Lymphedema? Yay! I mean yea

It turns out that yes, I do have lymphedema, aka swelling caused when you have lymph nodes removed. I am now regularly sporting this ravishing compression garment, known in the biz as a sleeve, or as I will refer to it from now on, The Sleeve:

Office selfie. Homemade timesheeet in the background; important numbers to remember business card in the background.

On Monday I went to the physical therapist, Genny, and sat down with her to prove to both of us that I was not swelling, I was just stiff and in recovery from my surgery, because I only lost 4 nodes in my surgery and my friend Dayan lost like 17 and she never had lymphedema, so there.

Five minutes with a tape measure proved that the circumference of my right arm, from wrist to shoulder, is significantly bigger than my left. And, as she pointed out, I am left-handed.

In a way it was a relief to find out that I had lymphedema because it meant that I needed to stop favoring my right arm--no more  injunctions against lifting"nothing heavier than a dinner plate." The best thing I can do, apparently, is to live my life, complete with The Sleeve ($75) and The Gauntlet ($35). I haven't broken out the gauntlet yet because I am afraid Jamie will co-opt it as he tends to do with any of my possessions he finds attractive or useful, and I mean, GAUNTLETS, come on.

Anyway, please note prices. After I purchased them (at a locally-owned pharmacy, of course), I received a very polite text from Andrew:

I'm sure we should try to get reimbursed for these via our so-far excellent insurance, but I'm so stressed out I'm not going to try to do that anytime soon. Which is another reason I'm going to start wearing the gauntlet. Will add a picture of that at another time.

I have noticed, as I walk through the Information Commons in Ellis Library, a few startled looks when students take in the long, "nude" colored elastic band on my bare arm. I thought it was because I was cute or something, but then I realized--it's The Sleeve. It's a sick-person accessory, or it just looks strange, or whatever. I'm not sure. Lymphedema can be (is?) permanent, so it might be something I'm adjusting to for good, along with foobs and a repeated realization of my own mortality. But I've been stretching "to the point of pain, not through it," per Genny, and it seems to be working.

Besides, I start chemo next Thursday and I am too busy being terrified about puking, being sick in front of my kid, losing my hair, and being poor to care too, too much about swelling right now.

Mastectomy day & expanders

I had quite a collection of bracelets before the day was over.

So today I am nearly four weeks out from my bilateral mastectomy (meaning both of my boobs were removed). I just want to record a few memories from that day.

• We, meaning Andrew & I, and my parents, went first to Ellis Fischel for some imaging stuff and onto the Women & Children's Hospital here in CoMO. The last time I lived here, this was Columbia Regional Hospital, but I guess the University of Missouri bought it. They seem to be doing a lot of that these days. 
• Anyway, my initial appointment went fine. I was injected with radioactive dye (radioactive! Jamie loved that idea), which hurt like doo-dah. Then I was directed to a narrow bed, raised up in the air, and photographed to make sure the dye was doing its work. 
• Then my caffeine headache kicked in and it really was the worst part of the day. MY BOOBS WERE CUT OFF AND THE WORST THING WAS NO COFFEE. I couldn't have anything to eat or drink anything and my actual surgery wasn't scheduled until 12pm. I was so cranky I almost forgot to be terrified.
• I just want to take a brief moment to note that, at age 45, I still cannot work my television remote. 
• And so if the worst thing about a bilateral mastectomy is the caffeine headache beforehand, I think it's safe to say that things went pretty well. Namely, the tumor that was initially discovered via 3D mammogram & biopsy in Washington, PA was all the cancer that my awesome surgeon, Victoria Wu, and her compadres, found. Nothing in the lymph nodes (in the end, they took 4). 
• If you don't remember, the tumor was in my right breast. I was somewhat gratified to learn that I did have precancerous cells in my left breast because at first I wanted a lumpectomy, then a single (unilateral?) mastectomy. But nothing malignant, which I am so happy to hear. Maybe the bilateral mastectomy prevented cancer from showing up on the left side--maybe not. But I am happy with my decision, which is the goal that survivors I have talked with tell me to work towards.
• So sometime in the evening, maybe 8pm, I awoke with a huge weight on my chest and looking up at my smiling, sweet parents and husband. It was like I was a newborn baby. Hello there!
• Turned out that the reason for the huge weight was mostly bandages, but not only. To reconstruct my breasts, my first set of foobs were inserted after the mastectomy. 
• These Phase One foobs are called expanders and they are plastic shells that feel like a plate of armor on my chest. "Mommy," Jamie said when he tried to hug me, "your milkies are hard. Why?" Observe:  

From http://reference.medscape.com/features/slideshow/breast-reconstruction.
This thing is inside me. It is indeed hard. And sometimes they hurt. 

• These nifty gadgets were inserted beneath my pec muscles and I now look and feel like a football star in training. Every week or so I go to my plastic surgeon, who is also amazing, and he or one of his residents, or both, take a side and inject me with 60 ccs of saline solution. It doesn't hurt, but you need to sit up slooooowly after they do it, or you might pass out. Just saying. 
• And at the same time that they inserted the expanders, Dr. Colbert (his name is Stephen Colbert, for reals, and I have a little crush on him) and his team puffed me up like a cancerous mushroom with all kinds of good fluids, which then drained out through four (4) of these, two sprouting from my each of sides like water balloons:

JP Drains. Empty thrice a day and record volume. I got the first 2 out after a week and the last 2 after two weeks. 

• So I guess officially I was an arachnid for about 2 weeks. Hmm.
• Once the drains were out and I was off the Percoset-Valium combo that made getting my boobs removed, peeing in a plastic bucket, and generally losing a lot of self-control bearable, I went back to work. For 2 whole hours. That was a day of victory, Wednesday, September 10, 2014. And then I took a three-hour nap afterwards. 

That is all for now. More to come re: lymphedema: yea or nay? and CHEMO. Yep. There it is.