Showing posts with label Surgery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surgery. Show all posts

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Spot the Difference


As many of you know, I had a little surprise before the holidays.  Turns out I had a spot of breast cancer.  People started leaving pink ribbons on my doorstep and on the windshield of my car, much to my chagrin.

You know what's worse than finding out you have breast cancer, though?  Finding out on the same day you learned you have cancer that your car has only six weeks to live!  I was far more disturbed by that cheery piece of news from my mechanic than I was about the cancer.  After all, Old Blue and I have been together for 19 years and I was hoping we'd make it to our 20th anniversary.  Alas, it was not meant to be.  *sigh*  But I digress.  Back to the whole "my car's dying but I'm not" saga...

The holidays were filled with fun activities like biopsies and MRIs and being injected with radioactive isotopes and having a freakishly long needle stuck into my boob without any anesthetic!  Not only that, they just left it sitting there, poking out a good three inches!  It was like those first aid videos where the guy has the chunk of glass jutting out of his arm and they have to pack it with gauze and bandages to keep it from moving.  Except this time they put an adorable blue face mask over the needle after they packed gauze around it.  Stylin'!

After all that, the surgery was nothing!  They took out the cancer blob and some lymph nodes, then sewed, glued and taped me back together again.  They even gave me a cute little pit pillow made by hospital volunteers to keep my arm from bumping my incision.  I was home two hours after surgery, happily doped up and mellowed out in my recliner.

Trust me... I was feeling no pain!
Now three weeks post surgery you can hardly tell I had breast cancer.  Seriously!  I defy you to spot the difference:

Yeah... I went there.

I still have some fun stuff to contend with, (like 6 weeks of radiation,) but overall it's all good.  I'm kicking cancer's butt to the curb!


Thursday, December 12, 2013

In which I get the "V.I.P." treatment...

If you know me at all, you know that I have a propensity for ending up in the hospital.  It's become almost a yearly thing with me.  2013-hand surgery, 2012-gallbladder removal, 2011-broken leg, 2010-ER visit after sliding down the attic stairs and clunking my head on the wall.  (Yes, I admit, I'm kind of a walking disaster!)  As the year draws to a close, I started thinking to myself, "Wouldn't it be great if I could get through 2014 without any medical disasters?" That would be so cool!

And then I went in for my yearly mammogram.  No big deal... no history of breast cancer in my family. I got smooshed and came home.  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I got a call from the radiologist that they wanted me to come in for another mammogram.  The first one wasn't clear enough.

They smooshed me again and I still wasn't too concerned... until they thoughtfully ushered me into the "V.I.P. Lounge" and asked if I wanted any juice or water or anything while I waited for the films to come back.  As I sat there drinking the complimentary bottle of water, I started thinking to myself, "When they take you to the "V.I.P Lounge" and offer you something to drink, it's probably not a good thing."

It wasn't.  An ultrasound, biopsy and MRI later it was confirmed... I have breast cancer.  

But before you go and get all worried about me, I want you to know I'll be fine. Because of the type of cancer and due to early detection, I'm getting off easy with a partial mastectomy followed by six weeks of radiation.


Yeah, I'll kick cancer's butt... no problem!  Because I'm a she-woman!   I think I'll skip the pink tattoo, though.  Pink is just not my color!
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