Surgery went well

We had to be at the hospital at 6am this morning for my lumpectomy surgery.  I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.  I don’t think it was necessarily from anxiety about the surgery... more from feeling terrible from the head cold I picked up in San Diego.

Surgery wasn’t scheduled til 10:00 but there was some things that needed to be done beforehand.  Besides normal pre-surgery stuff (getting an IV, etc), they had to do what’s called a “needle loc” in the radiology department.  It’s essentially a mammogram guided wire placement. When I had my original biopsy done in March, they placed a metal clip into the breast tumor and into the lymph node showing where the cancer was located at the time.  As was hoped, the chemo shrank the tumor down to nothing.  The surgeon, Dr. Kennedy, needed a way to see where the tumor used to be so she could remove the tissue and have it tested.  Hence, the needle loc procedure.  HERE is a link for a description if you want to read about it.

The mammogram technician came to get me about 8am.  We got all setup and the radiologist came into do the procedure.  It included several mammogram images, poking a needle into the spot where the metal clip was, and then using the needle to thread a wire into the former tumor spot.  It took the radiologist 3 tries to get it in the right spot.  Did it hurt? Um, YES!  The words I would used to describe the pain are not too lady-like so I’ll let you use your imagination.  ;-)

Once that was over, the rest was easy.  I got to take a long nap.  Dr. Kennedy took out the tissue with metal clip and that will be tested in the lab.  She also took out some lymph nodes.  All in all, surgery went well.  And now we wait.... pathology results should be back by end of the week.

I’m planning to take it easy for the next day or two...