Hey guys, thanks for the good wishes. Since the 6th I've been feeling pretty much like I lost an argument with a Mack truck; haven't even gotten on a computer 'til now.
The surgery went well enough, although the plastic surgeon had some trouble with the reconstruction - I had a 'lat flap' done, where they take part of your latissimus dorsi muscle and pull it around to where it was never meant to be, and I guess my lat argued about the whole deal. Wouldn't you know ... be nice to your muscles, work them, develop them, and they get argumentative.
I had a positive lymph node on quick section (quick pathology check done on the sentinel node(s) during surgery) so they took a bunch more nodes. Then I found out some new things, such as that I'm allergic to Dilaudid and Percs. And the old medical jinx followed me - if you're a doc, you get the most 'interesting' complications. I'm so over the whole 'this NEVER happens - theoretically it can, but we never see it' thing. And being woken every 30 minutes 24/7 for blood pressure checks because it's fallen into the 'amoeba' range ...
So I had a bad few days but have now turned the corner and am feeling more human. Being home = finally able to get some sleep! I got a verbal on the path report last night and it seems there's only one positive node out of the ones they took, which (given there's at least one) is the best possible news at this point.
The plan from here is: rest, recover, catch up on my reading and assignments for this week, rinse, repeat. I see the onc next week and we'll settle on a plan; looks like chemo is happening but I shouldn't need radiation. Have to build my hemoglobin back up before chemo (it dropped like a stone during surgery) so hopefully I'll have a few weeks to do that first.
And, of course, I have to catch up on things here! I missed you guys!
