cancer – day 21

I’m deformed. Why I thought they would be able to do this lumpectomy surgery and not leave me deformed I don’t know, but I honestly had not thought I would turn out like this.

I had the follow up appointment with Dr. Almonte today, he’s the plastic surgeon who put in the implant after Thayer did the lumpectomy. This was my first time out of the house since we got home from surgery, except for a couple of little walks Mom made me take around the house and to the end of my driveway and back. But today we went and had lunch with Mark in Folsom before going to the doctor’s appointment, and my parents were fairly excited to see that I wore my contacts and a little makeup. Mom kept saying how pretty I looked. I must have looked pretty awful the past several days, eh? I’ll probably hear that from her a lot during chemo when I’m bald and trying not to look like a freak. Anyway, we had lunch with Mark which was really nice because I’d missed him, and we had a good time, Dad says his laugh is infectious. Good grief, what in the world will I do with a guy that my dad actually likes? Dance, I guess!

So after lunch Mark goes back to work and Mom and Dad take me to Dr. Almonte’s, and he takes off the bandages and I get to see for the first time what I’m going to look like from now on. It’s not pretty. OK, yes, fully clothed with a bra no one would know what has happened, but bikinis are going to take a lot more bravado than in the past, or maybe swimsuits will just get eliminated from my beach wardrobe altogether.

Without getting too personal on the details, basically Thayer removed the right half of my breast, and the way implants work is they’re placed underneath the current breast. So even though the implant basically helps fill the bra cup size, there’s still this weird missing spot for the right half, which makes everything sort of point right, for lack of a more detailed description. Of course, it’s especially gruesome right now with stitches in three places and all the bruising besides the misshapen form.

I let my mom see, and the look on her face was clear confirmation that this is not a pretty sight nor one that will probably get much better. She had that kind of skeptical look on her face before she asked to see, it was that look you get from your mom when she thinks your faking being sick to get out of going to school or a lesson or something. But when she saw, it definitely became a look of “oh, dear” and sympathy.

What bugs me about it is part of my conversation with Dr. Almonte today, after I asked him if this is what it’s always going to look like. He said something about how some people opt to have more breast tissue removed from across the entire breast so that when the implant is put in it can have a more natural shape, and he asked me if Thayer had mentioned that as an option to me. Dr. Thayer is my cancer surgeon, and his focus of course has been on diagnosing and defining the extent of the cancer and getting it removed. But it bugs me. Surely Thayer has done many lumpectomies before, and surely he knows that it turns out misshapen like this. And surely he knows that by removing a little more of the breast tissue across the entire thing they can allow a more natural looking final result. Why didn’t he talk about any of that with me?

I know Thayer’s singular concern was removing the cancer, and now, making sure there isn’t any more and that we treat it aggressively and completely. And I agree with everyone out there who’s wondering why the hell I’m whining about this when I should just be thankful that the cancer was successfully removed with a clean margin and they got a large sample of the atypical tissue to test and they were able to remove the sentinel lymph node and only one or two additional rather than removing all my lymph nodes and possibly causing irreparable damage to my right arm and circulation. It’s true, all of that is vitally important and this thing about being deformed after the fact is a small price to pay for saving my life. But still, if the doctors know this happens and they know how to prevent it or make it less of an issue, why wouldn’t they have talked about it with me as part of the whole process? I thought I had done some good research and asked a lot of good questions of all the doctors, but I obviously completely missed this one. Of course, the long term answer, if the cancer is really gone and, after months of chemo and radiation I still really hate this misshapen thing next year, I could elect (and pay without insurance coverage) for more surgery to fix it all up.

Ach, well, I was pretty upset about it this afternoon, but I seem to be calming down on the whole thing now. After all, it could be worse. It could always be worse, and I can remind myself of that often when I get too down on any part of my situation or treatment/recovery.

In general I’ve been feeling somewhat better each day since surgery, less foggy in the head too, and the pain stays around a 5 almost all the time now, so I actually think my parents are going to let me go to/take me to the milonga in Sacramento tomorrow night. I will probably only dance with Mark, but it would so neat to go even just for that. Also, I had promised my students months ago that I would take them out to this particular milonga as a congrats for all their hard work in class and their work and practicing for the show Spotlight had last weekend. I promised them that before we even knew I had cancer, but at my last night of classes before surgery I told them I was still planning to attend this milonga, even if my parents had to come along to baby-sit me. I hope some of my students still show up, it would be so nice to see them social dancing after having taken my classes for several weeks/months.

On the other hand, selfishly, I really want to go because I know I’ll be leaving for South Dakota soon and there won’t be any argentine tango in my life for a long time out there, so I really want to absorb as much of it as I can before I leave for chemo.

Think it’s time to stop blogging for the night, Mizzou has been laying across my arm, and now he’s put his paw and head on my left hand so I can’t type with it. Ahh, cats, they’re so amusing. Mizzou really knows how to insist on having all of my attention when he wants it!