The pain is not bad at all unless I pull on the stupid drain, then I yell. It seems to be healing up well and isn’t really draining much, so hopefully when I go to the doctor this Friday they will pull the drain out.

Meanwhile, I have started radiation. It isn’t too bad. I go every day at 3:00. Once there, I take off my clothes from the waist up and put on a gown. I lay down on a metal table with my arms over my head, while the tech lines me up with the target marks they put on me, then slide into a large, round MRI looking machine for 2 minutes for a scan. I come out, have to lay there for about 6 minutes and the tech checks something and sends me back in for 7 1/2 minutes. I have to remain perfectly still throughout this entire process and that is very hard. As soon as she says hold still, my nose itches or my leg twitches or something. It is good for me to have my arms over my head for that long as it stretches all of the tight muscles across my chest. I am not allowed to have deodorant on during the procedure and there I am with my arms over my head and my nose right there at the arm pits. Smelly! Just kidding.

The machine has a constant noise like someone vacuuming and then when I roll into the machine it sounds like a train on a track going around my body. but I close my eyes and try to meditate. I read in the new Dan Brown book that it has been determined that yogis produce a healing substance when they meditate. I am no yogi, but I try to think happy thoughts. Anyway, the whole thing takes about 30 minutes or so.

On the way home, I start to feel, well not nauseous exactly, just really, really not hungry. Then a half hour or so later, I am very tired. Compared to chemo though, this is absolutely nothing. I don’t have any burns yet, but that might be coming. Apparently all of the side effects are cumulative, so I expect to become more tired and have effects on my skin. No worries though, I have fragrance free aloe lotion.

The next day, I do it all again. I have 33 treatments, so that puts me at the beginning of November to be done. I am counting down the days!

This has been quite a few weeks. I don’t know what I expected coming home from the hospital. But certainly the pain I have has surpassed anything I have known. I think I was expecting what I went through with the c-sections I had with the boys. I guess I was younger, healthier and more distracted by the baby, with that pain, and it wasn’t too bad. This time I didn’t have a sweet little thing to take my mind off things - unless you count Mojo (and I do).

Imagine every time you reach for something, with either hand but mostly with the right, gasping with pain. The pain also goes down my right arm as well because of the removal of the lymph nodes. The only time I wasn’t in pain during the first 2 weeks was when I was sitting absolutely still with my arms propped up. What is strange is the numbness under my arm. I wash or put on deodorant I can’t feel a thing, very weird. The nurse practitioner pulled my drains and that really helped. But it still was uncomfortable.

It reached a pinacle last Thursday. It hurt to move. Friday afternoon, (WARNING, this is where it gets gross) my right breast exploded with oozy stuff. It was dripping, no not dripping, flowing everywhere. Scott took me to the nurse and she took over a cup of fluid out of my breast, dressed it and gave me a high dose of antibiotics. She debated as to whether she should send me to the hospital for iv antibiotics but decided to try this first. So now I am changing the dressing at least twice a day and milking the icky out of it.

Now I know you are thinking this is just one of those things I should get used to it and get over it. The problem is how hard it is for me to look at the scars. I am such a wuss looking at it makes it more real.

I read a lot about the whole procedure beforehand. On line, books, brochures, you name it. None of them had any real pictures of what my breasts were going to look like after the surgery. It isn’t pretty. I don’t want to look at it and I sure don’t want Scott to see it, so this whole infection thing has been a nightmare. In a way, maybe it was good because it is forcing me to get used to the way I look now.

I finally did have a pity party for myself on Sunday. Saturday we were in the RV in Gainesville which was a lot of fun. There were a passel of people there, but Scott and our friends did all the work so it was easy enough on me. I don’t know, I guess it was the bouncing around in the RV on the way down and back or just the picking up after, or maybe because Nick came home and then had to leave right away and I was in a lot of pain and sort of had a melt down. Crying and carrying on, but at least I got it out of my system for a while.

The pain is finally getting better. I am trying to stretch my arm out so it doesn’t get too stiff and I lose any range of motion. Also, I am trying to avoid lymphedema, where my arm swells. The radiation oncologist referred me to a specialist, but I haven’t heard back from them yet. The trick is balancing exercising with overdoing. I am not to lift heavy things but light exercise is good for me. My question is what is heavy and what is light? Hopefully I will get in there next week. Meanwhile, I can go to the grocery store, I just can’t carry anything in.

So that is the update for now. I am supposed to go in for my radiation set up next Monday. Hopefully I have healed enough on the cancer side to allow that to get started.