8/31/2005 09:03:00 AM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|Recovery is tough. I mean, I was expecting not to be able to use my arms much. I was expecting to be sore and have difficulty sleeping. I was expecting to need a lot of help with the house and the kids. All of this is very obvious in theory. When it actually happens, it's much more challenging than you would expect. What does it really mean to not be able to raise either arm over your head or carry more than a couple of pounds in either hand? Well, it means Sam is still washing my hair and I can't even pick up the cat, much less my daughter. Okay...I knew that I wouldn't be able to pick up Cassidy for a while (she does weigh close to 30 lbs after all), but the water pitcher? I hadn't really thought that one through. Sleeping is still challenging as well. I sleep in a mostly sitting position. Somehow these details don't get mentioned in all of the support sites, etc. At least, not that I noticed. On the good side, I'm healing well. The drains came out on Monday. Dr. Cullington was very pleased with my progress and hinted at dire possibilities that hadn't occurred. I spoke with Dr. Tokaz (oncologist) and he feels good about getting the portacath put in in a couple of weeks. It won't have to be under general anesthetic (yay!!!) and this should be a relatively minor procedure. I'll be seeing him in another 10 days or so to work out a treatment plan, etc. I'm actually feeling well enough to be restless in the house. I'm out in the garden in the mornings, picking veggies, seeing the chickens. I can sit and read books with the kids and do a bit of cooking (no chopping, but it's progress). I poke around with stuff in the house and do too much and end up sitting a lot in the evenings to catch up. I've been told I can drive, but I'm letting other folks do that until it's necessary. Don't need to push it. Feel free to call or come by or whatever. The afternoons are a bit long at this point and the kids love company, too. :)k|W|P|112549710032315017|W|P|The Long Slow Road|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com8/25/2005 10:12:00 AM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|The surgery went off as planned. Both my surgeon and my plastic surgeon were pleased with the results. I was less pleased, but only because I was in a lot of pain in the hospital. It took a couple of days to work out a pain medication that I could tolerate that would also be strong enough to diminish my symptoms. Unfortunately, when the nurses moved me from the gurney to the hospital bed, I subluxated a couple of ribs (threw my back in layman's terms). By the second day, my back hurt a lot more than my front and there wasn't much to do about it until I got home. We checked out on Monday morning. I must say, the majority of the nursing staff were very, very kind and helpful, if a tad understaffed. When we got home Monday, I felt peachy. By the middle of the night I was violently ill. Gastrointestinal yuck! By 5 am I couldn't hold down liquids and we were on our way back to the hospital. Two bags of IV fluid and som IV pain and nausea medications later, I felt much better again. We reviewed all of my medications and decided that, with my sensitivities, my body had just gotten ticked and rejected the lot. The doctor in the ER helped me work out what to take and I stopped taking the anitbiotics, which are a terrible one for stomach upset. I think at one point, in the hospital, I was on 6 different meds in one day. Yick. Each day is an improvement. I've gotten tons of sweet cards, lovely flowers, and nice visits. And everyone's support has really allowed me to let go of my daily routine and rest a lot. I'll be really glad when the drains come out next Monday. Then I'll be able to walk outside more and just get around easier by myself. Right now I'm on a leash, quite literaly. :)|W|P|112498378968979579|W|P|Post Surgical|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com8/20/2005 11:23:00 AM|W|P|Sam-I-Am|W|P|The surgery went well yesterday. It was two procedures back to back. The bi-lateral mastectomy, followed by immediate reconstruction. Both went off without a hitch. That's a lot of work though and Kelley was in there for about four and half hours. General anaesthetic was also proportionally more than last time so she was in recovery for a while, and looking sick to the gills when they moved her to her room. That's been getting progressively better, and this morning she's been eating a little, got most of her color back and getting in and out of bed basically by herself. This is it for a few days, when she's feeling up to it - probably monday - she'll come home. Meantime I'm camping out up there, and the kids are at home with my folks. Aidan's taking it well. He's concerned but taking it in his stride. Right now he's making some cut-outs that I'll take back up there later this afternoon. Cassidy is also managing fine. It'll be good to get home, but they just don't need to see all of this just yet.|W|P|112456328233042680|W|P|Surgery and Recovery|W|P|potatosculptor@gmail.com8/20/2005 04:23:00 PM|W|P| honoria|W|P|Good news. We are sending good vibes in large doses. Love, Knut & Honoria8/18/2005 09:14:00 AM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|Earlier this week I went in for a CT scan (circulatory and organs) and a Bone Scan. Both of these were searching for traces of metastatic cancer in the rest of my body. After the word 'Cancer' the word 'Metastatic' is probably the scariest. Both of these tests came back negative (which is a good thing). This means that there are no traces of metastatic breast cancer anywhere else in my body. Wheee! In treatment, this means that we're definitely dealing with early stage II, low grade tumors (now gone) and a very low amount (if any) of widespread cancer in the body. We'll do chemo, I'll take my pills and we'll get on with life. I'm going to be checking into Brackenridge tomorrow morning at 6am (disgustingly early) for an 8am surgery time. Surgery is scheduled for 5 hours (both the bi-lateral mastectomy and reconstruction) so I should be out of recovery sometime after 3pm. I'll be in the hospital for a few days. I'm thinking I'll come home Monday. Please feel free to call the hospital or here. If I'm tired, we'll turn off the phone. :) If I'm up for visitors, Sam will tell you, and if I'm not, he'll tell you that, too. Sam will blog sometime Friday afternoon/evening to let everyone know that things went well. So check back in here late Friday. He won't have my email list to work with... Bright blessings to all. :)k|W|P|112438221454497698|W|P|Okay...Good News.|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com8/17/2005 07:38:00 AM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|This week has been a prime example of the utter wrong in the American medical system. It started with the fact that to get silicon implants, one has to be involved in a government study for five years. Okay....simple enough...someone is going to follow my breasts around for five years (images of men in black stalking me, staring at my chest). However, this involves over an hour's worth of paper work filed in the doctor's office that noone thought to mention until Monday afternoon. I could have spit nails. I did use abundant profanity in the general direction of the girl on the phone who really should have mentioned it over a week before when we opted for silicon in the first place. At any rate, I screamed to a number of people, including two of the doctors and the whole thing suddenly righted itself. I went in and sat in a comfy green chair, while the doctor's staff asked me a ridiculous number of questions about maladies that I've never heard of and then asked me to sign off on many little lines. Done. If the government wants to pay someone to stare at my chest for the next five years, okay. The next was the insurance company....I'm not sleeping well (obvious reasons) and as being well rested is important before my next surgery, I called Central Family Practice and LeAnn said, "Let's get you some Ambien". She calls it in and, lo and behold, the insurance company won't pay for it. Sam and I discover this at 7 o'clock at night when we go to pick up the prescription. Apparently, the insurance company won't pay for Ambien on a regular basis, but the doctor can call in a one-time override, under special circumstances. Of course, it was after office hours, so we'd have to wait until the next morning or pay for the whole cost ourselves. I had warm milk and slept moderately well. I called CFM in the morning, they called the pharmacy, then called the insurance company and now I can go get my prescription, but they covered it at the lowest level they could (we still pay about a third of the cost). Anyone else think insurance companies are evil? Stand up and shout now. The insurance companies in America insist that they have to keep cutting coverage and raising prices to counter the rising cost of litigation and the pharmaceutical companies' excessive price ranges. Bullshit. At the same time, many insurance companies are posting record profits year in and year out. Someone do the math for me. The airlines. We booked flights to England with the intention of visiting Sam's family. We had to cancel. Obviously they were non-refundable, unchangeable, etc. However, there's a medical exception clause in there. British Air is currently deciding if a cancer diagnosis and surgery are valid reasons for canceling our trip. They may refund our money..they may not. All of this leads to what really gets me aggravated. I'm 35. I have two young children. In the past 5 weeks, I've been diagnosed with breast cancer, had multiple biopsies, one surgery and I'm about to have a bi-lateral mastectomy on Friday. Someone give me a break! The people at the plastic surgeon's office acted like I was the problem. The insurance company is completely unaffected by my current condition. The woman on the phone at British Air barely registered what I was telling her before shoving me off to the customer service group (who don't accept phone calls, by the way, only fax or mail) The money grubbing, profit chasing attitude in this country has obviously stamped out basic sympathy in way too many people. I don't expect folks to weep and wail, but some common courtesy would be nice.|W|P|112429147067153539|W|P|The Evil in the System.|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com8/12/2005 08:32:00 AM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|In my quest to do Something while waiting around... My sister mentioned the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure on November 6th, this year. There's going to be a one mile family fun walk and we're in! I've created a team (Team Green). We would love to have anyone join the team and join us for the walk. You could also do the run, either timed or not. ****There is a problem with the race website...don't try to register for the team right now. You can't register for the walk*** I made some team T-shirts here: Team Green Store Yay to Laura for giving me something to think about and do yesterday evening! :)|W|P|112385400918141237|W|P|What to Do?|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com8/10/2005 11:12:00 AM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|I hate waiting. I've never been known for my patience to begin with and adding physical disability to that doesn't facilitate my good mood. Surgery is planned for Friday the 19th at Brackenridge Hospital. I'll be in-patient this time and should be there for a few days. Our visit with the plastic surgeon went surprisingly well. He's a nice man and we decided on an option that will only involve one surgery....period. No more surgery later, etc. I'm happy that this really will be the last surgery I have before moving on to the treatment stage. The best thing (sarcasm) is that I'll probably have just finished recovering from this last surgery. (Anyone else thing staples seem a bit barbaric for surgical closure?) Currently I can feel most of my upper arm again. The actual surgical site doesn't hurt, but there's an odd sensation of deadness that persists in your underarm after lymph node removal. For a while you alternate between feeling like your underarm isn't there and a sensation quite a bit like sandpaper, with occasional shooting pains as the nerves try and work around the damage. All a bit unnerving (hehehe). The idea of keeping busy is put to a serious halt by very clear messages from my body to sit down... a lot. So I'm reading. If anyone has a favorite novel they'd like to suggest....losing myself in fiction does seem to help. Dr. Tokaz (oncologist) is very positive about the direction we're taking. He's sure that chemo will get any lingering cancer that may be missed with all of this lovely surgery. Dr. He has me taking herbs and Omega 3 capsules. Everyone tells me that my attitude is fabulous, that my willingness to be positive or at least pissed off is great. Okay...most of the time I maintain that. But the waiting.....argggggg.|W|P|112369850178411664|W|P|Ah...the waiting.|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com8/06/2005 01:31:00 PM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|I'm not feeling at all clever today, so this post will be a bit more stark than previous. The surgery happened. Unfortunately, in the process of removing the tumor, a secondary cancer was found. This one is a lobular carcinoma...less than a centimeter, which didn't show up on any of the extensive testing we did in the two weeks before. In addition, the lymph nodes came back positive for microscopic cancer invasion. All in all, this new sucks! Lobular carcinoma are much more serious, especially in younger women. They don't show up on mammograms, because the tissue density of premenopausal women hides the developing cancer. Due to this we have decided (my team of doctors and I) to do a bi-lateral mastectomy with immediate reconstructions. That means both sides. The chances of a lobular carcinoma developing in the other breast is very high, especially as I'm so young. I'm due to talk to the plastic surgeon on Monday and will probably (hopefully) be back in for surgery sometime next week. In the process they will also implant a portable catheter (portacath) to facilitate my chemotherapy. Radiation will obviously not be needed at this point. The right mastectomy will involve removing more of my lymph nodes in the hopes of finding some that are not infected. The left will be a simple mastectomy. I'm very down right now...mostly because I really just wanted the surgical part of this to be over. I hate hospitals, no matter how wonderful the staff, and I always feel like a victim rather than an active participant in my treatment. I want to move on to the treatment stage, where I can at least feel like I'm a part of getting free of this insidious disease.|W|P|112336084085590444|W|P|Post Surgical|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com8/04/2005 07:56:00 PM|W|P|Sam-I-Am|W|P|Quick update. We got home about 5pm this evening and Kelley's lying low to heal up. The surgery went well and the modified sentinel node procedure apparently was a unreserved success. Which means that the surgeon was confident that he got the right lymph nodes, and its all about the pathology report now. There was also a previously-unnoticed, smaller lump that got removed. Just in case there wasn't enough already riding on this pathology report, we'll hopefully find out about that too tommorow. All for now, g'night Sam|W|P|112321121491455924|W|P|Sam Chimes In|W|P|potatosculptor@gmail.com8/05/2005 08:09:00 AM|W|P| Adrian Cotter|W|P|unreserved success! those are words that are good to hear!8/03/2005 06:18:00 PM|W|P|Kelley Green|W|P|Though the MR guided biopsy seemed a bit reminiscent of the middle ages, it did show that the second 'mass' was actually nothing much. Benign. Yay! Dr. Tokaz (the oncologist) seems as wonderful as everyone assured us. And we found out that the tumor to be removed is hormone receptor positive. This is a very good thing as it means it should be less aggressive and that taking anti-estrogen drugs will significantly reduce my risks of recurrence. I went to the hospital to do all the intake paperwork, etc. There seemed to be some confusion however; the hospital was sure that I was checking in to the hospital, while the doctor was scheduling me for an outpatient procedure. I'll actually be coming home the same day, which I find reassuring. Hospitals are a great place to catch something nasty. :) So, tomorrow morning I go in really early and the radiologist there will inject me with a blue dye and a radioactive tracer to help determine which lymph nodes would be the most likely to pick up cancer cells that have strayed from the tumor site. ('Voodoo', you say. 'Well, yes madam, but whatever works.') I then hang out for a couple of hours and have a 'sentinel node biopsy with partial mastectomy'. Partial Mastectomy and Lumpectomy are the same thing, but I think they say it just to scare you. I come home and......we wait. I don't know how long the pathology will take on the lump they remove or the lymph nodes, but I'm hoping they give me a day to de-stress. This has been quite a ride. I probably won't be typing for a bit, but I'll have Sam post something as we know. Bright Blessings to you all....:)k|W|P|112311897031651611|W|P|Luck can turn.|W|P|kelley@grngrl.com