let the healing begin

It's a new year and a new healing chapter in my life! 2012 is sure to bring difficult struggles, but I am excited that they will result in beautiful triumphs. It will be the year that I put cancer behind me for good.

I am so incredibly blessed to have each and every one of you in my life. Your steadfast love & prayers, along with God's healing grace, are what carried me successfully through this surgery.

From beginning to end, the surgery took 6 hours to complete. My breast surgeon, Dr S, completed the double mastectomy in three hours. My plastic surgeon, Dr K, took another three hours to perform the reconstruction and place the tissue expanders. If you're curious about the reconstruction, you can read about it here. I will need another surgery in about 4-5 months to actually place the final implants. My doctors said that the surgery went very well and progressed exactly as planned. I am so thankful for the perfect teamwork they displayed in order to produce such a wonderful outcome for me.

The best news out of surgery is that my lymph nodes seem to be CLEAR! They were able to test the 2 closest lymph nodes to the tumor. At the first check they both came back clear. Per standard protocol, they were still sent off to pathology which will determine the final prognosis. We are anxious to get the report back but we are confident that it will be good news.

One thing I did not prepare myself for was how much pain I would be in. I like to think I have a high pain tolerance but it's amazing how much we rely on our chest muscles to perform daily activities. Getting in and out of bed hurt tremendously; even putting socks on is now a complex task. I was loaded up with pain meds and muscle relaxers which made me feel terrible! Until now I'd never taken muscle relaxers and now I know why; I hate how they make me feel. I felt woozy, spacey and just plain icky. Now that I am home and it's been four days since surgery, I am not needing the meds as much. Thank goodness because I'm finally feeling much more like my normal self.

Throughout this entire journey so far, and especially the surgery, my wonderful husband has been my rock. He has been such a strong pillar of support and care. At home he is now playing nurse to me and both Mommy/Daddy to our daughter. I know he has been overwhelmed in many of the same ways that I have, but he also faces different challenges being the caretaker. Because of this, I continue to praise God for what an amazing man He created to be my husband.

The next few weeks we will continue to spend time at home recovering as a family. Chemotherapy will begin within a month or so; we do not have firm information on that yet but we will soon. In the meantime we will rejoice knowing that God has healed me in His own perfect way and I am now cancer free!! What an awesome feeling it is knowing that it is gone and my body is now free from that awful burden.

"blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him"
Jeremiah 17:7