2 weeks post surgery and still in a funk (and a drain!)

In about 2 months time, I went from getting a suspect mammogram to a mastectomy and the beginnings of reconstruction. A part of my body was cut off. One of the drains is still in, 2 weeks after the surgery. I have taken so much antibiotic that I smell like sulfur.

I have worn the same clothes for 2 weeks. A woman from the breast cancer support group thought to give me a “mastectomy camisole”. This is the only piece of clothing that I feel secure in. There is a pocket for the drain. It is soft and gently hugs my skin. I wash it about every other day, and then put it right back on. It is like a comfort blanket.

I take a shower every day, but I don’t enjoy it. My drain hangs, precipitously, at my side. If it dangles, the irritation and soreness gets worse. Once the tubing got hung on the doorknob – real pain. And I have to sort of look at the still mangled looking area where my right breast used to be.

I hope the drain will be removed tomorrow. They tell me I have to have 2 days of under 30 cc’s of drainage. Yesterday there was 28 cc’s. But it looks like I’m draining more today – this morning there was 18 already. I’m trying to stay still, do nothing, anything to stop the drainage and get the damn thing out.

I am uncomfortable with the “aggressiveness” with which my cancer has been treated. My cancer sites were small and early stage. But because there were 2 separate sites, mastectomy seemed to be the only option they would give me. My pathology report, as far as I understand now, looks good. The margins were clean. The invasive cancer was only 9 mm at its widest – 1 mm short of warranting the chemotherapy where you lose your hair. I have yet to meet with the oncologist. I’m in no hurry. I expect that she will want to put me on the estrogen-blocking drug, and I’m not keen on the idea. My cancer cells were only 10% responsive to estrogen, which they say is low. I've heard that the estrogen-blocking drug causes weight gain, sleeplessness, and aching bones. Just what I need.

Basically, I want my life back, and I want to have more say in what happens to me. I want the drain out!

At this point, I’m not even sure I want reconstruction – a silicon breast and more surgery. Yet the expander was put in. I didn’t have enough time to consider all of this.

I wish that more women defiantly wore their breast cancer instead of opting for fake “boobs”. I wish that I felt more comfortable walking around with just 1 breast, and not feeling like I have to “cover it up”. I actually like the feel of the no-breast side of me now. There is no need for a bra, it feels a little free-ing.

beginning thoughts on cancer

It is not easy for me to grasp “cancer” – the concept or the disease. I don’t feel sick, and yet I have cancer. It is only when I read the pathology reports that I begin to get some sense that there is something going on in my body that is alarming.

The cells don’t look right, with nuclei that are high grade, and micropapillary architecture showing frequent central necrosis. At the building block level, something is out of whack. Cancer is like an invader, and yet these are my cells that have begun acting differently and turned into something else.

When I first heard that cancer cells had been detected in my body, I thought that I was sort of like a tree with something else growing up the side of it, and eventually it would kill the tree if it were not cut off. Now I feel a little differently. The cancer feels more like it came from within me. Not that my environment – and all the hormone and pesticide laced food – does not play a part. It’s just that I don’t feel myself separate from my environment.

My environment and I are both the same life (if that makes any sense). I cannot hold myself apart from the world I live in, or protect myself from it. We are one.