This is my ‘before surgery’ photo waiting to be wheeled into the Operating Room.
After about a month of healing and rehabilitation, next stop is Radiation Therapy.
Not to overstate it, but this was the single most traumatic experience of my life, second only to receiving my original cancer diagnosis. But it’s over now and it was a big success as total mastectomies go. I say that because the pathology report on the breast and lymph nodes that were removed came back negative for any trace of active cancer. That’s the great news part. The success wasn’t just that I survived the surgery, but our Surgical Oncologist decided to perform only a partial lymphadenectomy of the one known and two adjacent lymph nodes under my arm suspected of being cancerous. That spared all of my other lymph nodes so that I could avoid developing Lymphedema. It was a ‘new’ procedure innovation pioneered by MD Anderson, and our surgeon made the call to try it on me. The gamble paid off because the pathology report showed that not only was there no cancer left in my breast, there was none found in the lymph nodes removed. That meant the rest of my underarm lymph nodes should also be ‘cancer free’.
So I’m keeping my fingers crossed as I move forward with my healing process and rehabilitation so that I can start radiation therapy in about a month. I pretty much have to have regained most of my mobility in my right arm by then, so I’m already starting on some of my prescribed exercises. They hurt a little, but that’s how you know they’re working.