The Surgery

The standard care for a stage 1, grade 1, mammary carcinoma is to remove the tumor with negative margins of surrounding breast tissue. This ensures that the entirety of the tumor and cancerous cells are removed from the breast. Additionally, a number of lymph nodes are biopsied to determine if the carcinoma has possibly spread to the blood, bones, or other organs. In order to correctly identify a lymph node which is positive for cancer, the surgeon relies on nuclear medicine. The lymph nodes glow bright blue once the medicine has reached them…it’s kind of cool.

On April 15th, I arrived at the hospital anxious and full of trepidation. I endured the nuclear medicine injection. It was like someone pinched your skin with needle-nose pliers and then filled the tissue with scalding water. I wasn’t expecting it to hurt as badly as it did. Then, I waited for the medicine to be taken up by my lymph nodes. Pictures were taken of the breast tissue to help the surgeon identify where the auxiliary lymph nodes were located. Shortly thereafter, they took me back up for surgery.

When I awoke I was uncomfortable, but I wasn’t in a tremendous amount of pain. The main discomfort I was experiencing was from the drainage tube in my side and the shifting of breast tissue when I stood, turned, rolled over, etc. The under arm incision for the lymph node biopsy was obscenely swollen and prevented me from laying my arm flat against my body. The incision caused me the most pain. Once the drainage tube was removed I was able to rest more comfortably. Strangely, the incision to remove the tumor caused me the least amount of pain. The site was numb to the touch, and the surrounding tissue was also numb. There was, however, an impressive amount of bruising.

The tumor was successfully removed along with 1.5 inches of surrounding tissue. The margins were negative (good thing). The lymph nodes were clear. The cancer was gone.

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