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 29, 2010

Surgery Completed

Well, it's 10:24 pm and I'm just back from the hospital. Dr. Tobias called at about 9:40 and said everything went well. Joan was a little agitated coming out on antithesia, but, they say that's not unusual after a long surgery. I went over and was allowed a few minutes with Joan about 10:10. She was not awake, but, looked okay. I will check in on her first thing in the morning.
This has been one of the longest days of my life. I know the Doctors and medical personnel here are first class, but, that's my DW their working on. And there's nothing I can do except wait. I'll try to rest tonight. Tomorrow we start the slow process of recovery.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Tell Joan that we had you both in our prayers today....thankful everything went well. If we can do anything, please let us know! Love you guys! Also, be sure to let Dot know that if she needs anything we can be there in less than 2 hours!! :-).

Rissa Watkins said...

Bless your heart, you must be beat! Thank you for the updates. Please let her know her readers and friends are sending positive vibes her way. I hope the pain isn't as bad as she worried about.

Unknown said...

So Mike how is Joanie doing today? How are you doing?

Jan Girard said...

Hi Mike and Joanie,

Happy to hear surgery went well. Sending you lots of love and prayers.

Jane, John and I can come to Boston to visit you - let us know if/when it's a good time. Please call us at 603-767-1917 (Jan) or 603-828-2817 (John).

Love,

Jan

Anonymous said...

Talked with Mike this morning. Mom is awake, tired and a bit sore. Both surgeries went very well. Our thoughts are with you both.
Love, Dot
ps. MIke's having some trouble posting today.

Related Posts with Thumbnails