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.


Wednesday, November 3, 2010

DIEP - Stage II on Friday

We will leave tomorrow morning for Boston. I am very appreciative to my brother and his wife for stepping in to take care of the girls. Since this began I don't know what we would do without our families to help us out. Both girls are looking forward to seeing Uncle Tommy and Aunt Beth.

I know that JieJie and MeiMei are scared. The hardest part of any procedure, whether you are looking at 14+ hours or 3 hours, is leaving my kids. They have been through so much in their short little lives that it pains me to put them through watching us leave - again. They only thing we can tell them is that I will be okay and will be home soon.They are very good about creating their own prayers so I am sure that in their own way they will be right there with me in the OR.

Hopefully Mike will be with me in recovery, so we probably won't be able to post any updates. I have promised calls to my DIEP Sisters - so you will hear from us. Please prayer for a smooth, uneventful, phlegm-ball free operation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thinking of you tomorrow as you say goodbye to your girls & drive to Boston and on Friday as you complete Stage II...Yeah! What a huge accomplishment. You are an inspiration and you are amazing :) You'll do great and I'll be thinking of you and hopefully visiting before the day is over :)
Love,
Sara

November 3, 2010 at 10:42 PM
Joanie said...

Thank you Sara!!! Hope to see you tomorrow!!!!

November 4, 2010 at 8:57 AM

Post a Comment

Related Posts with Thumbnails