My (perhaps controversial) thoughts as a "newbie" to CA.

Thanks Ruthbru and LisaAlissa--I appreciate hearing cold packs are ok...I have a couple of those...will be sure to put a towel in between though..I actually have one of those Chillows--the flat thin pillow filled with water that you use in the summer to sleep on..they really are kinda neat and many a hot summer night I pulled it out and flopped my head and hot sweaty neck back on it..until, that is, Pantaloon found it on top of a cupboard where I'd laid it...she ended up sleeping on it every night! There went my nice cool buddy! At least until she discovered something else to take her fancy....

I took my Chillow just now and put it on my chest but it's pretty heavy and kinda bulky so will go back to the little packs.....

Oh, my God--I dug up three cold packs out from under turning-white frozen chicken breasts and a half-empty bag of Walmart frozen veggies--and put one on one side, one on the other that had the lymph node taken from it--and HEAVEN! The pain just plain old stopped!! 100%! I can't believe it!

I just took a delicious warm shower and that heat felt great, but the cold packs on this burning pain was like a prayer answered....the pain is really just like a very very bad sunburn....and to think I almost tossed those cold packs last year when I was doing a spring deep-cleaning of my apartment...Of course I could have used those frozen chicken breasts--and awakened in the a.m. wondering if my own had decided to revisit their old haunt.....The Return Of The Ghost Breasts!

Ah,bliss....lying here, Pantaloon trying to find a warm soft place to haw-paw like she likes to do to self-comfort but having a problem negotiating around the tubes and pouchy bulbs and the cold packs, I for the first time in days can honestly say I am completely pain free... thanks, ladies....

Hi--

I want to wish all of you wonderful ladies who helped me and others through the last weeks with your interest, wisdom, insights, experiences, advice, compassion, and understanding a

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Love you!

Trill

Thanks, TnMimi-- appreciate your words! Hugs back to you! trill

ChiSandy, I know, I know....your'e right, you're right....

I've told myself:

"Well, what's the very very worst it could be? That cancer has spread into that sentinel node, right? Which means it moved on and could possibly be right now in there circulating...

"Didn't you from the very beginning plan for carrying on therapy after surgery--and for this very reason? Why are you afraid to read it now? What about reading it scares you so badly? Because something obviously does. You've already shown you could handle those first phone calls and discussions with your doctor back in early November...."

"But after I hung up from talking with him," I answer, "no one was home when I tried to call someone and share the news and get some reassurance and positive input...and I wrote that thing about not wanting to do anything...to not fight and do all the scary things...to cover my fear and denial with--with covers and denials and avoidances...

"There's just something about those words issued from some clinical, faceless, way-out-there source. All my life, whether it was report cards, papers handed back, grades coming in the mail, test results, what doctors had to say when i went for annual heart checkups at the County Health Department--I feel totally undefended and vulnerable and like captive prey about to be assaulted

"by a piece of paper...

"by words on a computer screen....

"Maybe it goes back to when I was two years old and one doctor thought I had rheumatic fever and one said no, that my heart murmur wasn't from a pathogen but was functional (which turned out to be the case), and my parents said they wanted to be as cautious as they could and went with the harsher diagnosis and put me in St Gabriel's Home for Sick Children for six months. I felt perfectly well, a bouncy, skinny little kid, and then overnight, out of the blue I was separated from my family--my brother couldn't come inside but had to stay outside and we waved to each other through the window. I felt perfectly fine but somehow I had lost my world, was alone there in a strange crib, the Sisters floating around me in the night, their habits swishing in the dark....

"I just knew that something was wrong with me, something pretty serious, that kept me in that crib,and I had no idea what it was....

"Mom many years later said, "They wouldn't advise to do that now--separate you like that, send you away..."

"I think that little Trilly is still in there, afraid of News, especially unaccompanied by a human heartbeat and any comfort or reassurance....

"Back then my parents were as mystified and scared as I was, my father having a stutter so bad he could barely frame a sentence without stammering. They were both in their early 'twenties and had lost their mothers and had stern, cold fathers and daily groped for purchase on the world. My mother told me that back then she had no idea how children came into the world, that for her first pelvic exam--by a kindly, white-haired doctor who was the gentlest soul on earth--the doctor had to lock the door to keep her from bolting. It was right after the War and there was yet no furnace in the house they were building. They were far from the confident, relaxed parents they'd turn out to be after the fifth of us was born. They were afraid to bring a sick child into the un-furnaced-house, even though it was late summer....Mom said they were scared, and wanted to protect me any way they could....

"So their fears transferred to me. And here I am at 72 and I still need that human voice explaining, reassuring, humoring, listening, encouraging.....

"You know the thing about discovering the lump? It's funny, but that was far, far easier and less painful and scary and shocking to me than when I went for mammograms every year and out of the blue here came a letter in the mail saying something suspicious had been found. Even though those call-backs turned out to be nothing, it was still so scary...

"It was that this way I FOUND IT ON MY OWN AND TOOK IT TO THEM AND SAID HERE, LOOK, I'VE FOUND SOMETHING!

"Maybe that sounds crazy and irrational but that's just how it felt: far better than going in on a nice fall day--no symptoms, no pain, nothing--to have my annual mammo and a few days later getting that call or letter.

"The difference between finding the lump myself and THEM finding it maybe represents a negligible, scientifically insignificant difference that can hardly be quantified, but to me it's HUGE.

"And right now there's no way I can approach this online report that I can think of that feels reassuring or gives me a feeling of having any control whatsoever. I just feel like prey on the other side of the screen, no defenses against the news..

"Yes, it may be positive news, but lately it's not been.

"The truth is, what I've been doing ever since I saw the results were in is believe it's negative news--when I go in Wednesday to see her I'll already be expecting it. So I've already prepared for it. And she will of course offer good words to ease the moment. while in between I'm talking, I'm giving her the Christmas present I made for her, appreciating her good hands, joking around, asking questions, tensing as she begins to talk and it's not good news but she's right away telling me about chemo that does very well with stuff like this, getting the drains looked at, removed. (Ouch!) (But it's a pain I can stand.)

It's that there's nobody on the other side of this screen that I can be human with and get some humanity back. You all are out there in the ozone somewhere."

Maybe this acute dissection of my feelings, finessing things to an excruciating degree might appeal in a limited way to a psychologist regarding human fears rational and not. But ChiSandy your posting is so on-target and right and correct and makes such sense and I wanted to ask myself WHY I am not doing what you so well laid out....

Hi ladies---

It's just me popping in. Hope you've all a fine holiday. I'm two weeks and a day post box and am grappling with pain when I sleep--if you can call it sleep. When I lie on my back the body/chest sort of "puddles" via gravity and I think that must be why lying down is so hard--so necessary and so hard! Talk abut damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don't. The stretching of the skin over the incisions really does cause an ache big-time. I love to sleep on my side but then encounter the side pain.

I still have the drains in. I go for the second session of p/t tomorrow and then the nurse said to call her when there to have her look at my drains. Am still producing fluid, although it's diminished--but so slowly! She said that we don't want the drains out too soon as the incision closes and fluid builds up.....no, definitely do not want that!

I've been taking a cold pack to bed with me and lay this over my chest, move it about,etc, making sure it doesn't touch raw skin ever.

I was wondering--is it safe to use a heating pad set on very very low? I was wondering if that would help as much as or maybe even more than cold.....I'm a diehard heating pad fan (say that ten times while holding your breath...). Am not taking any pain meds--the oxycodone long since gone. Yesterday I did take an Aleve although I know that nsaids augment the bleeding process and that's moving things in the very wrong direction...

Sometimes when I lean over, like to clean Pantaloon's box, I feel this strange kinds slithery feeling. Is that the drain tube in there shifting around?

I'm so dying to curl up into a little ball and sleep a long dreamless sleep, as I used to do, my arms and etc in any position they want to be in!

So---what say you on heat for pain?