August 8th (back-up) Surgery Day, part one

What do you wear to go and get your breast sliced off? I wanted to be elegant, yet comfortable. (A., I know you'll recognize this jacket.)

Mom is wearing what I came to think of as her "power jacket." It is a nice tailored jacket that she found in the closet of her guest room...where I've been storing the left-overs from the swap meet I hosted a while ago. (M.F., I think this used to be yours.) She looks great in it, either with jeans or dressy pants. She's worn to my doctor and lawyer appointments and it seems like every time she wears it, we had a good day.


It wasn't long before they gave me a new outfit. I particularly liked the socks (which I got to keep.) I don't know why I am wearing my sunglasses in this picture. I think the Valium must have been kicking in pretty good by this point. I look way too happy to be in the hospital. I mean, the socks aren't THAT great.

There are a lot of other details that are foggy about the whole day...but here's what I do remember.




Before they started prepping me for surgery, Dr. Rocco stopped by to say hi in her cap and scrubs. She looked really cute and it was nice to see her there. I was so glad she took the time to come and give me a hug.





The hospital gown they gave me was soft and felt like it was made of paper. It had pockets and tied on the side (instead of in back.) That was nice, but it was not the best part. Once I got settled into the bed-on-wheels, a very nice nurse (I think it was Terri) pulled back this little flap on the front of the robe and attached a hose to a valve hidden underneath. The hose looked like something from a vacuum cleaner, but instead of sucking air...it blew! It gently filled up my robe with warm air...just like when we were kids in pajamas after our baths and mom would stick the blowdryer into the neck of our jammies and they would puff up with warm air. (S., do you remember that? Did anyone else's parents do that?)

After she left, Eric the Nuclear Medicine Technician came to wheel me away. (Isn't that an impressive title?) He left me in a hallway for a little while and I sang out loud to myself to keep from getting bored or scared. I remember wondering what people who don't sing do in that situation. Mom said Grandma plays word games in her head. I sang, "I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter," and tried to sound as good as Lena Horne.


A nice couple walked past me and asked how I was doing. I said fine, and they apologized for asking since I was in the hospital and I must not really be doing fine, but they said they were glad I was okay and hoped everything would be even better soon. I was really happy to see them, because I was getting lonely in that bed in the hallway. I was getting cold too.


Just as I was starting to be really unhappy about being cold, and frustrated because I couldn't remember all the words from the song, a big guy in blue scrubs walked by and said, "Are you cold?"

"Yes I am!" I answered. He got me a second blanket from what seemed like a secret closet and tucked it in all around me. But, he could not help me with the lyrics problem. Later I found out his name was also Eric, and he was also a Nuclear Medicine Technician.


Finally, Eric #1 came back and wheeled me into a room with a big machine in it. The Machine looked like a giant waffle iron, but with a smooth surface...like it would make waffles that were flat on top and about as big as my kitchen table. I remember thinking that the machine looked old and beat up. I couldn't imagine what they were going to use it for...but it turns out they didn't use it on me at all.


Eric lowered the hospital bed down so I was lying flat. I remember being irritated that he didn't give me any warning before he did it.


Now I am getting kind of confused about the order things happened in. At some point, I was in a different room and had to get out of the bed and onto a conveyer belt type contraption that rolled me into a big tube like an MRI or CT scan machine. I think that must have happened first...and I think it was still Eric #1 handling me.


The reason I think I went into the conveyer belt room first is that my breast still looked normal when I was in that room. In the waffle-iron room, they did stuff that made my breast look like it had been stung with bees and smeared with mud.

I know for sure that my breast looked okay in the conveyer belt room because as Eric #1 was pulling back my robe to get my breast exposed for the procedure, I told him, "You're the last person who is ever going to see my breast like this, so will you just take a moment and appreciate it?" This seemed to embarrass him. At the time I thought he was just uncomfortable because he was just trying to do his job and didn't want to think about the fact that I was a nice lady with a nice breast who was about to lose it forever. But, now that I am writing about it, it really does seem like the waffle-iron room happened first. In which case, maybe he just looked uncomfortable because I was asking him to appreciate a breast that looked like it was smeared with mud and had been attacked by bees. Poor guy.


I fell asleep inside that machine and I'm sure I snored.


So, I know you're wondering what happened in the waffle-iron room and here is what I remember. Eric #1 introduced me to Dr. Church whose face I don't remember but he had on very nice trousers. He opened a plastic bag that had 3 giant Q-tip looking things in them that were pre-soaked in some kind of brown liquid. He used these to swab the brown stuff all over my breast. Then Eric opened some kind of bottle and accidentally spilled something all over Dr. Church! I remember telling Dr. Church not to worry because the stuff was splattered across his back...but didn't get on his nice pants. Then I told him he shouldn't wear such nice pants to work and why wasn't he wearing scrubs all over instead of just up top? Even though I was so sassy to him, he was very very nice to me.


He had to put a needle right into my nipple. I think the first injection was lidocaine, so I wouldn't feel the other injections so much. He apologized about 3 times as he was getting ready to do it...and then, (I thought this was so cute) he said "Excuse me," as he actually did it. I'm not gonna lie about it...that nipple-needle HURT.


Then he gave me several more injections all around my nipple that made the skin swell up like I had hives. I think this was the radioactive stuff that made it possible during surgery to identify which lymph nodes my breasts drain to first. The reasoning is...if the cancer has spread outside my breast at all...it would spread to these first. They are called "sentinel nodes" and they were going to be removed and biopsied during my mastectomy.


I got to go back to my first little room for a while, and I asked mom to take a photo of my poor breast. It was still all brown but I was disapointed to see that the hive-like swellings had gone down, so I couldn't get a picture of that. That was the last time I saw Mom before the actual surgery. They made her go wait in the waiting room and a really pretty nurse named Jojo came to wheel me back to a "holding room."

There were lots of other people on beds-on-wheels in the holding room and there were lots of magazines but I couldn't reach any of them from my bed. I tried to push myself over one of the magazine racks by shoving myself off a table, but the table was on wheels too and must have been lighter than my bed, because it just rolled away from me. Then I tried to rock back and forth in the bed to inch my way over to the magazines. I remember being frustrated because I couldn't get close enough to reach one, but maybe I did. Later on...I had a magazine in my lap. I don't remember getting it and I sure don't remember reading it...but how else would it have gotten there? The ad on the back of the magazine had a photo of a big green leaf shaped like a heart and I remember thinking about all the things in nature that are shaped like hearts and how they are like god's little love notes to us.


Jojo wheeled me over so I could go to the bathroom. I must have taken a long time because she knocked on the door and asked if I was okay. When I got back in my bed I said, "Hey, did you take one of my blankets?" She said, "Yes I did," and she got me a new one that was warm like it had just come out of the dryer.


Dr. Johnson, my anesthesiologist came in to meet me. He asked me some questions but I don't remember what they were. I'm pretty sure he asked me my birthday. (It seemed like EVERYONE kept asking my birthday.) He had a nice deep voice.

Several other nurses came and went and I tried to remember everyone's names, but it got too confusing. I do remember a young man in a white shirt named John who wheeled me down the hall. I teased him and told him "Go Faster!" and "Pop a Wheelie!" but he wouldn't because he got in trouble last week for going too fast with a patient.


At some point I was in my little bed-on-wheels in the elevator with Eric #2. I was singing "We're just two little girls from Little Rock" and I asked Eric #2 if he knew who sang that song. (It is the opening number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.) He didn't know and I gave him a hint. "She lives in Santa Maria!" He still didn't know, so I told him it was Jane Russell. He said, "Oh, yeah," like he knew who she was, but he might have been faking it.


A little later, we got to a room that seemed like it had several people in it. At this point I was really confused, but I heard this voice behind me and I said, "Hey! That sounds like Dr. Johnson!" I turned around in my bed and there he was smiling at me. If I'd been thinking clearly, I would have known that if you hear your anesthesiologist behind you, you're not going to be awake much longer. But, I was not thinking clearly, I was just happy to see him and proud of myself for recognizing his voice and remembering his name. That's the last thing I remember from my two-breasted life.