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.


Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Week 2 - Day 2

Last Week:  Okay so last Tuesday was rough. I will post a picture from that day last week when I didn' think I would make it through the day - a couple of things were happening. First, I apparently have a sensitivity to morphine (long story) and I had a phlegm ball in my throat that I couldn't get up therefore I couldn't breathe. Not being able to breathe led me to not being able to sleep. Then between the lack of sleep and my sensitivity to morphine I had some pretty major fears. Mike just said that I did sleep on and off, but had such vivid dreams that I didn't think I had slept. Not a pretty picture. Here is a picture from last Tuesday morning in the PACU unit. Wow, as I look more closely at this picture I can remember everything about that day. The good news is that at least now I KNOW I have a sensitivity to morphine and with the best docs in the world we can work with that. I still another procedure coming up, but not for a few months or longer. The next procedure is shorter - maybe 5 hours, not 14 hours.

This Week:  Today is Tuesday, April 6th. I got up at 6am and got myself out of my own bed!!! Helped a little bit getting JieJie and MeiMei ready for school, then went to school to help out in the library. My regular day to volunteer is Tuesday and I wanted to see the Librarian, who has been so tremendously supportive throughout this journey. Her mouth dropped open when she saw me!!!! I do my best to tuck my drains out of sight, but that's pretty tough to do. Although I could help check books in, I still don't feel comfortable having lots of kids around me. One pull of the drain and who knows what might happen!!! Better not to test it. I was so happy to see everyone!! Here is a picture of me walking JieJie into school this morning. When we came home, Mike cleaned and drained my drains. Here is a picture of the drains from my perspective. The other picture is the fluid in the cups coming from each drain. I will get one or more drains out on Thursday!!!   
You remember the Feed the Flap party? Well, we are certainly benefitting from all the wonderful meals that we were able to 'seal and save' after the party. Last night it was Marcia's Beef Stew. Very Yummy. It's amazing how good it feels to eat food prepared by someone else when you are recovering or taking care of someone recovering. Thank you Marcia.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You do look slightly doped up in that top picture, but amazing in the next one! Your drains look exactly like mine did - I'm hoping that I wont need them again for my stage 2 surgery!

Anyway, glad to hear you have such a supportive husband, and that you are doing so good!

Rest, rest, rest!

Joanie said...

Hi Teri - doped up is right!!! Thanks for the rest, rest, rest suggestion. Today I kind of hit a wall and was tired all day. Hopefully tomorrow will be a more energetic day since we have to drive four hours to Boston.

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