It’s Late

It is late and I have chemo tomorrow. I can’t sleep. I’m not looking forward to feeling so terrible for the week. It makes it hard to sleep thinking about it.

When we went to the radiation oncologist last week he had nothing but negative things to say about reconstruction. I believe they do that on purpose with the intent of scaring you off of reconstruction so Kaiser doesn’t have to pay for it. All he talked about was all the things that could go wrong. Thanks for sharing. How about speaking in the positive and leaving the bad stuff out or minimizing it to there is a chance (which is the reality) that these things could happen.

From my understanding of it so far, one method is to take an expander and put it under the chest muscle and slowly inflate it over time to stretch the skin. Then when they have overstretched it, they put in the actual implant. Two surgeries at least. Then as soon as I heal they will start radiation treatments.

Radiation will be every day, 5 days a week for 6 weeks. It is an hour drive to get there and an hour drive back. With gas prices being what they are we will be lucky if we don’t go broke just paying for the gas to get to and from radiation. I will likely have what amounts to a scorching sun burn on my new breast for the entire 6 weeks. Sounds pleasant, as everything else that has to do with cancer treatment so far. Is there any part of this that isn’t painful? Luckily, I am no stranger to pain.

2 comments April 2nd, 2008