Just Call Me Robo-Mom*
I’m writing this on Saturday morning while still feeling a little groggy from the general anesthesia. No promises that this will be exceptionally clear or understandable, but I want to try to keep up with everything that is going on.
I arrived at the hospital early Friday morning and was quickly wheeled into the operating room with just a little bit of pre-surgery excitement. The first exciting moment came when I noticed an air bubble traveling quickly through my IV tube toward my hand. I was slightly alarmed because in the back of my mind I remembered hearing some story about the dangers of something like this, so I buzzed for the nurse. She came right in and reassured me that the tiny bubble I saw was perfectly normal and was nothing to be concerned about.
The next exciting moment came when the anesthesiologist told me that I would be receiving sedation instead of general anesthesia for this surgery. I was immediately freaked out, envisioning that I would be awake while they were working inches from my face. The anesthesiologist left and then returned a few minutes later to tell me that my surgeon had actually ordered general anesthesia for me since he had to make a bigger incision than he normally would for my surgery. (This was because it had been so long since my lumpectomy—usually this kind of surgery takes place before the lumpectomy incision has fully healed.) I was very relieved.
The procedure was a bit different from my previous two surgeries because I didn’t receive any kind of sedation before I went into the operating room so I was wide awake when they wheeled me into the room. I took the opportunity to look around and to chat with my surgeon and the nurses, although it wasn’t long before I felt the anesthesia working its way through my veins and I was out.
Once I woke up I recovered for a short time, they took a chest x-ray to make sure the port was placed correctly, and then I left the hospital. I went straight to the radiation oncologist’s office for a teaching appointment. The nurses there showed me how to care for the MammoSite catheter and gave me play-by-play instructions about what would happen during next week’s radiation.
I will describe the MammoSite catheter and the port below the fold. If you’re interested, click below and keep reading. If you prefer to skip the graphic medical details (Dave! :) ), then you may want to stop reading here.
I have four new incisions on my chest now. One is on the right hand side just below my collar bone and one is on the inside of my right breast. The one below my collar bone is the mediport, which feels like a small disk (about the size of a penny), and the one on my breast is the spot where they will access the port to administer my chemotherapy drugs or to take blood.
The other two incisions are on the left side. One is not really new because it’s just a re-incision of my original lumpectomy site. The surgeon implanted the MammoSite radiation balloon in that incision. The second one on the left freaks me out, however. There is a hole at the bottom of my breast which measures about ¼ inch in diameter. Protruding from the hole is a plastic tube which is about 2-3 inches long. Attached to the end of the tube is a smaller, flexible tube. Both the end of the straight tube and the end of the flexible tube are capped off. During my radiation treatments, the nurses will remove the cap from the flexible tube and they will insert a long wire with a radioactive seed on the end. They will then irradiate my breast, which will last anywhere from 4-5 minutes. (You can see a picture of it here. Instead of coming out of the side of my breast, however, the tube is coming out of the bottom of my breast. Otherwise it looks just like this.)
During my first visit on Tuesday morning they will do a CT scan so that they know exactly how the balloon is placed in my breast and exactly where they need to place the radiation seeds. They will repeat this scan every day before I receive the radiation. They will also make a mold of my upper body and arm on the first day. I will lay in this mold for the CT scans to ensure that I am positioned exactly the same way for each scan.
The radiation treatments will take place twice a day at six hour intervals for five days. My first treatment will be on Tuesday and my last will be the following Monday. As I mentioned before, the radiation itself will only last for 4-5 minutes but each appointment will last about an hour. I understand that the main side-effect of the radiation will be fatigue. A nurse told me yesterday that by then end of the week most women are exhausted. However, this exhaustion can be caused by the frequent traveling back and forth as much as by the radiation treatments themselves.
I will be missing both of my classes next week as well as my class next Monday, which I am definitely concerned about. When I got home from the hospital yesterday, however, I had an e-mail from my school telling me that they will be taping all the classes I will miss. That is a big relief…especially since there will only be two class periods left before the final after next Monday’s class. I’m behind in my reading right now, so it looks like my week will be spent in the company of radiologists and my Evidence casebook.
*Kudos to Dave! for the nickname.
Comments
"I noticed an air bubble traveling quickly through my IV tube toward my hand."
Hehehe. That made me laugh, because I once noticed the same thing in an IV, and freaked out, too! :)
Posted by: Dave! | July 7, 2007 07:32 PM
Bubbles ... tiny bubbles ... I just shut my eyes and imagine Lawrence Welk. But maybe that's just me. :-)
I'm not brave enough to read about the port yet, but I know I will over and over in the coming weeks as I decide whether to get one. Good for you.
Posted by: WhyMommy | July 8, 2007 01:27 PM