May love and laughter light your days, and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!
~ Robert Frost

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. This is my story of how I faced my risk of breast cancer, the decisions I made, the support I received and my week by week recovery from surgery. I chose to have a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with immediate DIEP reconstruction at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (March 2010). For more information on my 'Medical Team' please see tab above. I also have a wonderful circle of friends who have supported me throughout. They have provided us with lots of delicious meals and desserts. Many of those recipes are included above under "Feed the Flap" recipes. "Feed the Flap" is a term I coined when trying to increase my abdominal (fat) flap to ensure that I was a good candidate for the DIEP procedure. This was not something recommended by any medical professional, it was just something that made sense to me. I think it worked!! Feel free to join me on this journey and feel free to post comments.

Select the tabs on the left side marked Week 1, Week 2, Week 3..... to go immediately to the surgical/recovery part of this blog.


Monday, March 22, 2010

Next week this time.....

Next week this time I should just be getting out of surgery.....this morning at 5:30am I fast forwarded to next Monday and thought, "Oh I will be walking to the hospital next week this time." Then when I was driving home from Rockland today at 2:30pm I thought, "Oh, I will still be in surgery." Then when I went to JieJie's Art Show tonight at 6pm I mentioned to a friend, "Oh, I will still be in surgery next week this time." Now it is 8:50pm and I am thinking, "If all goes well I will just be getting out of surgery." It is so hard to believe. But I will be on the other side of the surgery. The healing journey will begin. I can't even describe what it is like to choose this type of surgery just so you don't have to live in the shadow of breast cancer.

Waiting is tiring....waiting to get the results of my first, second and third biopsies. Waiting for consultations with breast surgeons, oncologists, plastic surgeons. Waiting for just the right team. Then after making the most difficult phone call of my entire life - the one to schedule my surgery, a different kind of waiting began. Waiting for March 15th......then waiting for March 29th.

Seeing the fear in the eyes of those around me is tough. How do you look at a little 4 year old who doesn't really understand and not see the fear? How do you tell then how you will feel when this whole deal seems unimaginable? This is when you want to just wake up and realize it is just a bad dream. But no, the clock keeps ticking, but the waiting is now getting very short. Part of me wants time to stand still and the other part wants time to fly by.

So, one week away from surgery and I am getting nervous.....but when I wake up tomorrow I will be able to say, "Next week this time my surgery will be over, the waiting will be over and the healing will begin."

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