They are gone...

It's been 4 days since I've been breast free as well as, hopefully, cancer free.

Let me start by saying, I feel pretty damn good. I keep thinking that maybe I'm in denial... Should the pain be this minimal? Should I really be up and at it, not laying in bed crying??

Now let me go back to the day of my surgery... Things were a bit surreal.... Well, more than a bit. It started with me being late... So, I got to avoid the hours of waiting in pre op! Everyone seemed to know my name and what I was there for... First thing was nuclear medicine. There, they injected dye in my lymph nodes with four needles via my nipple, no anesthesia. Little breast massages followed to work the dye through... I guess the private last moment I had with my husband was now voided because this Dr just had the last hurrah my breasts were ever gonna experience ... Bastard. After an hour of pictures, I got to get dressed again and the guy actually said, "oh yeah, that's right! I Forgot you wore glasses" =/

Fast forward through scrubbing down, a million of the same questions by every member of the surgery team, kicking Brad out of pre op because he was literally shaking, writing an "l" and "r" on my breasts so they wouldn't get mixed up.... And then waking up.

There was a nurse there telling me something important. All I could feel was the lack of weight on my chest... I touched it when she walked away... And broke down. They were gone! Just like that.... They were there, and now they aren't! Where did they go?? In a waste disposal bag, in a trash can? I was sobbing so hard that two nurses freaked out and were screaming for my nurse, "something's wrong, she's crying, get her pain medicine!"...

My nurse kept asking me where it hurt... Can I breath okay? Is it my throat??

No, I was just gasping for air because I was hyperventilating... Because they were here and now they are just gone, I told her. She hugged me softly and rubbed my back... Told me she was my best friend today and I could cry all I want.

By the time I got to a room and Brad was there, everything was okay... He was smiling from ear to ear, so happy to see me and to see I was the same old rock as always. Happy for the preliminary news that my nodes were cancer free. His happiness made me even more confident in my own. The Dr told us that he had a change of heart about the total skin removal after the nodes turned out negative... So he did a skin sparring mastectomy on both sides. Visually it's not what I was prepared for, but Brad is so confident in me being rid of cancer that he doesn't even seem to care about the new look of things.

So today, I feel pretty damn good!