Whoop whoop, I made it to the new normal. I’ve been putting off writing in here mostly out of general laziness, not because I have been unable.  In fact I am happy to say that I have been way more able than I feared I might be. I’m barely on pain meds (just 600mg of ibuprofen every 8 hours) and feeling pretty clear and sharp, albeit sore and tired (which is not surprising). But ok let me back up and tell the whole story, in as much detail as I can remember (for research! Because I am so totally going to use all this for the next novel.)

So Josh and I got up super early on Monday morning. I took a shower (with the special antibacterial Dial soap, which seemed a bit like magical thinking to me but I guess every little bit of knocking back the skin bacteria helps), got dressed (I wore my “breast cancer is a big fat doodiehead” tshirt that Susan Barnes gave me), said goodbye to the kids (Isaac was super anxious both the night before and the morning of, but he managed to hang in there), and when Mom got here at 6:30 we all packed our stuff in the Camry and drove to UCSF. We didn’t hit much traffic and got there well ahead of our recommended 7:30 check in time. We checked in at the surgery department and then they sent us over to the familiar 2^nd Floor of the Cancer Center, where we waited around (checking FB, playing Words with Friends, and generally trying not to think about the future) for the staff to get there so we could start with the wire localization procedure.

Eventually a nice Russian technician (side note: lots of Russian immigrants who both work at and are served by UCSF...many staff with Russian accents, and signs in Russian too) took me back into the Radiology department (this was the department across the hall from the main Cancer Center, where I’d had my ultrasound) and got me all set up in a mammogram machine in preparation for the wire localization procedure. She was very warm and nice to me, apologizing for the squishing (and rightfully so; this one was way more painful than my previous mammograms had been) and patting me soothingly. There were two different doctors involved in the wire localization procedure, both very kind and professional young women in their late 20s/early 30s. It’s weird to be at that age and stage where the professionals are younger than me. What was cool though was that all the professionals there were women. I commented on that and they said something like “yeah, most of us here in the breast center are”. Yay for changing culture. Anyway, once they got enough pictures (ow), they shot me in the right boob with some lidocaine (ow) and then poked me with a wire (not ow, fortunately) and left it there and taped it down. I got dressed again and waited for them to tell me we were good to go and then we all headed back over to the surgery waiting room. Anji met us there.

We spent only a few minutes waiting around in that waiting room before they took me to a room to get prepped for the surgery. Mom, Josh and Anji all trooped into the prep room with me. I had to get completely undressed and remove all jewelry (luckily I had plenty of people to Sherpa all my stuff around, since I still had my overnight bag and my pillow and my purse and everything at that point) and then they gave me slipper socks and this weird paper gown with portholes in it to wear. I got to sit in a special chair with all sorts of medical devices around it and they gave me warm blankets (that part was nice). We soon found out that at least one thing the ports were for was to attach what looked like a vacuum tube, which blew warm air inside my paper gown and kept me quite cozy, if not actually somewhat sweaty. There was paperwork to sign. Dr. Foster came by and asked me again what size I was aiming for in the reconstruction (I said a C or a D if possible, in order to balance out the bottom of me, but that I trusted his judgment), then drew on my breasts and initialed my shoulders. Dr. Foster is a generally quiet guy without much chattiness but I still made him laugh some, which was reassuring. Dr. Ewing came by and initialed me too. She was much warmer, as is her way. Then Jason the cute young anesthesiologist assistant came by and explained what was going to happen and offered me a nifty new pain management technique, which was essentially a shot of something to each side of my chest that would block pain for 8-12 hours. There was science explaining involved but frankly I was too nervous and distracted to really listen so I don’t remember how it worked. I just know that it did, yay. I asked some questions because I always ask questions but other than “can I have my phone and headphones in the OR and will you advance the track for me?” (yes) I don’t remember what I specifically asked or what the doctors answered. Then another technician came by to give me a radioactive shot to the right breast for the sentinel lymph node detection. I was still somewhat numb there from the wire localization so it barely hurt.

Then it was go time. They put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me to what they called the “kissing corner” where Josh and Mom and Anji all solemnly hugged and kissed me goodbye. Then they wheeled me down the hall and into the OR. I don’t remember much about the OR itself except that it was super brightly lit and much bigger than I expected (I wonder if there were multiple surgeries able to go on in there simultaneously, though there were no other patients I could see already there when I got there. I think I was the first of the day though.) I met the anesthesiologist whose name I don’t remember and who I probably wouldn’t recognize if I saw him because he was already gowned and masked, but he was super nice and kind. I stepped up to and lay down on the table, which was actually nicely padded with a support under my knees and neck. I put my headphones on and started listening to my guided meditations and tried to relax as much as I could while everyone bustled around me. They put an oxygen mask on me. The anesthesiologist kept kindly patting my shoulder and telling me how great I was going to do. Then it was finally time to breathe deep and let go and sink down into the dizzy darkness until poof, everything disappeared.

I woke up feeling relatively calm and peaceful, though also super groggy. I had a weird discombobulated feeling of “but I just went to sleep! It’s over already? Where did all that time go?” There was a nurse there who said nice things that I don’t really remember, but boiled down to “it’s all over and you did great.” I was really dry in both nose and mouth. They gave me ice chips and eventually water and that was a huge relief. I switched my playlist to handpan music (Sylvain Paslier’s “Carousel” seemed nice and soothing), and kept drifting in and out of sleep. At some point they let Josh and Mom and Dad and Anji in to see me and I remember it was really hard staying awake. I had to push myself to stay alert enough to have a conversation, but was pleased with myself that I could. Eventually they all left to go have dinner and I snoozed out for a while.

At some further point they told me they were going to move me to my room, which they did. I think that was around 6:30pm or so. I still had an oxygen tube in my nose but I was feeling a little more alert and less sleepy. So once we got to the room and I was settled (which wasn’t hard) I was able to text everyone and tell them I was in my room (though I mistakenly said “recovery” instead of room so apparently I confused them somewhat. Ooops.) When they came back they had brought me macaroni and cheese, which I was able to eat a little bit of. I was feeling much better but still kind of spacy, not just from the anesthetic but also I think from having fasted all day, so the mac and cheese was helpful even though I could only eat a couple of bites at first.

I was feeling well enough to chat and hear about how the day had been for everyone and to trip out a little on my bandaged up, much shrunken chest. I checked Facebook and enjoyed all the nice messages people had left for me. I called the kids, and I think they were relieved to hear me sounding so relatively normal. Eventually Dad left, and then around 8 Josh was getting kind of antsy so he left too. Anji stayed a bit longer and then she left and it was just Mom and me. We chatted a bunch with each other (as is our way) and ate some of the fruit salad mom had brought with her (I felt better after that). We also talked to the nurses who occasionally came to check on me. I was doing pretty well so eventually they took me off the IV and the only thing I had going on was these trippy compression wraps on my calves, which were plugged in to a machine at the end of the bed and which would hum and squeeze alternating legs every few minutes (I think this was to prevent blood clots or something). It was actually a kind of soothing massage, I didn’t mind it. And the noise was kind of a white noise so I didn’t mind that either. They helped us set up the guest bed for mom and eventually we got some sleep (though like with any hospital experience, there were several wakeups so it wasn’t super restful.) But they mostly left us alone between approximately midnight and 5, so we did get some sleep.

Side note: all the nurses (like all the UCSF staff we encountered, actually) were super nice and warm, we liked them all a lot. Especially memorable were Michelle the night nurse, a funny middle-aged black lady who made Matrix jokes about red pill or blue pill with me (my antibiotic was blue, the stool softener was red), and Chris, the kind, bushy-bearded, tatted-up white guy morning nurse who seemed oh so SF. Overall I have to give UCSF pretty high marks for a hospital experience...it couldn’t have gone any better than it did, in my opinion.

Tuesday morning we had a visit from Dr. Foster’s nurse around 7:30 and after that it was too hard to sleep so we kind of got up and got dressed and ordered breakfast (it being SF, it was actually relatively healthy and relatively tasty food...organic yogurt and oatmeal, cage free eggs, Peet’s coffee). Mom went down to the gift store and got me a size A-B sports bra (we were thinking that the one I brought with me, which was size C-D, might be too big) and a special “roo” camisole that hade pockets in the front to hold the drains. Dr. Ewing came by at some point to tell us that everything went great, and that the lymph nodes looked good from the outside but of course we had to wait for the pathology report to tell anything else. She also told me “I know now why you had that big hematoma after your biopsy...the tumor had a bunch of blood vessels all leading to it”. Not too surprising, but made me all the more glad that the tumor was out.

Anji came by again at some point in the morning. Her friend Tammy was having surgery that morning too, but as we discovered, it was at a different UCSF campus so she eventually took off to go there. She brought me some Velcro and yarn to use with the drains if I wanted and a cute plushy pink stuffed animal. Rabbi Lezak came by too, which was really great and I was happy to see him. I love that he always asks me “how’s your neshama (soul)?” We had an interesting little chat about the spiritual power of letting other people give to you. Josh didn’t get there until around 10:30, but when he did, Nurse Chris showed him how to strip the drains for me and explained all the discharge things, gave us some paperwork and then released us into the world again. I was walking fine but feeling very tender.

We drove home on a beautiful sunny San Francisco day and I felt really happy to be going home.