Hi everyone, Lisa here. *waves gently*

I’m briefly online, checking in on a few things (gosh golly, I made it until TUESDAY!), downloading email, and then I’ll take some time to read and respond.

Y’all have been wonderful and I am doing VERY well. Still can’t raise my arms above my head, and I’m keeping my left arm tucked tight most of the time. But pain meds (dilaudinum?) are working well, I’m eating gorgeous food (broiled salmon and broccoli last night, shrimp scampi tonight), getting lots of sleep, and watching lots of movies. (yay Netflix.)

More news coming as my coherency rate increases. Keep the energy flowing — it is WORKING.

Heigh ho, J here,

First of all, my apologies for a slow update. I actually thought that I had pointed out my twitter feed, where I have been updating regularly, but as you can see I actually didn’t (until now). Sorry about that.

Fortunately, no news has indeed been good news. Lisa came through her surgery with flying colors. Both surgeons (the one who performed the mastectomy and the reconstructive surgeon) gave excellent reports right after their respective portions. Lisa was into her visitor-accessible room just after 8PM on Thursday. She spent all day Friday at the hospital, making good progress mentally coming around but not feeling up to walking yet. Saturday morning, her mother and I arrived in the AM to find her sitting up with her feet on the floor, pants on, reading catalogs, having finished her bacon & egg sandwich (!). She was done with being in the hospital, and those of you who know Lisa know the look that was on her face. 😀

So she’s been home since Saturday ~11AM and doing just fine, all things considered. The meds keep her mellow, but we’ve tweaked the dosages just a bit (less of the narcotic pain-killer, but more frequent) and she doesn’t get truly woozy. We’ve also added Tylenol to the mix with the surgeon’s blessing, and that seems to be filling in the little “gaps” in the pain management. She gets up and moves around on her own, although she still mostly stays in bed.

The extra bit of good news that we’re trying not to be tooooo excited about just yet is that the biopsy of her lymph node that occurred during surgery was negative, which indicates that there is no further cancer to be concerned with. The reason we’re not hopping up and down yet is that that was a “rough” test that has 85% accuracy; they then send to a lab for the more thorough test, which comes back in 7-10 days. The rough test is still pretty accurate, but since the chance is still out there we’re trying not to get ahead of ourselves.

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts, prayers, energy, and positive messages. It was amazing, actually, how my new smartphone (I’ve been completely phone-less in the cell phone era until ~a month ago) let me update people and share their sentiments with Lisa while we were in the hospital. Anyway, I’ll post again in a day or so as things develop, and don’t be surprised if you hear from Lisa before too long; she already couldn’t help herself from sitting briefly at her desk and checking mail. 🙂

Hi, Lisa’s “J” here. She’s been a champ so far. She’s been admitted, and had one serious treatment so far – a radioactive dye was injected so that pictures of her lymph nodes could be taken. “Amusingly” she had differing reports on the procedure. One nurse said “this will be the most painful thing you go through today” and another said “it won’t hurt a bit.” Fortunately, the latter turned out mostly to be the case; save for a little pain, all was well.

Now she’s back in a pre/post-OP holding room. She has a visit from the anesthesiologist coming up, and assuming no delays (not that safe a bet, really) she’ll be in the surgery process in an hour. I’ll tell you more when I know it. In any case, if you’re disposed towards sending positive energy her way, an hour from now would be a good time to start. She’ll appreciate it, and heaven knows I will.

Cheers,

J

EDIT TO ADD: she’s on surgery now and will be for another couple hours. All quiet on the western front.

Yesterday was a kind of a breakthrough day. Without going into *all* of the details, suffice it to say that the ‘pre-op’ meeting I had scheduled with my plastic surgeon wasn’t what I thought it would be, and I still had to go to the hospital for my bloodwork. Moreover, even though I had a 2pm appt., we didn’t get brought back until 2:45, and then we waited for another 15+ minutes — in an EXAM room. One chair, a padded table, and a sink in a cabinet. J. was forced to lean up against a wall.

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It’s been a tumultuous week, so much so that I haven’t felt like writing about it. I’ve been doing quite a bit of talking, however, as well as visualization and imagery manifestation . . . but let me tell this story in it’s proper order.

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Let me start by saying that my thinking/decisions are changing fairly rapidly. Last week I had a 2nd biopsy, I was also on the verge of getting a cold, so I stayed home in an attempt to not actually get sick. In that, I succeeded. On Thursday morning my surgeon called.

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