Surviving Cancer

Somehow, a year has passed since I received the phone call, but more importantly, the diagnosis, that has forever changed my life. It has been 365 days since I was officially diagnosed with breast cancer and oh, what a year it has been. In all honesty, to sum things up, it was a year dedicated to cancer. The year was consumed by having surgeries, recovering from surgeries, and chemotherapy.

My most recent surgery took place on July 1st. It was the surgery that had to be rescheduled due to COVID-19. It was also the surgery I was the most unsure about. I was scared and really didn’t know if I wanted to go through with it. After thinking about it, a lot, I went ahead with the surgery. This surgery removed my cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. I also had fat grafting, but that’s really not the part of the surgery that weighed so heavily on my mind. I will have no more biological children, I will never have a period again, and I am now considered “post-menopausal” at the age of 29.

Surgery went as expected. There were no surprises and the pathology on everything they removed came back clean, meaning no cancer was detected. This was obviously great news. Recovery, however, did not go quite as planned. I was just getting to my hospital room and getting settled in when Josh showed up. I was surprised to see him because I hadn’t texted him or contacted him to let him know where I was. Clearly, the hospital took care of that for me! The nurses all left and it was just Josh I and left in the room. I was sitting up and we were just talking when all of sudden I started feeling like I couldn’t breath. I told Josh I couldn’t breath. We pushed the nurses button, but we all now those aren’t for emergencies. The nurses get to you when they can with those, so Josh ran out of the room to get someone. A nurse came in and then called for the rapid response team , as I had lost all the color in my face, I was struggling to breath, and my blood pressure was something like 56/35. Between the anesthesia, pain killers, and the condition I was in, what happened after the nurses rushed in is all a blur.

They eventually stabilized me, but I was put on 15 minute checks. So a nurse would come in every 15 minutes to check my blood pressure and heart rate, which was greatly accelerated. My resting heart rate after my episode was in the 120’s. My heart rate, a long with my blood pressure is something they tracked very closely. I remember not getting much sleep that night. They were concerned I had a pulmonary embolism, so they had to transfer me back to a rolling gurney and take me down to get a CT scan. Thankfully, the CT came back normal. I was also put on bed rest and had to have a catheter placed again. They never really came to a conclusion as to why I had the episode that I did. Again, due COVID-19 no visitors were allowed to stay past 8 pm. This didn’t bother me because I barely remember the nights. I do, however, remember getting woken up every half hour for blood pressure checks, and every hour and half so the lab could draw some blood. I spent 4 days in the hospital, and needless to say, it was miserable.

My lungs also had trouble recuperating from surgery and having to have a breathing tube placed during surgery. I had very shallow breathing and could not take deep breaths. I had to have a respiratory specialist come in several times a day to do a breathing treatment on me where they forced oxygen into your lungs to make them expand. It was easy for me to do, and fairly quick, so I didn’t mind too much.

In between all of the chaos, I had an incision that had opened and started bleeding. They used silver nitrate on it to try and cauterize it so it would stop bleeding. It did work, for a while. Before I left the hospital, though, it had started draining a little bit. The nurse was not overly concerned. Here I am, over two weeks later, and I have a big open wound on my hip. It’s pretty frustrating that it’s open because it’s just prolonging my healing process. They won’t close it now that it’s open in case there is infection in there, so it will have to heal from the inside out, which will likely take, forever…

Even though it was less than a year ago that I had mastectomy, it’s difficult to remember my recovery from that surgery. But I can honestly say, from what I remember, this surgery was much more painful. The abdominal pain I experienced was excruciating, almost all of the time. The pain medications they had me on were not even touching the pain. I got by, by sleeping through it the best I could.

I am just over two weeks out and feeling fairly good. The first two weeks I had to wear an abdominal binder 24 hours a day, except when I showered. I can now take it off to sleep. It’s a big adjustment to not wear it, and I wake up feeling quite sore after not wearing it. My open wound prevents me from sleeping on my right side. So, sleep has been interesting. Thankfully, I have an amazing husband who sleeps on the couch so I can do what I need to to get comfortable enough in bed to get some sleep.

Now that it’s all said and done, I am beyond grateful that I went through with the surgery. I have greatly reduced my chances of getting recurrence or another cancer. I have truly come to appreciate the two beautiful and perfect children I was blessed with already. I revel in the little things now, and seem to have a whole different perspective on my life. I find myself dreaming and making plans in my head for future family vacations and other adventures, that before seemed impossible. This surgery is hopefully the “unofficial” end to my cancer journey. The surgeries and the treatment are in the past, and I pray there will be no more.

Cancer will always be with me. It will always be a part of my life, something I monitor and track, but from here on out, cancer will not be my life. This past year, cancer was my life. Now, my life is my own, and there are endless possibilities of what I can do with it. Number one on the list is to watch my kids grow up, and take part in their childhoods as much as I possibly can. I feel I have missed so much already, and I’ll be darned if cancer thinks it can take more.