Flashback: Surgery

I started this blog a week or so before chemo started.  And I've flashed back to the beginning of April.  One more piece needs to be filled in:  surgery.

On April 8, I had my surgery:  a lumpectomy plus sentinel node dissection/biopsy.  I had two pre-operative procedures before surgery:  

First, was the wire localization procedure.  

Second was the radioactive dye injection in preparation for the sentinel node dissection.

I had read up on these procedures on breast cancer bulletin boards (I do NOT recommend doing this -- these boards can put the fear of God in you needlessly).  And many women had pain with the dye injection but most did not mention pain with the wire localization.   So, naturally, I was terrified of the injection but not the other.

When I first got to the hospital I was given a warm robe and valium.  I was escorted around by someone whose job it is to escort you around.  

Off to the wire localization where I was not permitted to bring my mom in with me.  It was a small, stuffy, hot room, and the procedure felt like someone had placed a coat hanger in me and was yanking it around.  Which essentially is what it was, except it the coat hanger was a thin wire and I'm hoping sterilized.  I very nearly passed out.

Then, on to the nuclear medicine department for the dye injection and lymphoscintigraphy.  The night before I had put my numbing patch on the left nipple.  The doctor came in and he looked to be about 16 years old.  I inquired if he had ever done this procedure before.  He assured me he had.  In fact, he did a very good job of it.  Each time he injected the dye (several spots around the nipple) there was a few seconds of burning pain and then the pain subsided.  Definitely not as painful as the wire placement.

Finally, back to the surgical area where my nightmare began.  In my pre-surgery meeting with the doctor, I had expressed fear about three things:  the gas mask, waking up with a tube in my throat, and feeling nauseous from the anesthesia.   The very short story is that my IV broke off, and rather than communicate this to me, and allow me to decide whether to go through the trouble and pain of having a second IV put in, the anesthesiologist unilaterally decided to put me out through the gas mask instead.  I was fighting with the person who tried to put the mask on, and they had several people holding me down.  I remember the anesthesiologist, rather than explaining to me what was going on, lying to me and telling me it was just oxygen.  It was horrible, and I woke up (at least with no tube in my throat) but nauseous and still smelling the sweet gas that they used to put me out.

It took several hours for me to get home, probably another hour to make it up the stairs, and several days to start feeling normal again and stop smelling that smell.  But, made it to a local park four days later to see the Virginia bluebells.  Whew.