Wednesday was my consultation with the surgeon, which was a bit of a mess truth be told.
It was kind of mad with myself for going in with such a firm idea of what I wanted and expected them to do. Feedback for the care team is they should really set expectation sooner, so people know what they are going into and don’t make their own plan.
I’m having a single mastectomy booked in for Tuesday morning. (I really wanted a double which is where the disappointment came in). I was so mad that again no one was doing what I wanted or taking into consideration my body and what I really wanted to do with it. I threw a total tantrum in the room. After I calmed down, I had to apologise and was mortified at my outburst, but I just couldn’t contain it. I was fuming. My surgeon is the nicest woman ever though and explained that this was being done as a lifesaving procedure. If she took my other boob and anything went wrong, and I couldn’t have my chemo or I got an infection it could potentially kill me. I mean if you going to give a good argument, she nailed it. She explained that I couldn’t have any reconstruction now as I was having more chemo then radiotherapy, but when I came back to her after treatment, she would remove my right boob and do the reconstruction on both at the same time. I sucked it up and accepted that this was a good deal, and the outcome would be exactly what I wanted. Just not how I planned it. Best to keep myself alive at this stage though I guess.
There was a spanner thrown in the works when I asked if I would have my lymph nodes checked during surgery. She explained that I would be having an auxiliary node clearance to remove all of the lymph nodes in my armpit as the cancer had spread to them from what she could see from my MRI and CT scans. OK. Give me a second to take that in.
I’ve been upgraded to the stage 3 cancer club.
I left the appointment with more leaflets and exercises to do post-surgery and a nice foam tit to use after Tuesday. My head is still whizzing with all of this information. Pre op assessment is this morning, then the weekend to take in this life changing surgery. I don’t know if I should be sad I’m losing my left boob after 35 years of it being there, or glad to see the back of the thing that is killing me. Head blag!
