Busy week

This was a busy week.

On Monday, I met with a personal trainer for help with ideas for stretching out my upper body and catching my lower body up after sitting on my a#^ for a month. She was very kind. My reconstructive surgeon stressed last week that I take 3 more weeks to heal and my trainer ("L" we'll call her) was great about working with what I could do. How sick is this - I didn't even break a sweat, but was limping the next day... go figure. I feel like my upper body is healing well and that my posture and range of motion is coming back. My lower body has no excuse. We haven't set up a schedule yet - but I am motivated to keep my body in shape the best I am able as it will help through the chemo process.

Tuesday, I went in for surgery to have a port put into my upper right chest area for easy access to my veins. It was a full surgery with anesthesia, but I believe the whole surgery took approximately 15 minutes. The doctor said it was a success, which was good to hear. The port is a small box shaped thing about an inch or so square that sits completely under my skin. The doctors are able to access the port directly to draw blood, run chemo, etc., so that I am not continuing to have IVs run into veins every time its needed.

The surgery prep itself was a great example of why a port is a good idea. They tried twice, unsuccessfully, to place an IV in my left arm and finally gave up and moved to the right side. It hurt. Surgery itself was great and I continue to sing the praises of the entire Abbott staff. I wasn't feeling so well that night or the next morning and was sick from the anesthesia, so took anti-nausea medication. I was fine by the afternoon.

Thursday was the day for my second reconstructive visit and chemo session one.

My first stop was at the reconstructive surgeon's office for my second boob expander fill. This time they added 75 cc's to each side, which is more than the 50 they added last time. Again, they feel a bit tight and are very hard, unlike anything I am used to so far in life. I am not scheduled to go back in for another 3 weeks, which is fine by me. I was a C/D cup and always wished that I was either smaller or perkier, so now that I am down to a solid A/B (probably a B after today), I am really enjoying my new profile! They stay where I want them and make me look a bit thinner I have been told! This is great! I will go back to a C eventually, but no rush really - the chemo slows them down anyway so I am going to enjoy the lack of bounce while I can. That was probably "too much information," but you could consider this whole blog to be that, so oh well.

The most exciting part of the week is that I finally got the chemo treatments going. I started taking a steroid yesterday for reactionary purposes, which they gave me also today through an IV and that I will follow up with tomorrow. I received an anti-nausea medication via IV with a prescription to pick up tomorrow for the oral follow up to that. I also have another anti-nausea medication on hand (which I ended up using for the port surgery on Tuesday), so I shouldn't be too sick. They administered all the bags separately thorough my nifty new port and all 5 or 6 bags took approximately 5 hours. I had company there which made the time go by quickly and also feel very comfortable in the room. As I write this, I am tired, but not feeling too bad. I am not sure what to expect over the next few days as it affects everyone differently, so I am curious what my weekend will have in store for me. Either way - one down and five more to go!

Carrie