Woof-Da, It's Been A Minute

Woof-da… It’s Been a Minute

Woof-da, it’s been a minute since my last note to you.

A lot has happened.

I went to Nebraska, and I decided against taking my products and setting up a booth this year. I wanted this trip to be just quiet family time.

Well… family time, nonetheless.

There really is no such thing as quiet when I get together with my Nebraska family, whether we are here or there.

My cousin is involved in all sorts of committees and helps with just about everything surrounding the town event, so she was pretty busy. The kids basically took leave to the pool the entire time we were there, which was actually pretty nice.

And then there was the baby snuggling.

Oh, how I love that.

Sometimes you just need some baby snuggles.

Coming Home Was Bittersweet

Coming home was bittersweet.

The sweet part was getting home to my girl, Tinsel, who had stayed with one of my very best of besties, Deb.

I know Tinsel loves her time with Auntie Deb, but she was a little mad at me when Kevin brought her into the house.

And when I say a little mad, I mean she acted like she was the dog of the Grand Poobah of Town, had requested the Porsche of dog houses, and instead we brought her home a cardboard box.

She would sit at the foot of my bed with her back to me.

Whenever I called her name, she would look up at the ceiling like she was saying,

“I know she isn't actually trying to talk to me right now after leaving me for all those days, and now she won't even get me anything.”

She is so funny.

She punishes me like that when we leave, and honestly, it has gotten slightly worse since Papa passed and we kept her.

She has become a little more clingy with me.

I mean, she always was when he was alive, but now that he's gone, she has bloomed into a full-grown teenager on me.

And that was the sweet.

The bitter was returning from our little mini-cation to the real world.

Because coming home also meant returning to the reality of my pending double mastectomy and everything that came with it.

It meant adjusting the daily medications I take.

It meant no food—clear fluids only.

It meant adjusting my current life to prepare for all of the upcoming changes.

It meant changing from who I am now into who I am going to be.

And honestly?

That is scary.

I kept thinking about what it must be like for people who go into witness protection. Obviously, what I am going through is nothing compared to that, but there is something about knowing that your life is about to change so dramatically that makes you wonder who you are going to be on the other side.

I wasn't disappearing.

But parts of the person I had always known were about to change.

August 27 — Surgery Day

Now comes the cancer news.

August 27.

I had to report to the hospital at 6:30 in the morning for surgery.

If I said I wasn't scared, I would be lying.

I've done a lot of things in my life, but this had me more terrified than anything I can remember.

Deb came with us, which meant so much to me, but they wouldn't let her come back with me.

That bothered me.

I needed that support.

Kevin is amazing. He really does take the “in sickness and in health” part of our vows seriously. But I was going through something that, in that moment, I felt like only another woman could truly understand.

Deb was perfectly fine staying in the lobby, though. That's just who she is.

So I went back.

First came the pre-surgery routine.

They had me wipe my entire body down with their special hospital cloths.

I couldn't help but think, Didn't I just take a shower last night with their special soap?

And then, because apparently that wasn't enough, I had taken another shower with their special soap less than an hour before arriving at the hospital.

But okay.

I wiped myself down again.

Then they hooked me up to all sorts of monitors. There were things attached to my back, an IV was started, and they put a special pad underneath me to help prevent pressure sores because I was going to be on the operating table for a long time.

I was in my gown, in bed, and they checked my blood sugar.

Then they put a scopolamine patch behind my ear to help with anesthesia-related nausea.

And then the doctors started coming in.

The Surgeons

My first surgeon was from Mayo. He is my general surgeon, and he was the one who was going to remove my girls.

He explained that someone would be coming in to give me several injections of a dye-like substance around my breasts.

The purpose was to help identify the path the cancer cells would take if they were traveling through my lymphatic system.

That would help him determine which lymph nodes needed to be removed and tested for cancer.

Then he signed his name on my chest.

There is something very surreal about having your surgeon literally sign the part of your body he's about to operate on.

But I understood why.

It meant everyone knew exactly where he needed to be and what he was there to do.

Next came my plastic surgeon.

She would be doing my reconstruction using my own tissue so that I could have some breast shape after my breasts were removed.

We had discussed implants before.

I had been absolutely clear from the beginning that I did not want them.

I already had a foreign ick inside my body fighting me.

I definitely didn't want to voluntarily add another foreign object to it.

Then she told me my BMI was three points too high to qualify for the implants. 

Of course, suddenly that became exactly what I wanted.

We laughed about it.

Because sometimes you have to laugh at the ridiculousness of life.

She marked up my body with all sorts of lines and measurements, creating her roadmap for what she was planning to do.

Then came the woman with eight tiny needles.

Four in each breast.

She injected them in a circle around each nipple.

The right side stung like a bitch.

The left side?

I barely felt a thing.

And then came the ladies of doom.

They put medication into my IV and told me I would start feeling drowsy.

Kevin kissed me.

I told him I loved him.

And then…

I don't remember them even getting my bed completely out of the pre-op room.

Waking Up

I remember waking up.

I remember trying to call Linda.

She didn't answer.

I wanted to go home.

My Moe Bob needed me.

Although, if I'm being completely honest, I think the reality was that I needed him.

I remember telling my 18-year-old son, who was helping Kevin get me into the house, that I had lost my boobs and needed him to go find them.

I don't know for sure, but knowing my son, I don't think he found much humor in that statement.

And I know for a fact I wasn't trying to be funny.

I knew my girls were gone.

And that was about all I remember.

Recovery Became a Blur

Until around the beginning of September, my days were spent in the recliner at the foot of my bed.

I slept there.

I woke up there.

I went back to sleep there.

Moe Bob slept with me every night.

And on a couple of nights when there were storms, Tinsel—the pit bull who was apparently still holding a grudge against me—slept with me too.

That became my world.

Recliner.

Dogs.

Pain.

Sleep.

Repeat.

But I do have replacement girls now.

They are smaller.

Way smaller than anything I've ever had.

But I have little girls to start with, and my plastic surgeon did a beautiful job.

One day, I decided I was going to get some little inserts and see how it felt to wear a bra with them.

And let me tell you…

I walked around feeling pretty damn confident.

I felt like one of those overdramatic people walking down a runway.

I was feeling myself.

Then I noticed my little inserts were floating upward.

Apparently, my new girls had decided they wanted to go on a field trip.

So now I need to add some Velcro to the pads and the inside of my bras.

Once I get that figured out?

It's going to be perfect.

And Then the Drain Decided to Have Opinions

Then came the problem with the drain on my left side.

It wasn't draining correctly.

There wasn't a lot of material collecting in the bulb attached to the drain, but instead, it was leaking out beside the drain tube through my skin.

So we went to the ER.

They cleaned me up, got everything situated again, and sent us on our way.

I was home for about two hours.

Then I started leaking again.

At that point, Kevin and I decided we were going to make the best of a bad situation and use sterile gauze to make sure the drainage wasn't just running down my side.

I had my first follow-up appointment with my plastic surgeon's PA, and she explained what was happening.

Turns out, we weren't getting the suction right on the drains.

She fixed us up, and on September 3, we went home again.

Something Still Didn't Feel Right

Then the weekend came.

And I just felt… off.

I hurt.

Everything hurt.

I called the nurse line on Saturday and spoke with a very nice general surgery PA.

We talked about how I was feeling.

I was exhausted.

My body hurt.

Theraflu helped me feel a little better. It helped with the joint pain and muscle aches.

He told me I could take Tylenol and that I could come in if I wanted to be checked out, but from what I was describing, it sounded like I might simply be coming off surgery and possibly dealing with a cold.

I didn't have high fevers, and they hadn't quite started.

We talked about the fact that the ER was extremely busy, and when you're already sick, spending hours sitting in a crowded ER around everyone else's germs isn't necessarily the best thing for you unless you really need to be there.

He told me that if things got worse, I absolutely needed to come in.

So, naturally, I did what any reasonable person would do.

I ordered brats and all the goodies for a Labor Day BBQ.

I was looking forward to trying some new flavors.

I was ready for some normal.

Then my cousin called to see how I was doing.

I told her how I was feeling.

I told her how tender my left side was.

And when I say tender, I mean a blanket being laid across my left side could make me see stars.

My cousin is a nurse.

Kevin held up the phone so she could take a look.

She had Kevin mark around the redness.

And then she told me something I really didn't want to hear.

I needed to go to the hospital.

Back to the Hospital

I called the nurse line again and spoke with the same PA.

After hearing what was happening, he agreed.

I needed to come in and have someone take a look at me.

So Kevin loaded me up.

And we headed back to the hospital.

Again.

Only this time, something felt different.

I wasn't going in for surgery.

I wasn't going in for a scheduled appointment.

I was going in because my body was telling me something wasn't right.

And I was about to find out exactly what it was.

Until next time... keep finding joy in the ordinary, hope in the hard days, and strength you didn't know you had. 

Thanks for walking this journey with me.