Le Panda Prepares for Surgery

The tumor and breast removal surgery is scheduled for 2 pm tomorrow (Thursday, November 10th).

Until a few weeks ago, I thought a mastectomy was literally chopping off a breast but I learned that that isn’t what they do these days.

I will have what they call a “total skin-sparing mastectomy” which means preserving the skin of the breast, nipple and areola while removing the tissue of the breast as well as tissue underlying the skin of the nipple. They will also remove the 8 cm x 5 cm x 7 cm tumor, satellite tumors and any lymph nodes that light up as infected with cancer.

My sisters, Ali & Jen, are here with me helping me get ready for surgery and will be with me for the recovery. As always, I am so grateful for them! If all goes as planned, I’ll be in the hospital for a night and then I’ll head back to the rental in SF to recover. I won’t be able to raise my arms above my shoulders for a while and will have drains connected to me that will allow fluids out of the site. I’ll probably be drugged up for a few days.

I’ll get pathology results back from the tumor and will get a prognosis within the next few weeks. My oncologist will also talk with me about any further treatment. More on that when I get the info and digest it.

The plan is that I recover from the mastectomy (2 months or so?), have radiation for a month or so, heal from that and sixish months from now have a silicone breast implanted in me. I just let out a long sigh even writing that last sentence: the road has been long and it feels like a long road in front of me still. I’m grateful I did those 10-day meditation retreats and I learned how to get through a day one breath at a time.

I’m feeling some complicated feelings around loosing my left breast. I’ve been experiencing grief for a variety of reasons prior to this surgery and I imagine I’ll experience grief after this surgery. I decided one thing that I wanted to do was make a mold of my breasts before surgery. Thanks to Amy & Eli from UCSF’s Art for Recovery, Olivia, Jen & Ali, we were able to accomplish that last night! It was a team effort! The photos at the top of the post show the process in making two molds with support casts. Once I’m feeling better I hope to make some casts from the molds using resins: for some reason I keep imagining a breast lamp. We shall see!

We’ll post an update here after surgery at some point.

Thanks again for all of your support. I do appreciate the texts/calls/emails/notes!

I’ll see you all on the flip side of surgery!