The Mastectomy

Turns out it’s not that bad to have your boobs cut off. If you ever have to do it, I recommend bringing my mom, my cousin Lindsey and my husband with you. They will keep your spirits up so you don’t freak out too much about the thought of having your boobs sawed off your chest.

Here’s how Monday, February 28 went.

Mario and I got up at 4:30 a.m. I showered with the pre-op soap that the breast surgeon’s nurse gave me. It’s a pink, liquid soap that she gave me in a pee-specimen container. It’s some sort of germicidal soap that I had to use on my chest and armpits to make sure my skin was as clean as possible. It smelled like the anti-flea shampoo that I use about once every three years on Spanky Mae when I actually bathe her. I think she’s had exactly one bath since our human babies were born.

My stepmother, Sherrie, and my little sister, Nicole, had spent the night with us so that they could get Allie and Miles ready for Miss Sabra’s house. Sabra is the world’s best daycare provider on the planet. She runs a daycare out of her home and has become like part of our family (or “fan-i-lee,” as Allie would say). I think of her as a governess who teaches our kids things like How to be Nice to Each Other and How to Count and What Squares Are and such. If I think of her as a governess out of a Jane Austen novel, I don’t feel so badly about not being a stay-at-home mom.

Anyway, Mario and I got to Medical City at around 6 a.m. Lindsey and my mom were pulling in to the parking lot right as we were, so we all walked in to the pre-surgery area together. It was nice having a team with me. My mom refers to Lindsey as her hospital advocate. Lindsey has some sort of biomedical science degree from Texas A&M and is a respiratory therapist at a hospital in Ft. Worth. We know that if we have Lindsey in tow and something goes wrong in a medical setting, Lindsey will swoop in and fix it.

And she came prepared, too. She made dozens of her lemon cookie things, which usually have lemony yellow icing drizzled on top. But in honor of breast cancer, she covered them in Susan G. Komen pink. She brought them to bribe the nurses just in case it came down to that. Lindsey could bribe just about anyone to do anything for one of her lemon cookie things. I believe that if Obama knew about these, he could use them to bribe North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons or whatever they have that they’re not supposed to for just one bite of Lindsey’s lemon cookie things. (I’m so not in to politics, I don’t know why I chose to reference it here. These lemon cookie things are freaking amazing, though.)

So we get to a sort of holding room where Lindsey pulled a gift out of her purse for me. It was wrapped in a cute little silver container that used to be Granny’s (our Granny went through breast cancer twice. She passed away from Alzheimer’s this past May). In it were three tubes of the World’s Best Lipstick. It’s Crystal Berries from Ulta. If you are not in the know about this stuff, you need to educate yourself. This color looks good on any skin tone, and it’s impossible to get because Ulta is always sold out of it. Lindsey buys it by the dozen online (when she’s lucky and they actually have it in stock). As she passes my present to me, my mom snags it and steals one from me. Not cool, Mom. You shouldn’t steal from your breast-cancer-laden daughter.

Then a nurse comes in to take me to what I was most worried about: Nuclear medicine. One young breast cancer survivor who I recently met said that nuclear medicine was the worst part of the mastectomy. This is where they had to inject my breasts with a radioactive dye. The dye would travel to my lymph nodes in my armpit area so that the breast surgeon would be able to identify the sentinel node (the first one that cancer would spread to if it had spread) for removal.

Needles have never been a fear of mine, but seriously? Four shots around the nipple area of each breast? I was definitely nervous about this part. The breast surgeon’s nurse warned me that some women describe the pain from these shots as worse than childbirth. She just wanted me to be prepared, you know?

For some reason, by the grace of God, these shots didn’t affect me like that. I barely noticed them. A couple of them burned a little bit, but it ended up being a breeze. I attribute little things like this—the fact that the shots didn’t hurt—as God’s answers to all the prayers that people have been sending out on my behalf.

After that, I was wheeled in to the pre-op unit. I met my anesthesiologist, Dr. Smith, who was wonderful—and not just because he gave me pain meds. I can’t remember what all we talked about, but he was unusually friendly for an anesthesiologist. Anesthesiologists don’t really get to know their patients; there’s no need for them to do so. They just knock out the patients and go on their merry way. I wish I could remember what we talked about. I don’t. I just remember liking him a lot.

Then Dr. Antonetti came in. He’s the plastic surgeon. He’s very quiet and unassuming. When he explained the reconstruction process to me in one of our earlier visits, he said he’d use “donor skin” to replace the breast tissue that the breast surgeon would have to remove.

Having just read the best freaking book ever “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach (buy it now. I promise you’ll like it), I knew what Dr. Antonetti meant by “donor” skin. It’s cadaver skin, man. So freaking cool. Someone donated their body to science, at which point it probably got sliced and diced a million and one different pieces, and I ended up with some of his/her tissue to make my new boobies. I have cadaver boobs. Technically, it’s just the under-part of my new boobs that belong to someone else, so it’s like half cadaver boob and half Melanie boob.

So when Dr. Antonetti came in to say Hi just before surgery, I told him that I hoped he got lots of extra cadaver skin because I was thinking that I might want bigger boobs than what God originally gave me. He seems to hate it when I refer to the allograft as “cadaver skin.” He much prefers “donor tissue.” Which is exactly why I keep using “cadaver skin.”

After I said that, he looked over at Mario and said, “Well, it’s really up to him.” Mario was sitting near my head, out of my view. But he must have made a gesture like he was carrying two giant watermelons on his chest, or maybe there was some sort of telepathic communication between these two, because when I woke up from surgery, I was rocking some massive knockers, man. Lots of cadaver skin going on up in here.

The surgery went something like this. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying this, but I do work at a children’s hospital. And even though I’m not even close to being clinical, I do like to pretend that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to medicine. The breast surgeon, Dr. Alison Laidley, removed the breast tissue, along with the sentinel lymph nodes from each armpit. The tissue and lymph nodes went to pathology. A cursory look at the lymph nodes showed no cancer.

Then Dr. Antonetti took over and started the reconstruction process. He put tissue expanders under my pectoralis muscles. These are basically empty breast-implant sacks that will “slowly” be filled with saline to stretch the skin around my new boobs. Before surgery, I was under the impression he would only fill these expanders with a tiny bit of saline. Instead, this cat took something like a water hose connected to a saline faucet, turned a knob and let ‘er run like he was filling an Olympic-sized pool.

I swear he said during a pre-op visit that these suckers would be filled slowly, over a period of time, via saline injections into the tissue expanders. I don’t know how much more saline will fit in these things, because right now, a week after surgery, I feel like I could pop at any second.

I think I was in surgery for six or so hours. But then my right breast started to swell. I don’t really remember this part very well because I was still coming out of anesthesia. I remember Dr. Antonetti pushing and prodding around on my right breast and begging him to stop because it hurt so badly. Apparently, I had developed a hematoma, and it was swelling like crazy. They had to wheel me back to surgery.

I remember waking up in the PACU having to pee like a race horse. The nurse put a bedpan under me, but I guess I got pee shy and barely anything came out. They wheeled me back to my room, and I still had to pee so unbelievably bad. I think it was pretty late because my mom was asleep on the little couch in my room. And I started crying because I thought I was going to pee all over my bed. I told her to go pull a Shirley MacLaine scene on a nurse (remember that scene in “Terms of Endearment” where she goes ballistic about getting Debra Winger needing some pain meds? I promise, no more “Terms of Endearment” references.) Mom did her job and got a nurse to come help me go to the bathroom. Ahhhh relief.

On Tuesday, I was still pretty out of it. Mario said that even in my state, I was correcting people’s grammar. Seriously, must I always be a bitch about this? A nurse came in and had some apparatus for me to inhale into so that I could begin taking deep breaths (it still hurts to take deep breaths). She was trying to tell me to take a certain type of breath. She couldn’t think of the right word, and she was getting frustrated. Apparently I asked her in an irritated voice, “You mean ‘shallow?’ ”

D’oh. I guess that’s not correcting grammar, but I was a butthead about it. Man, I can’t help it! Pain meds do this to me. It’s not my fault.

I remember Dad sending me a Facebook message telling me he enjoyed visiting with Mario and me at the hospital. I have absolutely no recollection of him visiting with us.

I remember Lindsey telling me to breathe into the little apparatus thingy until the arrows got to 1,000. She was pushing me like Bela Karolyi telling Nadia Comaneci to do a back flip on the beam, man. And I just couldn’t do it.

I remember flipping out about my Medical City Children’s cup that I was drinking out of. (I don’t want to get fired so I won’t go into detail about drinking from the enemy’s cup.)

I remember being in so much pain, I can’t begin to describe it. My mom would ask me, “Are you in any pain?” And I told her that it felt like I had a horse or a house sitting on my chest. I had a PCA pump with morphine, but I swear it was empty. I pushed the button repeatedly, and my pain level never budged. I remember my stepmother being in the room and I had tears flowing down my face because of the pain. She and my mother got a nurse, who was able to give me a shot of Demerol. From that point on, my pain has been manageable.

And that’s about it. I’ve been home for almost a week now. My mom, Aunt Teri, Sherrie, Nicole, Sabra, Mario, Chris (sister-in-law) and Ida (mother-in-law) have been amazing helping me get around and keeping my kids bathed and clothed. Every night, friends and neighbors bring us home-cooked meals so that we don’t have to worry about dinner. Again, I thank God here for putting us in the hands of gracious, generous friends who have gathered around us to support us.

Until yesterday, I had two drains (four total) dangling around each side of me. These drains were inserted into my boobs during surgery and allow fluid to drain out of me so that I don’t swell up and get infected. These drains are at the end of about two feet of rubber tubing that hang out of my boob area. This nasty reddish/orange-ish fluid drips out all day and collects in these little grenade-sized rubber bulbs. Sometimes little bits of tissue flow out as well. When they reach the bulbs, they look like little tequila worms floating around. I have to measure the fluid each day. (So gross, right? I had to share it.)

Thankfully, I’m draining less and less each day, so Dr. Antonetti was able to remove one grenade from each side of me. Now I’m down to one grenade per side. Allie has been drawing pictures of me with my grenades by my side. It’s kinda cute, I guess.

Today I will meet with Dr. Laidley. She will talk to us about the pathology report and spell out what my next steps are. I think this is the visit where I will find out if I will need chemo and/or radiation. I’m hoping for good news.

Praise God for you guys. Praise God for putting me in the hands of great doctors. For a mother who loves me no matter how crabby I get and who will measure the nasty fluid in my grenades. Praise God for my coworkers who went so overboard with pink gifts and a party for me before I left for surgery. Praise God for all the kind messages on Facebook and for my mother- and sister-in-law who are unloading the dishwasher and making beds for me. I’ve never been so grateful in my life. Breast cancer isn’t so bad, really, because of y’all.