#35 It's Nothing

Well thought I better just let everyone know how I went with my Ultra sound last week! I guess I have given it away in the title of this blog post........

Findings: region of concern failed to reveal any underlying hernia, mass or collection. Okay so what the fuck is it then?? No one seems to be able to answer that question.

On the upside I am feeling so much better this week since I have stopped most of my physio exercises  (not all) but the ones that seem to aggravate my abdomen. So onward & upward I go towards recovery!

Thanks for listening!

#34 The Great Escape

The Great Belly Button Escape is on! After yet another visit to my doctor it seems further tests are needed! The escaping belly button, is getting worse. My specialist said it was a pre hernia and that I had to keep an eye on it & try to strengthen the muscle area. So back to the Rehab Physio I tootled........ they gave me some more exercises & changed some of the ones I was already doing (*cough* not doing as it hurt too much.)  I then spent the next several days doing the said exercises, until I could barely walk. Doing anything that everyone does in their day to day lives was proving very uncomfortable. So after discussing this with hubby, I decided to stop the exercises from the physio again and see if it improved.

Well it did, but I think the damage may have been done! Now not only did I have a bulge in my abdomen, but it had grown. So today I went back to my GP (who is so good & thorough) she is sending me off for another Ultra sound as she believes it is now a hernia! Tomorrow after work I am having the Ultra sound and hope to get some sort of result. Yikes! Hoping for something that can be resolved.

Wish me luck!

#33 Mother's Day Classic.......

Well it's only been 2.5 weeks since my nipples were created, but it feels like so much longer. After having the procedure, I was told not do exercise other than an easy walk. I had signed up to do the "Mothers Day Classic" two days after my procedure, so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to walk it or not. "The Mother's Day Classic" is an event you can run or walk 8km to raise money for Breast Cancer Research.  So I'm sure you can all understand that I was passionate about doing this. So when mother's day came along I dragged the boys off into South Bank Brisbane for the event! It was an early start and a bit fresh to say the least, but a lovely morning with the sun shining. I felt like I could manage the walk, so we went ahead and did the 8km. There were so many people there dressed up in various costumes as well as just team T-shirts like we had. It was a very up beat event.  Afterward, we had a lovely brunch at South Bank before heading home! I had a great Mother's Day!

My three boys & I before the event!

We even got on the Today show with this shot! :-)

At the finish line!

That evening I managed to get water under my dressings and had to head into the hospital the next day to have them re dressed. This gave me an opportunity to see what they were looking like. They looked surprisingly good. I was very bruised but otherwise all looked good.

A week later I had the dressings removed, finally, and was given some spongy things to put over my nips so they don't get squashed. These I have to wear for about 4 weeks. They are horrible as they leave indents on my breasts (Flaps) and show through my clothing. So at the moment I am being very selective about what I wear. It's a pain in the arse, but will be over with soon. Tattooing will happen in a couple of months.

All in all the nipples look pretty real, but I will definitely look "excited to see you" on a permanent basis! Could be embarrassing.....................

#32 Nips

Well it has finally happened!
I tripped off to see my plastic fantastic yesterday, where I sat in his waiting room for what seemed like hours. I always seem to be waiting in Doctor's rooms these days. Fortunately I had Kerri Sackville's book "When my husband does the dishes" to keep me occupied.  I was sitting there laughing to myself and hubby would keep asking what was so funny! My response annoyed him "secret woman's business"! But I digress... Just buy the book and you will know what I mean!

I watched an array of people coming out of his room with noses covered in bandages, arms in slings, leaving me wondering if I was in the correct place to have new nipples made! Finally my name was called and in I went to a familiar room where I had to strip off my top half & hop on the bed. There were two nurses there, the lovely Laura who has been at most of my appointment & another. I was given some local anesthetic to numb my breasts and then a sheet with a hole in it was put over my breast as they prepared me for the procedure. As he began I could feel him cutting into me (Not in a painful way) just the pressure it was weird, then came the stitching. They chattered amongst themselves (the nurses & Dr) throughout most of the procedure asking me the occasional question. I asked about the tattooing that would come after my nipples have healed and the Dr asked if i wanted to meet the lady who does it, as she was around at the time. So in comes this lovely woman, who asks if I mind her being there during my procedure. Which I didn't at all. She had never seen the procedure done, even though she does the tattooing, which I thought was interesting.
We chattered while the Dr did the second nipple. She was telling me how she has tattooed flowers on some women, she said she should learn how to do other tattoo's in case someone wanted something different. I think by the look on my face she realised that wasn't going to be me, she laughed and said she could just do a nipple... Phew!!

When he the plastic surgeon had finished I was allowed to look at my lovely new nipples with a mirror before they applied the dressings. Not really sure what I thought, everyone was saying what a wonderful job he had done, all I could think of was wow, all those stitches and blood....and these little nobs! I hope they look better next week when the dressings come off!

I had a list of do's and don't s given to me & away I went. I  needed a wine tonight!

#31 Lumps and bumps................

Visited my GP three times in the last two months.  Not because I was ill, I have just had other business to attend to. Yes, even after all the cancer crap, other stuff is still going on!

Haemochromatosis, for instance, I have to keep a check of my Iron levels, making sure they do not get too high. Pap smear, still have to go there as well, luckily we can still locate my Vjayjay...not that it's moved :-)  Then there is the bulge! Somewhere between my stomach scar and my Vjayjay (I love that word).  The appearance of this bulge had my GP thinking it may have been a hernia.  She had sent me off for an Ultra Sound, which found nothing. Personally I think it may be my old belly button trying to escape! She said that things internally will have been moved around a bit & she won't always know where things are anymore!!  So I need to speak with my surgeon about the bulge.

Talking with her, we discussed my surgery, I told her that if I had known exactly what I would go through in the short term I may have chosen another form of reconstruction. She agreed that knowing what can happen and what can get moved around internally, she probably would not go through with this surgery herself! She would have had the mastectomy & then had implants at a later stage!

NOW SHE TELLS ME!!

I'm not saying that this surgery was the wrong thing to do, and certainly in the long term I'm sure I will look back and wonder what was I banging on about! Anyone looking at having this procedure should just go in with their eyes open, knowing that muscle is taken from you and will never be replaced. 12 months is a long recovery and I didn't realise how long that would seem, or how frustrating it would be. I have met a woman who is four years post surgery and she is very happy with everything.

So onward I go, about to have new nipples and tattooing. I've secretly always wanted a tattoo. I look forward to my future. I just hope my old belly button doesn't pop out. Having two would just be embarrassing! :-)

#30 Belly Buttons, Vajayjay's & bikini lines.....

Now I don't want my blogs to get all too serious & boring even if we are dealing with a serious issue. I have had a lot of laughs with my husband, sisters & friends over this time, and I'm going to share some of those with you now. Firstly though I need to give you the Wikipedia description of my surgery so you can properly understand what I have had done, & why I have no muscle strength in my abdomen area.

Wikipedia definition;
A TRAM flap is a surgical procedure, most commonly employed for breast reconstruction. TRAM flap stands for Transverse Rectus Abdominis Myocutaneous flap. In this procedure, the breast with cancer is surgically removed, and a portion of the abdomen tissue group, including skin, adipose tissues, minor muscles and connective tissues, is taken from the patient's abdomen and transplanted onto the breast site. This procedure is preferred by some breast cancer patients because it combines a mastectomy with a abdominoplasty, and allow the breast to be reconstructed with one's own tissues instead of a foreign implant. It is contraindicated for patients who need abdominal strength, since the muscle removal weakens the abdomen.

Apparently my doctor's forgot to mention (or I didn't hear) they were taking muscles from my abdomen & obviously being able to get out of bed, or out of a chair wasn't something I needed to do anymore!! Of course I could, and perhaps should, have googled the operation I was having. But then I probably wouldn't have gone ahead with it, which is why I didn't (Google) at the time. I just needed to know the bare minimum so as to get through each stage as it happened.

Now that I have some muscles missing from my abdomen, there are a lot of things I cannot do & some that I will never be able to do again (or so they tell me), like sit ups for instance. I will never be able to do them again. Sit ups were something I've never been able to do, so you can understand how devastated I was about that :-) When I go the the hair Salon having my hair washed is lovely until the I have to get up from the chair, I scared the shit out of my hairdresser the first time when I fell sideways off the chair as she was raising it. Then there is swimming in our pool, I can't lift my feet off the bottom to swim as I feel like my stomach will split open, so I just stand around in the pool like a Nana. Getting out of bed involves a battle roll across the bed until my feet or some other part of me hit the ground. This part of the recovery I wasn't prepared for & I'm finding very frustrating. However I continue to go to Physio and do my Core work & feel a little improvement as time goes on.

There was a lot I hadn't taken in when the doctor's were speaking to me, and I believe this is common for cancer patients. For instance, no one told me I would loose my belly button and have it replace with a fake!  Hubby tells me, that I was advised about this. I don't remember and was shocked when I realised I had a new one. When my dressings were removed and I got to see the final outcome of the surgery, I realised a lot of things had been moved around. My real belly button was now tucked neatly somewhere closer to my Vajayjay than it should ever be, and as they have tucked it in they also pulled up my bikini line so high Hubby now asks when I'm getting my chest waxed!

A few days after surgery,whileI was in hospital, I finally got to see my new breasts! What a shock!! I screamed to my sister to come have a look (as she was visiting at the time) because I thought they had placed one of my new breasts in the center of my chest! WTF?? My lovely sister (looking very worried I might add) said "No it's not, it's all fine." (I found out later that she was actually worried about it too). However all of this was just swelling and in fact the surgeon has done an excellent job with the reconstruction. Even putting on deodorant can be a bit hit & miss as I have no feeling under one arm pit, and am never sure if I have hit the mark or not. Just waiting for someone to let me know!

So off to the Physio I head again with my pretend belly button & freshly waxed chest to continue my journey through this god awful disease, but with a smile and a sense of humor. God I love life!

#29 How Dense are you?

In a previous blog I have mentioned that I had very dense breast tissue. This was the major factor in having to have bilateral mastectomy when I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. I have recently been pointed towards a Ted Lecture regarding this issue! Please take the time to watch this lecture; http://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_rhodes.html 

Mammogram technology is currently the major breast cancer diagnostic tool in Australia & America. Mammogram is a very important tool to uncover change in many women's breast, however if you have very dense breast tissue mammogram is unlikely to uncover tumors at an early stage. This is crucial for survival.

How do you know if you have dense breast tissue? If you don't, and most of us wouldn't know, ask your doctor and read your mammography report. Dense breast tissue is a stronger risk factor than having a mother or sister with Breast Cancer. Even though this lecture is out of the US, I had a call from a Brisbane Breast Cancer nurse recently who had just gotten back from a conference that talked about the relationship between breast density and breast cancer. So it looks as if Australia is catching up on this issue.

If you notice a change in your breast INSIST on additional imaging not just mammogram! Ultra sound & MRI can assist in finding tumors (It probably saved my life), until a new imaging such as Deborah Rhodes MBI technology becomes available.