Thursday June 1st, on the day of the surgery, Gwen dropped us off at 6 am at Faulkner Hospital. My surgery was scheduled at 7 am.
After registration they whisked me away to prep for surgery: to hear about all the risks, to sign all the paperwork, to meet the surgery team, and --- most importantly--- to get the IV in. I always have trouble with the last one...
I am fair skinned with lovely blue veins, which are oh so deceptive, but no one was interested in listening to me. The nurse tried to get the IV into my wrist twice, but both times the veins popped leaving me black and blue. Now, I have been down that road so many times and I requested the professional IV people (turns out in MA you can always request one after two unsuccessful tries). The IV nurse was able to finally get the IV in, though painfully searching inside my vein for a while -- I was just grateful it was done at least in only one try.I devote so much time to describing getting the IV, as it was the most dramatic event of that day.
Once the IV was in, I was cruising down the corridor counting ceiling lamps... and then I woke up in the post-op station after the operation because George was squeezing my bruised hands.
13 lymph nodes were removed, a breast lumpectomy, and, finally, the port was removed as well. The tissues were sent to the pathologist to figure out whether I actually still have cancer or not (diagnostically the only almost sure way to know).
We grabbed an Uber and by 12:30 pm we were already home. After wolfing down some leftovers, I crashed and slept for several hours.
So, of course I was super bruised and covered in bandages, but not much more pain beyond that, to the extent that I didn't even eat the painkiller tablets. I thought I would wait till the evening and eat one before going to sleep to hold me over through the night, but it never even got to that point.
