Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Surgery update
Here's the big news: CLEAN LYMPH NODES!!
Here's the whole story:
We got to my mother's room about 10 minutes after she'd been brought in from recovery; we would have been there 45 minutes earlier, but my husband made us late as always, using one of his favorite ploys, dragging his feet until we were a little bit late and then insisting he had to take a shower, grrrrrrrrr. Anyways, she was groggy but apparently ok; the nurses hadn't been told anything, so one of them went off to initiate the protracted procedure to get the surgeon on the phone.
There was more to be concerned over than previously posted about, because last night my mother belatedly revealed another couple of news flashes; 2 new lumps had come out that didn't feel "owie" like the lipomas (harmless fatty skin tumors) and thus were suspect, and there'd been a lump for years near the site of the tumor that they'd decided to remove as well since it was right in the same area and better safe than sorry... there wasn't much cause for worry about the latter, but if the former were new cancer that'd obviously be VERY bad. Finally, the doctor was on the line, and, after several minutes of the nurses fumbling around trying to find a working phone and a working place to plug it into, I was talking to the person with the answers. She told me that:
1) The surgery went smoothly.
2) The 2 new lumps WERE lipomas, NOT cancer.
3) The old lump was just a fatty mass.
4) The lymph nodes were clean, which means that the cancer is very unlikely to have spread beyond the tumor.
5) They still had to test "the margins," which seems to mean checking the extra tissue that was removed from around the tumor to see if it contains any cancer cells; we won't know the results of that one for about a week.
6) The reconstructive surgery should lead to a fairly normal-looking breast once it's healed, but it'll be noticeably smaller than the other one, so she'll need to either wear a pad in that side of her bra to balance them out or have further plastic surgery to even them out; she won't like that, and I don't think she knows, so she hasn't been told that part of it yet.
Another thing I learned today is that someone who has surgery and doesn't have anyone to come in and help them is in for a rough time; my mother was too weak to do anything for herself the whole 6 hours we were there, and if I hadn't been there she would have been desperately thirsty with a glass of ice chips within view that she couldn't get any of... the modern torture of Tantalus (who was cursed to be eternally thirsty and standing in water that receded if he tried to drink it). In addition, to fight the looming threat of pneumonia, she was supposed to use this device that you suck air through every 15 minutes, and she wouldn't have been able to do that unassisted either. Since she couldn't think clearly enough to page a nurse, and the nurses were disinclined to leave the gossip session at their station to wander over when paged in any case, she'd have been in bad shape with everything from getting more pain meds to going to the bathroom; we couldn't even get her some juice without 1st my aunt, and then I (who's willing to be far less polite) marching down there and standing over them to pressure them into getting out of their chairs.
There were FOUR us there to supposedly be helping her out; realistically, the men weren't expected to do much besides run the occasional errand, but my mother's sister had flown a long way to be there... and guess who did 99% of the work the entire time? While my aunt either hovered around or was with the guys in the hallway, I fed my mother a constant stream of ice chips, adjusted her ice packs and blankets (neither of which stayed in place for more than 30 seconds at a time although she was barely moving), coaxed her into using the air-sucking thing, and tried to make cheerful conversation.
My mother didn't seem to be suffering much at 1st, but when she started getting some more pain we had a struggle with her because she was hesitant about taking more painkillers, for fear they'd make her queasy; she only gave in after 2 nurses told her that she'd have to take a bigger dose if she waited until the pain got worse. She was brave about choosing to be helped out of bed in the lengthy process necessary to get her into the bathroom with all the tubes and wires in her rather than using a bedpan, though, I've gotta give her that.
At one point, she complained that her head felt hot; I put a hand on it, and her hair (it's grown back a couple of inches already, amazingly) was soaked with sweat in the back. I sent my husband to arm-twist a nurse into bringing a fresh pillow to replace the soggy one, and got a bunch of paper towels from the bathroom to try to dry my mother's hair. Because she can't shower for a couple of days, I asked her if she wanted me to get wet towels and wash off as much sweat as I could, and she was able to hold her head up long enough for me to do that and blot her dry again. When the nurse finally arrived with a new pillow, she airily informed us that this heavy sweating of the head is common after surgery; why we weren't told this, and why the nurses weren't checking for it so that action could be taken if it happened, remains a mystery. Luckily, *I* was there, and kept swapping the pillows regularly to keep her discomfort to a minimum.
Another shocker was that they explained to her how to order her dinner when she clearly wasn't really understanding, and then NEVER checked to make sure SOMEONE put her order in before the deadline; I try to convince myself that they made a call to verify that we had, but I can't make myself believe it. If she'd been there alone, even if they HAD ordered dinner for her she couldn't have eaten any of it without help; it took me the better part of an hour to feed it to her one tiny bit at a time, and you KNOW that no employee of that hospital was going to volunteer for something like that.
The choosing of the dinner items from the "clear liquids" menu that was approved for her to have was one of the few things my aunt made any attempt to participate in; she was more of a hindrance than a help, though, because she kept trying to get my mother to agree to have jello, which she doesn't much care for, when it was obvious to ME that a far better choice for her "semi-solid but really liquid, sort of" item was the fruit ice, since she'd complained repeatedly of how irritated her throat and roof of her mouth were from having the tube in there... since I have the greater force of personality, MY meal plan got agreed to, and I was proven right when my mother kept saying over and over how soothing the fruit ice was to all that abraded area.
When we finally left about 8PM to let her rest, she was still so groggy that if we didn't keep talking to or interacting with her she'd start fading in and out of awareness; it floors me to think that the original plan was for her to GO HOME today... since when do they send people home who can't keep their eyes open for more than a couple of minutes at a time? Even before we found out how slow her recovery from anesthesia would be, we were all horrified that they thought it was ok to send an elderly cancer patient home the same day of a fairly major surgery; they changed their plan, with no explanation given, last night, but even if they hadn't they obviously couldn't have sent her home anyways. She's supposed to be coming home tomorrow, but that'll depend on if she can move around on her own and so forth; there's no way to know in advance, so we'll just have to see.
Looking back on it, the scariest moment of the day was when I 1st got to her room and looked in and saw her; I honestly didn't recognize her until she croaked "hi." I'd never seen her without the wig, which closely matches how she's worn her hair for years, and was unprepared to see her with hair that was not only very short but GRAY (she's always colored it). I also hadn't seen her without a full face of makeup in a while (which was significant both because heavy makeup makes a big difference and because her eyebrows haven't grown back much yet), and certainly NEVER with her face all slack like that... my husband later said that he'd been surprised too, because it didn't look like her at all. As time passed, her face regained its mobility and normal contours, but it was still like looking at a vaguely familiar stranger rather than a family member.
It was a long, exhausting day, but she's past the worst of it... assuming she doesn't get an infection, pneumonia or some other complication. Once she's fully recovered from the surgery, she'll have radiation to, hopefully, knock out any stray cancer cells that might have escaped detection; for now, though, she's going to spend a couple of weeks healing and resting.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to send her some positive thoughts.
Here's the whole story:
We got to my mother's room about 10 minutes after she'd been brought in from recovery; we would have been there 45 minutes earlier, but my husband made us late as always, using one of his favorite ploys, dragging his feet until we were a little bit late and then insisting he had to take a shower, grrrrrrrrr. Anyways, she was groggy but apparently ok; the nurses hadn't been told anything, so one of them went off to initiate the protracted procedure to get the surgeon on the phone.
There was more to be concerned over than previously posted about, because last night my mother belatedly revealed another couple of news flashes; 2 new lumps had come out that didn't feel "owie" like the lipomas (harmless fatty skin tumors) and thus were suspect, and there'd been a lump for years near the site of the tumor that they'd decided to remove as well since it was right in the same area and better safe than sorry... there wasn't much cause for worry about the latter, but if the former were new cancer that'd obviously be VERY bad. Finally, the doctor was on the line, and, after several minutes of the nurses fumbling around trying to find a working phone and a working place to plug it into, I was talking to the person with the answers. She told me that:
1) The surgery went smoothly.
2) The 2 new lumps WERE lipomas, NOT cancer.
3) The old lump was just a fatty mass.
4) The lymph nodes were clean, which means that the cancer is very unlikely to have spread beyond the tumor.
5) They still had to test "the margins," which seems to mean checking the extra tissue that was removed from around the tumor to see if it contains any cancer cells; we won't know the results of that one for about a week.
6) The reconstructive surgery should lead to a fairly normal-looking breast once it's healed, but it'll be noticeably smaller than the other one, so she'll need to either wear a pad in that side of her bra to balance them out or have further plastic surgery to even them out; she won't like that, and I don't think she knows, so she hasn't been told that part of it yet.
Another thing I learned today is that someone who has surgery and doesn't have anyone to come in and help them is in for a rough time; my mother was too weak to do anything for herself the whole 6 hours we were there, and if I hadn't been there she would have been desperately thirsty with a glass of ice chips within view that she couldn't get any of... the modern torture of Tantalus (who was cursed to be eternally thirsty and standing in water that receded if he tried to drink it). In addition, to fight the looming threat of pneumonia, she was supposed to use this device that you suck air through every 15 minutes, and she wouldn't have been able to do that unassisted either. Since she couldn't think clearly enough to page a nurse, and the nurses were disinclined to leave the gossip session at their station to wander over when paged in any case, she'd have been in bad shape with everything from getting more pain meds to going to the bathroom; we couldn't even get her some juice without 1st my aunt, and then I (who's willing to be far less polite) marching down there and standing over them to pressure them into getting out of their chairs.
There were FOUR us there to supposedly be helping her out; realistically, the men weren't expected to do much besides run the occasional errand, but my mother's sister had flown a long way to be there... and guess who did 99% of the work the entire time? While my aunt either hovered around or was with the guys in the hallway, I fed my mother a constant stream of ice chips, adjusted her ice packs and blankets (neither of which stayed in place for more than 30 seconds at a time although she was barely moving), coaxed her into using the air-sucking thing, and tried to make cheerful conversation.
My mother didn't seem to be suffering much at 1st, but when she started getting some more pain we had a struggle with her because she was hesitant about taking more painkillers, for fear they'd make her queasy; she only gave in after 2 nurses told her that she'd have to take a bigger dose if she waited until the pain got worse. She was brave about choosing to be helped out of bed in the lengthy process necessary to get her into the bathroom with all the tubes and wires in her rather than using a bedpan, though, I've gotta give her that.
At one point, she complained that her head felt hot; I put a hand on it, and her hair (it's grown back a couple of inches already, amazingly) was soaked with sweat in the back. I sent my husband to arm-twist a nurse into bringing a fresh pillow to replace the soggy one, and got a bunch of paper towels from the bathroom to try to dry my mother's hair. Because she can't shower for a couple of days, I asked her if she wanted me to get wet towels and wash off as much sweat as I could, and she was able to hold her head up long enough for me to do that and blot her dry again. When the nurse finally arrived with a new pillow, she airily informed us that this heavy sweating of the head is common after surgery; why we weren't told this, and why the nurses weren't checking for it so that action could be taken if it happened, remains a mystery. Luckily, *I* was there, and kept swapping the pillows regularly to keep her discomfort to a minimum.
Another shocker was that they explained to her how to order her dinner when she clearly wasn't really understanding, and then NEVER checked to make sure SOMEONE put her order in before the deadline; I try to convince myself that they made a call to verify that we had, but I can't make myself believe it. If she'd been there alone, even if they HAD ordered dinner for her she couldn't have eaten any of it without help; it took me the better part of an hour to feed it to her one tiny bit at a time, and you KNOW that no employee of that hospital was going to volunteer for something like that.
The choosing of the dinner items from the "clear liquids" menu that was approved for her to have was one of the few things my aunt made any attempt to participate in; she was more of a hindrance than a help, though, because she kept trying to get my mother to agree to have jello, which she doesn't much care for, when it was obvious to ME that a far better choice for her "semi-solid but really liquid, sort of" item was the fruit ice, since she'd complained repeatedly of how irritated her throat and roof of her mouth were from having the tube in there... since I have the greater force of personality, MY meal plan got agreed to, and I was proven right when my mother kept saying over and over how soothing the fruit ice was to all that abraded area.
When we finally left about 8PM to let her rest, she was still so groggy that if we didn't keep talking to or interacting with her she'd start fading in and out of awareness; it floors me to think that the original plan was for her to GO HOME today... since when do they send people home who can't keep their eyes open for more than a couple of minutes at a time? Even before we found out how slow her recovery from anesthesia would be, we were all horrified that they thought it was ok to send an elderly cancer patient home the same day of a fairly major surgery; they changed their plan, with no explanation given, last night, but even if they hadn't they obviously couldn't have sent her home anyways. She's supposed to be coming home tomorrow, but that'll depend on if she can move around on her own and so forth; there's no way to know in advance, so we'll just have to see.
Looking back on it, the scariest moment of the day was when I 1st got to her room and looked in and saw her; I honestly didn't recognize her until she croaked "hi." I'd never seen her without the wig, which closely matches how she's worn her hair for years, and was unprepared to see her with hair that was not only very short but GRAY (she's always colored it). I also hadn't seen her without a full face of makeup in a while (which was significant both because heavy makeup makes a big difference and because her eyebrows haven't grown back much yet), and certainly NEVER with her face all slack like that... my husband later said that he'd been surprised too, because it didn't look like her at all. As time passed, her face regained its mobility and normal contours, but it was still like looking at a vaguely familiar stranger rather than a family member.
It was a long, exhausting day, but she's past the worst of it... assuming she doesn't get an infection, pneumonia or some other complication. Once she's fully recovered from the surgery, she'll have radiation to, hopefully, knock out any stray cancer cells that might have escaped detection; for now, though, she's going to spend a couple of weeks healing and resting.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to send her some positive thoughts.
