along with the steristrips was taken off after about 8 days and it looked quite good or at least as good as a foot long scar can.
The drain was removed on the 9th day and it was the most heavenly relief. It was akin to having a foot long flexible splinter removed. I hadn’t realised quite how much tubing they can fit inside you without you really noticing. It went up along the side of my ribs towards my armpit and then turned towards and along my chest. So yes it really was about a foot long.
My scar is, according to Hannah my daughter, awesome and cool, I do wonder about that girl sometimes!
Today I went to see the breast nurse for the post op follow up and all she did was remove a rogue dissolvable stitch which decided to “pop” out and not dissolve. Apparently this can happen and dissolvable stitches only dissolve inside the body.
I also went to see the oncologist who is absolutely nowhere near old enough to be a consultant. I really must be getting old.
Anyway, this is the upshot.
My lymph nodes were definitely clear, and the operation was “curative” so currently I have no cancer in my body. But, and it is quite a big but, the type of cancer I had and the way it was scattered about (I had several small tumours and pre-cancerous “bits” in my breast) means that although I do not need to have radiotherapy I really should have chemotherapy.
Apparently, because I am so young (yes I know, they are well aware that I am 47) and the risk of recurrence and the fact that the cancer is herceptin receptive and hormonally driven means that although I could opt for just taking tamoxifen only, having chemotherapy, followed by herceptin and tamoxifen reduces the risk of recurrence to virtually zilch, and I’d quite like to be around for a goodly while if only to make my family’s life a complete misery!!! J
So first I have to have a complete body CT scan. They aren’t bothering with my head, probably because there isn’t anything worth worrying about in there. This involves injecting me with dye and lying very still for about 20 minutes. I also have to have a bone scan. More dye, go away for about 3 hours and then come back and be scanned not sure with what or how long this will take.
Then in a couple of weeks I begin the first of 6 rounds of chemotherapy, one every 3 weeks, pop into Northwick Park for the morning and then go home and return 3 weeks later. This is then followed by a year’s worth of herceptin therapy which is also intravenous and on a similar protocol.
So there you have it. It’s a bit of a bugger but then stuff happens, c’est la vie! J
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