Can’t think of a witty title….

On Tuesday this past week I had the first saline injection into the tissue expanders.  The entire process is kind of cool.  The expander has a special port where the fluid is injected into, but since everything is under your skin they use a magnet to locate the position of the port.  After marking out the location of the port they inject the saline with a needle that looks like it could take down a horse!  Well, I guess the needle isn’t that big, but the barrel attached to the needle is probably the biggest I have seen being used by someone other than a large animal vet.  Anyways, the entire process went pretty quick and I couldn’t really feel anything besides the needle going in.  I will do this once a week for the next 4 weeks, and then wait about 3 months with the expanders filled before the next surgery.  The idea is that increasing the fluid gradually will allow the tissues to stretch properly and reduce the risk of tissue damage or tissue death that could be caused by bypassing this process.  In general the expanders still have the general uncomfortableness about them, and sometimes I can feel the fluid move if I bend down too fast or when I first start running.  It’s weird, but it’s not that bad.

Enough with the boring stuff…..

Last weekend I drove up to Virginia to hang out with my brother.  We watched boy movies, road bikes, and ate Chipotle!!!  By the way the Expendables 2 movie has the best Chuck Norris line ever!  It was great, except for my brother kicking my butt on the bike.  The bike trails in Virginia just outside of D.C. are pretty cool, and better than I expected.  But I guess in an area with that many people and traffic there has to be a trail system to keep the bikes and cars separate.  Made me wish Myrtle Beach had a similar system, but I guess most people come here for the beach and not to ride bikes.

Last but not least, I received my welcome kit from Oiselle this week!  It was like Christmas showed up in the mail!

Tried out some of it on the run this morning.  It was super comfy.  Can’t wait till the next 5K on Sept 8th to bust out the race kit!

The new normal and fun news!

This week is one of the first weeks that I have not had any doctors appointments.  Kind of weird.  I have been getting back into workouts or some sort of consistent workouts.  I’m not cleared to swim yet since public pools and the ocean carry too many germs so I am limited to the bike and the treadmill.  I have mostly stayed on the trainer with the bike since some of the meds I had to be on made me a little dizzy.  I am learning to tolerate the treadmill.  Again I find myself limited by the medications which have caused my resting heart rate that pre-surgery was a comfortable 50 bpm to now have jumped to 80 or more.  It is frustrating trying to run on the treadmill with a constant eye on the heart rate monitor to make sure my heart rate is not red lining when I am running just under 12 minute per mile pace.  I’ve run 3 times now on the treadmill and it is getting easier to tolerate the uncomfortably slow pace because I know the meds will be gone soon and things will come back to normal.  But honestly if this is some of the worst parts of this new life I will accept it graciously and keep moving forward.

While watching some of the past weeks Olympic events I started following some of my favorite athletes via twitter.  One tweet particularly stood out by David Boudia USA gold medalist diver and fellow Purdue Boilermaker.  He tweeted a photo of this quote that has basically summed up life since 5-29.  We know suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character & character produces HOPE. Romans 5:3-4  I’m not normally a strong believer in all the bits of the bible, but sometimes they get some things right.

On a more fun note.  I have been accepted to be one of the newest Oiselle runners.  Oiselle is a women’s running apparel company with super cute and comfy clothes.  I can’t wait to get back into race shape and help represent this awesome brand.  More to come on this new avenue as things unfold.

Adios drain tubes!

It was a big day.  The last of the 4 chest drain tubes was removed this afternoon.  I was bummed last week when they only took 3 out and I still had to deal with the one, but only having 1 drain was way better than 4.  I wish I would have taken a better picture of them so you all can get the full effect of what these things are all about, but borrowing an image from the internet this is essentially it.  The tube is sutured into the side of your chest and then placed so it catches fluid from deep inside and also more superficial.  The whole system works essentially on suction.  You open the valve at the top to empty it and then roll it up to push all the air out of the bulb before placing the plug back in.  Then it just magically fills up again.  🙂

Maneuvering around with them is a bit of commitment.  Most of the time they fit into my hoodie pouch and that worked fairly well.  But since it was super hot while the drains were in I couldn’t wear a sweatshirt outside and had to rely on a pouch aka “fanny pack”.  It felt like I looked super stupid but it really was the easiest way to carry 4 of these drains around comfortably.  Showering was also an interesting event.  Luckily though an old triathlon race number belt worked brilliantly, and I was able to easily attach them to it.  I also started to get back on the bike this week inside though on the trainer and I found that the drain fit perfectly into my back pocket.  Again the self photo I took of this was pretty bad, but the whole idea was kind of funny.

Now it is more waiting.  In about two weeks we start filling the tissue expanders and that will take 4-5 weeks to complete that process.  I guess in a way we are done with the demolition phase and now onto the rebuild.  In the mean time though the goal is to get my shoulder range of motion back, and get back into a better run and bike shape.

Pathology

Yesterday Aug 2nd we got the full pathology report back from the surgery.  The left side was completely normal while the right side was pretty much what was determined from the scans and biopsies.   They found that the tumor was a ductal carcinoma in situ type 2 and that it was 2.5 cm in size or roughly about the size of a quarter.  Within the tumor and a round it there were no signs of the tumor spreading, and all of the lymph nodes that were biopsied also had no evidence of the cancer.  So what does all of that mean?  Well, it basically means that all of the cancer is gone, and that I will not need any further treatment.  And since I had the bilateral mastectomy and the BRCA genetic tests were negative the chances of recurrence is less than 3%.
As far as post surgical stuff.  Everything has been going well.  The pain was not too bad, but the muscle spasms have been pretty uncomfortable.  My pectoralis muscles are pretty pissed off that the tissue expanders have been jammed into them, and so the muscle spasms have been less than fun.  But the really annoying drains are coming out.  3 of the 4 drains have been removed with the final one getting removed hopefully on Monday.

The numbers:

Ultrasounds: 5

MRI: 2

Biopsy: 2

Doctor office visit: 12

Hospital gowns worn: 15

Surgeries: 1