The Day After

What is there to say except "Holy Crap!"? As you can imagine we've had a long weekend. And when I say "We" I really mean Desi, I've just been a spectator sleeping on an uncomfortable couch.

We arrived at the Huntsman Cancer Institute on Friday at 1:45PM where Desi was promptly escorted to her own waiting room. We were able to meet with the Surgeon Dr. Neumayer (I'm still fuzzy on the actual spelling) who explained again in detail what Desi was about to go through. Perhaps the scariest part (for me that is) was when she pulled out a Sharpie and began to draw the incision lines on Desi. It was an event that added a sense of the macabre. Fortunately Desi was a bit overwhelmed and didn't stress out too much. Desi was then injected with radioactive isotopes which were part of the sentinel biopsy which would be performed at the beginning of her mastectomy. The purpose being to locate which lymph nodes drained the breast tissue and to check for more cancerous cells. After this she was visited by the anesthesiologists who were both great and made her feel very comfortable. Of course her comfort could have been due to the drugs they gave her, but I digress.

With little fan-fair she was carted away and I was left alone in the waiting room. It is difficult to write the emotions I felt at that time. Throughout this entire ordeal we have had a sense of peace and special spirit has been in our home as we coped with this cancer. At this moment however, I was terrified. Terrified that I might never see her again. I'm not afraid to say it, I wept.

Six hours later Desi was finally in the recovery room. They weren't very busy and I was able to go back there and sit with her as the effects of the anesthesia wore off. Eventually she became a bit more lucid and was finally assigned a room. Apparently the housecleaning staff was on a long lunch break and hadn't gotten around to getting the rooms cleaned. I did offer to help, but they didn't accept. Eventually we were able to be moved upstairs to her room, which was beautiful. It felt like we were staying at a nice hotel, of course nice hotels don't have I.V. trees and oxygen tanks bolted to the walls. During this time we did receive the first bit of good news. The sentinel biopsy showed no signs of cancer in her lymph nodes! This is great! This isn't a 100% certain, but there's not much more we can do to see if it's spread any further into her body. They did find some atypical cells in the tumor and are waiting for the final pathology report to see if they'll need to perform another surgery to remove more tissue. Radiation therapy is now a possibility, but we won't know for sure for another week or two.

We then spent most the evening trying to keep Desi comfortable. Some of her friends and family were able to visit and that really put her in good spirits. After a long night and an uneventful morning she was able to go for walks and eat good food. Her strength built back up and she was able to be released around 5:00pm Saturday evening.

Now we're here at Grandma McGee's where Mikey is having the time of his life and Desi is able to get some much needed rest and relaxation.

More to come...