Double Mastectomy Is NOT EASY!
Results from my PET scans were all good. Whew! It seems that chemo side effects are like the gift that keeps on giving. For the past couple of weeks now my legs and fingers have been really sore and seem to feel more sore every day. It’s really bad when I try to get up from sitting or lying down for a while. I literally feel like an 80 year old woman. I asked my oncologist what was going on she said chemo had a tendency to cause arthritis. She suggested I take glucosamine to help. I have been searching on the internet saying that the only thing that really helps is exercise. I am trying to get back to my yoga for now which is not easy with the pain and the fact that 5 months out of practice has taken away a lot of my flexibility. Like everything else with this disease, baby steps, and knowing that I hopefully the arthritis will go away and if I get back into yoga and exercise every day it will get easier with time.
My double mastectomy wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. After 4 hours in surgery my body didn’t react well to the anestsia or the morphine pump they tried to give me. I ended up vomiting for 12 hours. Vomiting with chest sutures is very very painful and I refused to push the morphine button because the nurse did twice and it only contributed to my vomiting which did not help my pain. The good thing I was only the hospital for 2 days and the nurses and techs at Plano Medical Center were all really great. I am now almost a week away from when surgery was and I am in quite a bit of pain. Yesterday was not a very good day because I was sick again all day. The doctor prescribed me patches that I put behind my ear that help manage the nausea. Where were these during surgery or chemo? I think I would have rather had the patches than taking the Phenergan or Zofran.
Another side-effect of all this business is that I now have to have reading glasses because everything close-up is so blurry. I have always had perfect eyesight so this is another undesired side effect.
It’s pretty difficult seeing myself in the mirror with nothing in my chest and drainage tubes hanging out everywhere. My plastic surgeon did put in expanders but he hasn’t filled them with anything yet because he wants the sutures to heal first. I was hoping for a little something when I woke up from surgery but no luck there. Luckily, I know that it is all temporary but I still have a hard time looking at my body because it doesn’t look like me. At least I have chemo and my mastectomies behind me and now I just have to heal and then I have radiation for 6 weeks and then after that it’s all about rebuilding my body. It’s been a very crazy ride, and very surreal. I think I have said it before but a lot of times it feels like I am watching it happen instead of it happening to me. I don’t know maybe that’s a psychological coping method for me. Even though I have been in pain and had to deal with a lot with this it seems to be going by really fast.