March 2018 Surgery Group

Hello everyone,

I am schedule for surgery 3/12, still undecided on what I'm doing! Can't make a decision between mastectomy or lumpectomy and radiation. I don't want to have radiation. I'm so undecided. Very frustrating.

Best wishes to everyone

mkn86, my type is almost identical as yours, IDC, Right, 5cm, Stage IIIA, Grade 3, ER-/PR-, HER2-, thank you for starting the thread!

I was diagnosed in Oct 2017. This week is my last chemo, then I'll have four weeks for recovery. My surgery date is on March 27, 2018. I'll have mastectomy and then go with flat.

Best wishes to everyone!

Bilateral without reconstruction scheduled March 8, 2018. Chemo a few weeks later.

My surgery was on 2/28 but I'm going to join this thread because everyone on the Feb surgery thread is so far ahead of me. I had my surgery 2 days ago and am recovering at home now. I had a BMX with immediate implants and a sentinel node biopsy. Will get the biopsy results back when I meet with my BS next week. I had neoadjuvant chemo so I'm done with all the major treatments unless I get bad news on my biopsy. Crossing my fingers and toes.

The Pain Management team gave me an epidural for my BMX. I was in absolutely no pain for the first day. Real pain came after they removed it, and I think today is the worst it's ever been as I'm counting the hours until my next pain pill. Each day after this is supposed to be better, so that's a relief. My chest is extremely sore and numb, and it's very odd to see that implant in without any feeling associated with it. I guess that's how it's going to be moving forward.

I resumed a normal diet the night after my surgery.

What I took to the hospital:

Lozenges

• Lip Balm
• iPad
• iPhone & charger
• Change of clothes
• Toothbrush & toothpaste
• Moisturizer

I thought I'd packed safety pins for the drains but no go. Other than that, that was all I really needed.

jsm22 - I hope your surgery went well and that your nodes were all clear. It would be great if you could avoid chemo! When you're up to it let us know how you are.

lisaRx - HI! I hope the pain is easing up with every hour. I'm glad you joined the March group. May I ask what Rx pain med they prescribed? What day next week do you meet with your team and get pathology results?

Today I had the radioactive seeds placed in my breast to mark the area the surgeon with take out Monday. The breast has to stay compressed for about 20 minutes while they implant the seeds. Have to say it was fairly uncomfortable, but mammograms always hurt me. Next stop nuclear dye injection 6:30 Monday morning!

Philippines/mat:

March 19 for me. Thank you.

Josie

prayers for a strong recovery JSM

prayers for a strong recovery Lisa. Thanks for the good tips on what to take to surgery

bilateral mastectomy 3/6/18.

I was diagnosed with idc. 4mm area with another 3mm area that was not biopsied which is 6mm posterior to the 4mm area. I was told that these areas are really close to the skin, about 1cm deep. I am having a lumpecomy with oncoplastic on both breasts, as well as a sentinel node biopsy. Some days I think I've made the right decision to do the oncoplastic, and other days I feel unsure of my decision. I can't find very many posts on here from people who have had oncoplastic. The second opinion dr seemed to think that the oncoplastic surgery would be beneficial. He said it would reduce the risk of reoccurrance, because there would be less tissue. He also said there would be less of a chance of developing seromas, which could cause deformities during radiation. The surgery also allows for symmetry in both breasts which only requires one surgery. This second opinion Dr did not do this procedure, but he felt that I had a good surgical team who could.

Are there posts on here regarding oncoplastic that I am missing? I found one that was helpful, but it is fairly old and not very active.

Mrsmcg

Mrsmcg - if you look to the left of this page there is a "search" button. If you use that you are sent to a page there's a search term box. It will return all the form posts containing the word you seek. I did a quick search and it seems like there are a lot of discussions about it in threads, but I did't see a thread entitled "oncoplastic".

I'm having a lumpectomy tomorrow, followed by a bi-lateral reduction 2 weeks later. I have a large area to be removed and my breast surgeon wanted to make sure she got clean margins before handing me off to my plastic surgeon. I originally had been working with a breast surgeon whose speciality was oncoplastics. For a variety of reasons I switched surgeons. I wish this all could be done at once, but this is the team I want and that's how they do it.

PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT: For any of you who are going to have drains after your surgeries, I found this cool product called "Pink Pockets". They are temporary soft cloth pockets that stick firmly to the inside of your garments to make pockets to hold drains. They ship very quickly (at least in US) -- "Pink Pockets"

Hello March group!

This post turned out to be ridiculously lengthy but I do hope you take the time to read it. I must admit I've been quite the stalker of this website for months and thought my first post should be a contribution. So I thought I could share some of my very fresh journey with you. I am exactly 32 days out from my NSM, with TE placement, SNB and for the first time since the surgery I feel "almost" like myself again. Remember no two bodies are the same so when women say everybody recovers differently take that to heart.

A month prior to surgery I tried hard to take EXTRA good care of myself; spin class, hiking, no coffee, caffeine, very limited sugar. I went to get a massage which was nice but didn't do anything for my anxiety but the gal was so sweet and sent me a lymph node video excersice, herself doing an upper arm excercise, and another yoga video specifically for carpal tunnel (basically stretching the same upper body muscles). I did those for the four days leading up to my surgery. What I really got a lot from was a Reiki session three days prior to surgery. I had never done one before and it was an amazing amount of stress released. I was not sleeping and I was having anxiety ridden night terrors mixed with awful dreams. The Reiki session allowed me too finally relax and shut my mind off. I truly believe it was because of the lymph node excercises that helped the dye move very quickly when I went in for the sentinel node injection which was surprisingly not painful and because of the Reiki session pre-op anxiety was more manageable. I did ask my doctor for Xanax which I took a couple of times to sleep and before the node injection. I also took arnica four days before surgery. Nothing day the before or day of. What I wish I would have done was taken more stool softeners more days before surgery.

During pre-op I asked for a anti-nausea patch they put behind my ear and I had no nausea issues at all. After surgery I wished I'd asked more questions about the expander and its placement. The TE was placed over my muscle, stitched to my muscle in three different places, and filled with 120cc of air. It's a 400cc expander that goes waaaay under my armpit. My breast was totally covered with transparent techaderm dressing with my nipple exposed. At home I had Hydrocodone, Cephalexin (antibiotic), and Prochlorperazine (which I never took). I neglected my nipple for two weeks and regret it. They gave me bacitracin two weeks later, after the fact, to put on my nipple which I should have been putting on immediately. I also feel I should have been stimulating my nipple more as the upper half actually responses to touch whereas the bottom half doesn't. My husband started giving my massages everyday with healing oil around the surrounding tissue and muscles. Another regret, I left the hospital with no exercise pamphlet (told only to not lift my arm above 90 degrees, no exercise, and walk like a grandma for two weeks) and no guidance of bra or no bra. The expander was so painful it literally felt like it was too big for the space like trying to fit into skinny jeans!

So I hope some ladies get something from the following as others may think it's a bit hippy-dippy but these are some of the things I did to aid my healing: made a big pot of bone broth soup with elk bone marrow (husband's a hunter) and drank a cup everyday; took Staphysagria 30c, Arnica Montana 30c, and Hypericum Perforatum 200ck for 10 days; made a shake everyday with yogurt, Bio-K plus probiotic, banana, protein powder, and super foods powder; my sister sent me some special tea and my husband would brew a pot everyday and add a Smooth Move tea bag to it. I would add Ashwagandha, Milk Thistle, chlorophyll drops and a lemon to it (not tasty at all!). I saw immediate reduction of brusing and swelling within the first week! Once the dressing came off and had my first fill (day 16), I started with my sister's scar healing oils and am completely amazed how good the scar already look. She sells them!

I got my drains out day 5 and day 16. My output was directly related to how much I was moving around. Therefore, I sacrificed exercising (even walking) and limiting my arm movement in hopes of reducing the output and I believe my ROM suffered. PS wanted output to be below 25cc two days in a row. At 3 weeks I couldn't even lift my arm out straight and had to pretty much demand PT because I'm so freaked out.

I didn't so well on the Hydrocodone. It wreaked havoc on my stomach causing a lot of abdominal pain and made me super groggy. I was just trying to get away with stool softeners and Smooth Move tea but couldn't take the abdominal pain so I took a stronger laxative and spent two days with the porcelain gods. Terrible! Day 8 I was switched over to Tramadol (a non-narcotic) and did okay with just Smooth Move. I didn't start weaning my pain meds until day 14 and was off them day 24 (lots of Tylenol and IBU in between).

I'm lucky enough to telework so week 3 I worked 15hrs and week 4 I worked 35hrs. Day 30 was my first half day back to the office. The pain from the TE has gotten better with every fill (3rd fill now at 240cc). Sleeping is still my nemesis and ROM isn't where I would like it to be but yesterday I hiked 2 hours and then...wait for it...went to a concert!

Ladies, it's hard to see your progress when you are in the midst of it. I have been OCD with my Fitbit just to have proof that I am indeed getting better even if it is two steps forward and one step back. It was hard for me to not compare myself to the women that got off pain meds 3 days after surgery, to the women that had their drains removed quickly and especially to the women who started running a week after surgery. As one of my favorite artist says, "You can't rush your healing". So take time to find that space within you to breathe and just surrender.

Each of you (and even the women not on these forums) is in my thoughts and prayers. 💜💜

Hi,

Surgery scheduled for 3/20. Lumpectomy plus oncoplasty - reconstruction of left breast and reduction/lift of non-cancerous breasts.

Happy that this thread was started - I'm just anxious to get it all going.

Nice to meet you all!

Linda