Crap Nobody Should Ever Have To Deal With.

Okay, friends. I hope you're ready to read about a bit more badness. If not, just skip this post. Really, it's okay - perhaps the next time I write, it will be all about unicorns farting rainbows. Seriously, one of these posts has to have some good news, right?! Sigh.

I went into this surgery pretty confident. Maybe even a bit cocky. I was not super stressed about it... I had found THE most qualified surgeon, and with his expert care, this sounded like something I could really do well with, and then move on. I've had a lot of surgeries in my lifetime; nine in total. And some pretty big ones, like a full spinal fusion and an abdominoplasty. I've always gotten through them pretty well. A week or so on pain meds, resting, and then I start to feel better quickly. But what I did not take into account is that this time, my body is pretty worn out. In the last 18 months, it has been through a double mastectomy and reconstruction/failure, 4 months of chemo, and 6 weeks of radiation. I have also (probably) been on an oral chemotherapy drug for the past year through my clinical trial at Dana Farber. My body has been through a lot. It has soldiered on, but it is not a strong, vibrant body right now. This unfortunately became incredibly clear after I underwent this big surgery.

In order for me to be away in New York City for 9 days, and for Kevin to be there for most of it with me, we enlisted the help of my wonderful father-in-law Bernie and his amazing girlfriend, Donna. Thank God for them being willing to take care of our girls for so long, and for doing such an awesome job. This was no small feat. Our good friends, the Barrons, also helped tremendously by taking the girls overnight on Saturday night so that we could jump on a train early Sunday morning, October 16, to head down to the city. The Barrons took our girls, along with their adorable crew of 4 kiddos, to the Making Strides Breast Cancer walk in Albany on Sunday while we traveled down to the city. It was so amazing that they could all be there to represent our family at this important fundraiser! Together, we helped to raise almost $2000. So proud.

So Kevin and I got down to the city in time for my 1pm appointment with Dr. Joshua Levine, where I had to be "marked" for surgery the next day. Dr. Levine reviewed the plan for surgery, and then drew all over my chest and thighs with a blue Sharpie. He sent me on my way with 5 prescriptions to fill at CVS so that I had the meds I would need post-op all set to go. Sadly, this turned into an aggravating afternoon of CVS-hopping in order to find all the meds I needed, since the one right across the street didn't have the meds. Once that was done, we met up with our good friend Dean and hung out at a bar near our hotel having some drinks and snacks. It was awesome to get to see him, and to have some grownup hang-out time in the city. I was feeling really excited for my surgery, and we toasted to my soon-to-be new boobies and the end of this saga!

 Pre-surgery celebration with my sweet hubby Kevin. So lucky to have this man by my side.

This guy right here has been my friend for 22 years. Love my Dean!

After our afternoon together, Dean had to head home to do some work, so Kevin and I strolled over to Times Square to see some sights and grab some dinner. It was a gorgeous, warm evening and we had a relaxing meal at a yummy restaurant. I felt kind of sad that we weren't in the city having a fun, touristy weekend like the hundreds of people all around us... but I was grateful that we at least we squeezed in a few hours of fun before the big day came.

Times Square on the eve of my surgery, having a bit of fun before it's back to business.

The next morning was Monday, and Kevin and I woke up at 5:30 am to throw on some clothes and grab a cab over to the hospital. We arrived at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary at 6:30. (I know the name of the hospital sounds bizarre, but they have a legit plastic surgery department and private rooms, so.) We quickly got through registration, and were sent up to the pre-op floor. The nurses there got me all gowned up, drew my bloodwork, and injected me with pre-op heparin (ouch!). By 8am, it was time to hug and kiss Kevin and say goodbye. I hated this moment of leaving him -- seeing the panic in his eyes, and knowing that he'll be worrying about me for the entire rest of the day. The nurse gently took my arm and guided me towards the OR. Thankfully, they had given me some relaxing meds and I was feeling a bit goofy. I smiled cheerfully at Kevin as I walked away and told him, "I'll be fine! This is it - next time you see me, I'll have TWO boobies! Get ready for your Barbie Doll wife!" Ha. Those were some good drugs. They brought me into a huge OR with these enormous surgical microscopes and had me lay down on the table. The very nice nurse anesthetist chatted with me while she placed my IV, and then it was a peaceful lights-out as the anesthesia hit my blood stream.

Waking up from anesthesia can be really fun. When I came to, there was a team of nurses all over me, shouting directions at each other and shoving my freshly-incised thighs into a pair of extremely tight compression shorts. As I realized what was happening, I started screaming in pain and in typical Melanie no-filter fashion, I started yelling at them to put me back under anesthesia for this, RIGHT NOW GOD DAMNIT!!! They hushed me and continued on with their excruciating work. I probably continued to yell at them for some *expletive* pain meds. At some point this ordeal ended, and I was finally brought to recovery and given some good pain meds. Yessssss, that was nice. Then I felt really cold, so the nurses bundled me up in a billion blankets. Then my body felt warm but my head was super cold, so Kevin helped me to wrap my head up with one of the blankets. This made me giggle like a crazy person and Kevin decided to snap a picture of this moment, for which I am thankful.

I think I shall name this photo "Narcotic Enchilada". Or perhaps "Opioid Caterpillar".

Kevin thinks this is the greatest picture ever taken of me... and he may be right.

So once I was a bit more coherent, I learned that I had been in the OR for 11 hours. Yep... that's a whole day of surgery. Dr. Levine had had some trouble with my left reconstruction, because the grafted blood vessels wouldn't reach the place where he needed to attach them. After 3 attempts to make it work, he finally realized that he had to harvest an extra blood vessel to lengthen the attachment. He took a vessel from just under my abdominal muscle near my pelvic bone, using my previous C-section scar (brilliant). This worked beautifully, and then the right side reconstruction had gone smoothly.

After the fun times in recovery, I was moved up to the post-op floor. Now I was feeling like my mouth was so dry, I must have unknowingly swallowed an entire desert of sand. The nurses spooned me ice chips and used the Doppler to check the blood flow in my flaps every hour. My vitals were checked constantly. My urinary catheter was crazy uncomfortable. My lungs hurt badly from the long anesthesia, and my breathing was shallow and painful. My whole body was horribly swollen from all of the IV fluids they'd had to give me during my long anesthesia. Around 1am, I spiked a high fever and felt infinitely more miserable. The timeline is a blur, but they apparently gave me Ibuprofen at some point to bring it down, and it didn't help. I began begging the nurses for Tylenol -- something, anything, do you have a gun? -- to help this fever go away. I was desperate. There was some confusing issue with them not having orders for me to get Tylenol, they had to call Dr. Levine, blah blah blah. Hours passed and I was in agony and super frustrated that it seemed as though nothing was being done to help me. Finally in the early morning, my nurse anesthetist from the previous day came in to check on me -- I think those 11 hours we had spent together the day before had bonded her to me. She was immediately infuriated that I was laying there so miserable. She stepped in and started advocating for me - calling Dr. Levine personally, getting me Tylenol, and telling me about how much trouble she had had keeping my blood pressure up during my long surgery the day before, hence the swelling from all the fluids. She also explained that this was the reason I woke up suddenly in pain while my compression garment was being shoved onto me - my BP had been so low that she couldn't safely give me any narcotics at that point, and I needed the stimulation to get my pressure up. Okay, that's terrible, but medically I can understand how it was necessary. I so appreciated her help and explanation.

At some point later that morning, my fever subsided, and by that afternoon, I was sitting up eating, and also got myself walking around. Becoming ambulatory quickly after surgery is very important in order to prevent blood clots (DVTs) from forming, and while it feels like the last thing you want to do, it actually feels good once you're up and moving, and you've endured that first painful step of getting hoisted out of bed like a beached whale.

Out of bed, swollen and eating a salad. Trying to stay positive even though I look like a monster

and feel like a piece of hamburger meat.

The next few days were just a big blur of misery. Kevin had to leave to get back to work and the girls, and while I had planned to just stay in the hospital alone, it became clear that this was not a great plan. Kevin called my dad on Tuesday morning to ask him to come down, and he was there by my side within about 4 hours. Amazing. It was so necessary to have family with me throughout this horrible time. Don't get me wrong, the hospital was really great and the nurses were sweet, patient, and attentive. But my recovery was not smooth. Despite the Vancomycin I had been started on pre-operatively to prevent C. diff, my GI tract became hugely crampy, gas-filled and painful, and it became clear that this intestinal infection was ONCE AGAIN rearing it's ugly head. The high fevers continued to come daily, every late afternoon/evening. Dr. Levine called in an internal medicine specialist as well as an infectious disease doctor, and they did some diagnostics on me to try to figure out what was causing the fever - chest x-rays, urine culture, bloodwork. The chest x-rays looked "a bit abnormal", so before we knew that the C. diff was back, they started me on some stronger antibiotics to rule out pneumonia. This royally pissed off my C. diff and was quickly discontinued, thank God. I was put back on Flagyl to help treat the C. diff, and my tummy slowly started to return to normal. I did my best to eat the hospital food, and at first it tasted good, but man, it became extremely tough. Bless their hearts, they were trying to feed me bland things for my GI issues, but sometimes it was just hell being presented with trays that looked like this, while my dad ate KFC and juicy hamburgers on the couch next to me.

Nothing whets the ol' appetite like an ice-cream scoop of chalky mashed potatoes

and a big heaping pile of plain grilled eggplant. Kill me now.

On Day 3 post-op, I got to take my first shower, and that was pretty awesome, although laborious and painful. I had 5 drains coming out of my various incisions, and the strength of a newborn. Standing in the shower trying to wash myself without falling over was a feat in itself. The compression shorts they had me in were hell to get on and off over my huge, painful thigh incisions. At some point late in the week, I started to suddenly feel despondent. Being in this hospital, in pain, with colitis, with gross food, with horrible daily fevers, with nothing but ridiculous 80s sitcoms on the TV (remember "Empty Nest"?)... and being away from my hubby, kids and dog... it all started to feel like too much. I started to feel really weird. Like my thoughts were scrambled. Like I was just not myself - I was feeling frantic and really anxious. I was having lots of "brain zaps", which is this weird feeling like a lightening bolt to your brain. This typically happens when you take a daily SSRI like I do, and the levels are suddenly way off. I started having insanely horrible nightmares every time I tried to nap -- really vivid work-stress dreams about angry waiting clients, or dreams that there was a demon in my house and it was killing my kids. I kept asking the nurses and doctors to help me figure out what was wrong with me, why am I suddenly psychotic?? In a moment of clarity, I finally figured out that one of the drugs I was on for pain -- Gabapentin -- was causing these neurologic side-effects. Jesus, did anything else want to go wrong? I stopped taking this drug, and it took a few days, but my brain finally started to clear up. On Friday night, when Kevin walked back into my hospital room, I was in the midst of this mental prison. He was like a ray of sunshine and hope walking in that night. I will never forget how amazing it was to see him, and how safe and normal I was finally able to feel.

Did I mention that my new boobs are gorgeous, and somehow in all this mess, they managed to heal without incident? Yes. Huge win. So, there's that. At least we have that.

So getting back to the story... they finally let me leave the hospital on Saturday morning. We booked out of there like our feet were on fire. It was Kevin's birthday, so we went out for a yummy lunch together and then back to the hotel. Kev went out to try to buy me some bike shorts so I didn't have to keep wearing the one awful compression garment every day. While he was out, my fever struck, right on time at 3pm. This one was really terrible. I shook and shivered uncontrollably for three hours. The doctors had never really pinned down a good reason for my fevers, other than the inflammation in my gut from the C. diff and the inflammation at my multiple huge surgery sites. I took Tylenol and lay in bed shaking all afternoon. At least I was out of the hospital.

In bed at the hotel on Saturday afternoon.

WHY. WON'T. THESE. FEVERS. GO. AWAY.

PS - This was my last fever.

That evening, Kevin went out to meet his friend Dave, who randomly happened to be in the city, for a birthday drink. When he got back, I was feeling much better and we ordered a pizza and a movie and had a nice quiet hotel-room date. Not bad. On Sunday, I woke up feeling great. Hardly any pain, no fever, no brain zaps, no weird Gabapentin feeling - hooray! Kev and I went out for a yummy brunch at a nearby diner, and then he had to leave once again to get back to work and kids, much to his dismay. Luckily, my dad was able to come back down to be with me again. Dad and I went out for a nice dinner and a stroll around a few nearby blocks, which was really nice. That night I had terrible insomnia, and couldn't get to sleep until about 4:30 am, but I somehow woke up at 8:30 feeling great. I showered and my dad and I grabbed a cab to get to my one-week recheck with Dr. Levine. He checked me out and told me I looked great. I was thrilled to report that I was finally feeling great. He was a bit concerned about one area of redness around my left thigh incision, and warned me that it could try to open up and need further treatment. I begged him with tears in my eyes to let me go home to my kids, even though the original plan was to stay in the city until Tuesday. He told me it was okay to go, but to stay in close touch with him over text about the state of my incisions. HALLELUJIA!

My amazing microvascular reconstructive plastic surgeon, Dr. Joshua Levine. He's such a great doctor and person, and what a good sport to pose for a picture with me! As if I weren't already annoying enough. I'm a terrible patient.

So Dad and I scrambled to get ourselves packed and on the road, and at Dr. Levine's insistence, we stopped every 45 minutes so I could take a quick walk to prevent blood clots. I got home that Monday night, October 24th, and immediately started feeling a lot more pain in my legs. I think the God-forsaken Gabapentin, which had been making me psychotic, had also been doing a boat-load to relieve my pain. When it fully left my system, I felt like someone had taken an axe to the backs of my thighs. And while it was beyond amazing to be home, and I was over the moon to see my kids and my dog, I was also now... home. My messy home. With the litterbox that needs scooping, and the floors that need sweeping, and the clutter that needs de-cluttering. With the dog that needs walking and the kids that need feeding. Kevin can/will only do so much, so being home also means that I'm back "on duty" to some extent.

I was able to rest pretty well for most of the week, and Friday was filled with pre-Halloween festivities at my girls' schools. I got myself put together enough to go to Shayla's preschool circus/costume show, and Ashlyn's school Pumpkin Day. My left thigh wound had started to open up some by this time, and I was wearing a big absorbent maxipad and a huge ace bandage on it, but in the middle of Ashlyn's classroom I realized that the bandage was leaking and there was an impressive wet spot on the back of my pants. Yuck. Somehow I survived that day and that weekend, and on Monday I wrapped up my weeping thigh and gimped along with our neighborhood friends and my beautiful family for a fun night of Trick-or-Treating.

Supergirl Ashlyn and Princess Leia Shayla. These two tough girls are my heart.

Bravely enduring yet another holiday of Mom being sick.

Let's not forget my Stinky Dog, Lupita, in her skunk costume. God she's cute.

She makes me smile even when everything else is pretty damn awful.

Back at home, I ended up going to see a local Albany breast surgeon, Dr. Kaufman, for my follow up care. He is a colleague of Dr. Levine's, so they were easily able to chat back and forth about me. Around 2 weeks post-op, Dr. Kaufman saw that my left thigh incision was starting to dehisce (pull apart), so he managed to order me some special suction-sponge bandages to wear over my incisions. I wore these from Monday till Friday, with much technical difficulty involved with the pump canisters filling with fluid and beeping incessantly, dragging the bulky pumps and tubes around with me, etc. So last Friday when these annoying bandages finally came off, and the incisions should have looked much better, this is what we found (***WARNING -- EXTREME GROSSNESS***):

Yup, so that's a huge hole in the back of my left thigh. It's about the size of my palm and about an inch deep. That is my hamstring muscle you are casually gazing at. After the bandages came off, I laid on my stomach on Dr. Kaufman's exam table with tears rolling down my face, in disbelief that this was happening... again. Another complication. Another. Freaking. Problem. Someone please just wake me up when this nightmare is over. I can't do this anymore.

I left Dr. Kaufman's office feeling downright depressed, and unsure that I would have the stomach to pack my painful leg-hole with wet gauze and bandage it twice a day for the foreseeable future as I had been instructed. I called my boss Danica to deliver the bad news that my recovery has been set back, and I would need at least one extra week out of work now. As always, she was amazingly understanding and supportive... a huge relief while going through this nightmare. On Sunday morning, I looked at my hole and had a mini panic-attack. How can I seriously walk around with this hole in my leg like everything is fine?!? I got ahold of Dr. Levine (this amazing man had given me his personal cell number), and he recommended that I have a suction sponge placed inside my wound to help it to contract down and heal faster. This is called a VAC drain, and although it sounds bulky, annoying and cumbersome like the Preventa dressings were, it also seems like the best step to get the Grand Canyon in my thigh to heal. Dr. Kaufman, sadly, had to be out of town this week, but I was able to get ahold of my original plastic surgeon, the wonderful Dr. Gannon, and she graciously agreed to order this device and place it for me. So now I'm in a holding pattern of waiting for this procedure to happen. There is apparently an arduous process of getting insurance approval, then ordering the device, that has to happen, and of course this takes several days to happen. It's cool, I mean, it's not like I'm sitting here writing my blog feeling like a victim of a zombie attack or anything.

My awesome friend Uelia, who I met at Dana Farber in August and is also battling Triple Negative Breast Cancer right now, sent me this card after my surgery. It moved me to tears. It says, "The Regents of the School of Hard Knocks hereby confer upon you, having demonstrated extraordinary resilience in the face of adversity, this Master's Degree in Crap Nobody Should Ever Have To Deal With." Amen. You're goddamn right. I have earned this degree, and you know what? I am so sick of this. There, I said it. I am trying so hard to be brave and strong, but seriously, when is this going to be over? How much physical and emotional pain can one woman endure in such a short period of time?

I want my leg back. I want my life back. I want my health back. I want my sanity back.

So here it is. My moment of darkness. Let's just get it all out so we can perhaps move on, and go back to feeling positive and optimistic. Don't read this next bit if you need to think of me as some sort of superwoman, because I am not, and this just needs to be said...

Fuck you, cancer, and the dozens of problems I have had to endure because you decided to pick on me. Fuck you for taking me away from my kids so much. Fuck you for making me think I was going to die and leave them. Fuck you for chemo, and radiation, and surgery after surgery after goddamn surgery. Fuck you for one trillion doctor's appointments, for complications, for intestinal infections, for fevers. Fuck you for so many special holidays spent sick in bed. Fuck you for making me miss work, or go to work sick and bald and broken. Fuck you for all of this pain and misery, which has lasted well beyond when I should have been done. Enough is enough. Fuck off, you nasty bastard.

Okay, well, that felt good to get out. If you made it this far, thank you. I know this was a tough post to get through. Here's hoping that my next post can have far fewer curse words and disgusting photos. Maybe I'll have intact body parts to show you next time - wouldn't that be exciting! Please keep the thoughts and prayers coming. I couldn't do this alone.

One more picture of my beautiful girls so we can end on a happy note. God, I love these kids.

Hashtag Epic Foobie Fail: Coming up with Plan B

Well, re-reading the post I wrote back in April, it's pretty cute that I thought I was DONE with all this breast cancer-related crap. Sadly, life had other plans for this tough lady. About a month after  writing that post and having my silicone implants placed, the incision on my left side decided to open. Despite looking completely healed, it turned out that the radiated skin was just too damaged to heal fully, and couldn't hold the weight of the 520cc implant. God bless my plastic surgeon, Dr. Gannon, who did her best to keep closing it back up... but time after time, the darn thing just dehisced again. Opened up. Oozed. Hurt like a mo-fo.  And literally *every* time it re-opened, it was either a major summer holiday (Father's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th...) or a Sunday afternoon. You can't make this stuff up. Dr. Gannon generously gave me her cell phone number, so I would text her that it was open again, and she would meet me in the office on her day off to numb it up and place more sutures. It would be super sore for a few days, look like it was going to heal, and then fail again about 7-10 days later. Fun, fun times.

Probably an overshare here, and sorry it is so gross, but this was my reality for several months. Franken-boob.

Melting tissue, necrotic black areas, sutures pulling through skin. Overall badness.

I would text photos like this to Dr. Gannon on the regular. She is a saint.

During one of my trips to Dana Farber in Boston, I went to visit my amazing friend Beth, who is also a PA. Her beautiful daughter, Olivia, was born prematurely and was spending time in the NICU at Beth Israel hospital, right next door to Dana Farber... crazy, right? While I was hanging out with Beth and telling her about my stressful non-healing saga, she suggested that I find a wound care clinic to help me figure out other ways to get the darn incision to heal. I immediately started searching, and ended up finding one at a hospital in Albany. When I called, they said it would take several weeks to get an appointment. Shocker. I mean, it's not like I have an oozing hole on my chest or anything here, people. So I did my best to keep it closed until I saw them, but it really was a horrible nasty mess and a difficult waiting period.

Visiting Beth and Olivia at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, where Beth gave me the idea to find a wound clinic.

Thank goodness for smart friends!

The wound clinic doctor gave me some various creams and wound matrix materials to use, and decided to have me begin hyperbaric oxygen treatments. This is not exactly a walk in the park. You spend 3 hours a day, 5 days a week in a glass tube filled with a very high concentration of oxygen. It helps wounds to heal by delivering a higher percentage of oxygen to the tissues. The hard part is that it takes about a month to really "kick in" and start working. Well, I went faithfully to my "HBO" (hyperbaric oxygen) treatments for over a month... but in that time, the incision failed so badly that Dr. Gannon had to make the awful decision to take the implant out on the left side. It seemed to make the most sense just to get that darn tissue to heal without the weight of the implant on it, and then figure out *another* surgery later on to bring healthy tissue to the area and replace the implant. This was an incredibly difficult moment... to feel like this was an official failure; to know that I would have a completely flat, boobless chest on that side. Throughout this whole cancer process, I hadn't had that happen - there had always been at least a tissue expander there. Now this would look, and feel, super cancer-y. Tears rolled down my cheeks as Dr. Gannon removed my hard-earned implant, that I'd been fighting to keep through all of the pain, doctors visits, HBO treatments and immense aggravation for 4 months. Sniff. I pulled myself together and told myself that this would all be okay. It wasn't cancer anymore. It was now all just cosmetics. But still, it felt incredibly unfair that this was all happening to me now, after all my treatments were over and I was SUPPOSED TO BE DONE. That sentence just kept playing through my head: "I'm supposed to be done." This shouldn't be happening. But, life is unfair and shit happens. You just gotta move on.

Still making it to work and smooshing Chihuahuas in between all of my medical appointments.

Gotta keep some sense of normalcy even when part of you body is trying to fall off.

So, with the implant out and now wearing a silicone implant in my bra on that side, I continued going every day to HBO treatments. This meant a lot of stress over missing time at work in the mornings, getting the girls to daycare so early that they had to open the center 15 minutes early for me (bless their hearts), racing down to Albany, having treatment, and racing back to work for appointments. It was crazy. But I met some awesome people there, too. Charlene and Matt were my HBO techs, and they kept me laughing the whole time. They gave me funny movies to watch to kill the time, and chatted with me on the phone while I was in the chamber. It's amazing how, when you're going through something tough, having great people there with you can somehow make it fun. This seems to be a common theme throughout this journey... and a meaningful life lesson amidst the chaos.

 I made the HBO tech, Char, take a picture of me in the tank on the first day of treatment.

And then she knew that I was crazy and we became fast friends.

Now that my left foobie had officially left the building, Dr. Gannon referred me to a microvascular surgeon in Albany to see if she could do some sort of skin flap or graft to create me a new breast. Dr. Gannon believed that the implant could just go back in, and some new skin could be moved over from my upper back to replace the dead skin on my now-flat chest. Well, after again waiting about 3 weeks for an appointment, Dr. Rezak saw me and informed me that sadly, no -- the implant could not go back into the area that was now a yucky wound. It would just get infected. A new breast would have to be made from healthy fatty tissue grafted from somewhere else on my body.

Many women in this situation have something called a DIEP flap performed, which takes skin and fat from the belly and moves it up to make a breast. However, because I have a thin build and no substantial belly fat, Dr. Rezak talked to me about taking skin and fat from the backs of both of my thighs to reconstruct a left breast. This is called a "stacked PAP flap" procedure. There are very few surgeons who are trained and experienced enough to perform microvascular reconstruction like this, and I was excited to have found one right in Albany. After waiting to have a special CT scan to map my tissues and blood vessels, and going to see her again to review results in September, I was finally able to schedule surgery for mid-October. Phew. I was very excited to get rid of the draining hole in my chest, but also slightly terrified -- this would be my biggest surgery yet. It would involve a 10-hour surgery, 5 days in the hospital, 4 weeks out of work, and huge painful incisions on both of my thighs and my chest. From what I could tell, this was going to be the best move for me. I would have 2 healthy foobies and never have to go through another breast surgery again, God willing. But in the back of my mind there were thoughts like: what if something happened and this surgery also failed? What if the blood supply died? Then what? I'm running out of options here. I was planning to proceed with the surgery, but was silently feeling very stressed about the outcome.

 Me and my sister Jess, both rocking our pixie cuts. Dang, we're sassy.

Cue my sister Jess entering the scene. About 10 days before my surgery is scheduled in Albany, she just so happens to mention to one of her doctors that I'm planning this surgery. He completely flips out that I'm having this highly specialized surgery locally, and tells her to INSIST that I go get a second opinion from one of the surgeons who helped develop breast reconstruction flap procedures in NYC, Dr. Joshua Levine. So she gets on the phone and gets me an appointment with him - TWO DAYS LATER. If you've been paying attention so far, you will notice that it typically takes about 2-3 weeks to see a new doctor. So long story short, I end up taking a last-minute day off from work and my Dad and I drive 3 hours down to NYC. We spend TWO HOURS with Dr. Levine, going over my entire history, discussing options, listening to him explain his opinions. It becomes very clear that THIS is the doctor who should be doing my surgery. He has been doing nothing but these microvascular breast flap reconstruction procedures for 11 years, and has a very high success rate. His feeling is that implants have such a high failure rate (67% over 10 years) that I should have not only the left breast reconstructed from a PAP flap, but also have my right implant removed and another PAP flap on that side. I'm amazed that he thinks I have enough tissue to accomplish this, and I'm thrilled at the prospect of having 2 fleshy foobies, no implants, just 100% my tissue. His receptionist manages to get me scheduled that afternoon for the special MRI/angiogram he needs in order to map my tissues, so we end up in the city all day and come home ready to book surgery with Dr. Levine. He also, miraculously, managed to get an infectious disease specialist on the phone while I was in his office, and came up with a plan to use specific antibiotics for me post-op that will pretty much prevent me from having another bout of C. diff colitis. (I skipped over this part of the story, but let's just say that being on 6 weeks of antibiotics while your boob incision is open makes for a VERY unhappy intestinal tract. Blech.) This alone impressed me tremendously, as I've seen several local doctors, including a GI doc, who were unable to come up with a solid plan for me. And boom - just like that - he's got it done. Amazing. This is the path I was meant to take. Huge kudos to my big sis for pushing me in this new direction and helping to make it all happen. She is amazing.

So that is where we stand: Surgery with Dr. Levine is now scheduled for October 17th down in Manhattan. I will spend 5 days in the hospital, and 9 days total in the city. It will be so hard to be away from my girls all that time, but my amazing father-in-law, Bernie, and his girlfriend Donna, will be hanging out at Chez Brennan all that time to take care of them. Kevin and my dad will take turns being with me in the city, and my friend Dean who lives there will also be able to help keep me company. My bosses have been hugely supportive of this whole Foobie Fail portion of my story, despite many hours, and now weeks, of time off from work. My friends and neighbors are once again gathering around me to offer their help and support. I am one lucky lady to have such a strong support network through all of this. I am hopeful, and actually pretty confident now, that surgery will go well, I will finally be able to move on, and have smooth sailing ahead for a good long time. Please universe...let this be the end... it is looooooong overdue.

With my beautiful girls at my vet clinic's "PetStock" festival last week.

Hopefully it is all peace, love, and good health from here on out!

One Year Later!

Somewhere in the midst of all the exhausting work of fighting cancer and still working and being a mom, I lost the ability to update this blog. Just in case you thought I didn't make it through, here I am to tell you: I am here. I am rocking my post-chemo pixie cut, my soft silicone foobies, a nosering, a devoted Chihuahua, and a life much more rich and full after facing such a dark time.

I still love to drink Cosmos and laugh with my amazing friends (this is my beautiful vet school bestie, Melissa). That much hasn't changed.

 

Sooo... let's see... where did I leave off? I think I got to the part where my hair fell out. Right. So we did indeed have a "hair-shaving party" and my whole family came to help me try to laugh through this depressing admission of illness. I was feeling terrible from my 2nd round of the nasty AC chemo, and really not enjoying that my hair was coming out in clumps in the shower. I really wanted to be able to shave my head and donate it to Locks of Love, but I washed it and then couldn't dry it or it would've been all over my bathroom floor, so I admitted defeat and just... got rid of it. Sigh. My beautiful long blonde hair, a part of who I have always been. I told myself "it's just hair, it will grow back" and tried hard to stay positive, but man, that was rough. On May 27, 2015, I sat on a chair out in our backyard and let it just happen. It was an ironically beautiful, sunny spring day. My sister wielded the clippers, and my sweet nephew Brooks bagged up the clumps. My niece Cadence did her best to keep me laughing as she documented with photos - and I love her for trying. My hubby Kevin was my rock through this experience. If you are reading this as a chemo patient about to lose your hair: I do not recommend trying to make this into a "party". Loved ones gathering around looking sad and awkward while you shave your head just does not feel fun. Lock yourself in the bathroom with your spouse or best friend and perform this sad act privately. Here are some head-shaving photos. I was trying my best to be brave and happy but was kinda dying inside a little.

 

 

My sweet Ashlyn May telling me it will be okay.



 Doing my best to triumph over this terrible day.

 

Okie-dokie. So now that that's out of the way (phew.... it only took me a year to gather the courage to post about that), we can move on with the story.

 

So chemo went on through the whole summer. The treatments themselves were actually pretty fun (!!). I became good friends with the woman I mentioned in my last post, Kayla, and her husband Andy, and we basically hysterically laughed in our chemo chairs every 2 weeks together. I also had a friend or family member join me for the treatments: My mom, dad, sister; Kevin (x2), my friends Meg, Dean, and Melissa. Have I mentioned how awesome my support system was? So they laughed along with us and we had an amazing little party each time in the back corner of the chemo room.

Kayla and me at one of our boisterous "chemo parties". Not joking... chemo infusions were a blast
thanks to this amazing woman right here.

Then I headed home for 3-4 days in bed while summer weekends took place around me. Pretty depressing. But we got through it. The kids, after going through the whole "Mommy has a boo-boo chest, be gentle" thing, got used to now hearing "Mommy is sick and needs to rest right now." I would return to work on the Tuesday of each post-chemo week and carry on with business as usual. Amazingly, I usually felt pretty okay, and it was shockingly comforting to be the doctor instead of the patient - to get to help others. I had one hiccup when my red cells dropped and I felt terribly weak and anemic, landing in the hospital with a blood transfusion. Other than that, though, life went on as usual. All my clients remarked on my gorgeous new "hair cut" and "highlights", tee-hee, awkward. Only one nasty rotten woman felt the need to point out directly to me that I was wearing a wig and demanded to know why. How rude. Let's just say that day wasn't so smooth... but I picked myself up and moved on. As usual.

 



Check out my awesome new haircut. Please don't ask what salon I use.

 



Wearing a wig and pretending to be "normal" was a pretty strange experience. That blasted wig was hot, itchy, and just generally annoying. I felt incredibly fake wearing it, but the only other option was to wear a hat or scarf and announce to my clients that I had cancer. No, thank you. I wore comfy cotton caps at home and around town if I felt *safe* doing so. It was like I was living a double life, trying to keep track of "people who know" and "people who don't know". Yuck. Very uncomfortable. I really hated this part of losing my hair the most. I just really didn't want every single person to know my business, but to have people not know felt wrong too. It's so hard when you have an obvious outward sign of being sick and just want to suffer with some dignity and privacy.

 

 

Relaxing with my girls in the backyard on a hot summer day.

 

 



The end of summer finally came, and with it the end of chemo. I was pretty exhausted but otherwise okay - just some mild numbness in my fingers from the Taxol, which has since resolved. I pulled myself together enough to pack the family up for our annual week-long vacation in Maine. The trip was fun but really tiring. I was NOT going to let cancer take this trip away from me, but rocking a chemo cap on the beach is super uncool. We did get some much-needed family bonding time, though. Priceless.

 

Somewhere in the middle of the summer, I went back to Dana Farber in Boston to talk to my really smart oncologist there, Dr. Sara Tolaney. She had recommended that, after chemo, I join a clinical trial for BRCA-1 positive, triple-negative, stage 2 patients in which they were studying an oral drug to prevent cancer recurrence, and I was all about that. So when I went in to talk to her about the trial, she asked about my treatment. I told her that I was getting through chemo, and then would be done. No radiation treatment was needed, according to my local oncologist (who shall remain unnamed). Long story short, Dr. Tolaney quietly raised an eyebrow - she knew that I should DEFINITELY have radiation because of the aggressive type of cancer I had and the spread to my lymph node. So we got that arranged back here at home, and about 2 weeks after finishing chemo, I started 6 weeks of radiation with a wonderful, awesome, amazing radiation oncologist named Dr. Aryal DeJesus, who developed a deep friendship with not just me, but also my little radiation buddy, Shayla. She and her receptionist Debbie spoiled her rotten while they irradiated my entire left chest and armpit area 36 times.

 

Dr. DeJesus was such a blessing to us. She is just the coolest, most compassionate oncologist ever.

 

I magically sailed through radiation with very little skin burning, religiously slathering myself with aloe and calendula oil daily. My treatments ended around Halloween. I got my port removed, and my hair was starting to grow back.

 

So remember how depressing it was to lose my hair? Well, let me tell you -- when your hair starts to grow back from chemo, it's the most uplifting feeling ever. Just to have peach fuzz, then a buzz cut, then a spiky-rockstar girl 'do, makes you giddy. I felt so funky with my new hair that I went and got my nose pierced to match my new look and to celebrate being a SURVIVOR. Wow. It felt really good to be able to say that.

Yes, I really wore this hair to work. Freedom from the wig -- amazing. One client said, "Wow, now THAT's a brave haircut!" And I thought... yeah, you don't know the half of it. ;)

Starting to have a real lesbian/punk chick hairdo now. Told myself that people totally choose to wear their hair like this all the time. I became obsessed with Chihuahuas somewhere around this time. That little creature on the left is my new dog, Lupita. How stinking cute is that face? Talk about pet therapy. If only she wasn't impossible to housetrain...

 

That gets my story pretty much up-to-date. I am almost to the end of this long process of getting cancer the hell outta my body. Double mastectomy - check. Chemo x 8 treatments - check. Radiation - check. I am midway through the one-year clinical trial and go to Boston once a month for checkups, which has been great. I get to see my dear vet-school friend Debbie and stay overnight with her and her sweet family. There are really no other treatments available to prevent recurrence for Triple Negative patients like there are for estrogen-positive breast cancer patients, so hopefully the Olaparib drug they are studying on me (or maybe I'm in the placebo group - boo) will prove to have a big benefit to us in years to come. Last Friday, April 22, I had my final soft silicone implants put in and no longer have those hard, uncomfortable tissue expanders in my chest. Surgery was painful but it already feels, and looks, so much better. My plastic surgeon, Dr. Susan Gannon, is so talented and wonderful. This fall I will be getting my ovaries +/- uterus removed laparascopically to prevent ovarian cancer due to my BRCA mutation. Yeeeeeah, we don't want any more cancer, thanks. :) I am also planning to take a road trip down to Maryland in November to see Vinnie Myers, the world's-best nipple tattoo artist. Can't wait for that! Having no nipples is sad, folks.



 

What a year this has been. Lots of sadness, tears, fear, and pain... but also great things like: new friends, like Kayla. Getting to reconnect with my old friend Jen from high school, who helped me tremendously - she is also a recent young survivor and talked me through some tough days. Deeper connections with my existing friends, and realizing I have the truest, most loyal, loving friends on the planet (Meg, Dean, Beth, Melissa, Bizarro Beth, Tara, Lakshmi, Jenna, Steph... the list keeps going). Bonding with my kids and family. An incredible appreciation for life and living each day to the fullest. Feeling loved and supported. Watching my entire neighborhood rally around me to bring huge meals, cards, and gifts for me and the girls; even doing our laundry and mowing our lawn for weeks on end. Obscenely thoughtful and generous care packages constantly arriving in the mail from my vet school girls - Sharon, Debbie, Rachel, Holly, Krishna, and Jasmine.Visits and phone calls from my most favorite people. Finding out that our family carries this rare cancer gene so that my mom and sister can do preventive surgeries, and the next generation doesn't have to get cancer if they also carry the mutation. Feeling like I kicked this thing in the ass, and showed my girls how to be tough when life gets hard. Knowing that I am stronger than cancer.

"Yes they're fake, the real ones tried to KILL ME." Love this shirt that I wore to the 
Breast Cancer walk in October. 
My friend Michah made me this beautiful pink ribbon scarf.

With my dad, girls, hubby, nephew and niece at the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. Such a fun day - it got freezing cold and snowed but we still had a blast!

Yes, that's right, I'm a cancer-fighting superhero. I raised over $3500 and was presented with a pink Pacesetter Cape.

 

And that, my friends, is where we are. Here is a silly picture I took yesterday after I dried my hair and ended up looking like a middle-aged Midwestern hockey mom. Or Kate Gosselin. Yeesh. Growing out my hair is going to be a long process, but I'm enjoying it in all it's crazy stages. I got some blonde highlights and I'm feeling more like myself - but it is definitely a new self. I am not the same woman I was one year ago, and I actually couldn't be happier about that.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, and for sharing in my story. And don't worry, I will keep posting as my hair grows back and life goes on, and on, and on... for a really long time.

 

Xoxo,

Melanie

 

 

 

 

 



 



Soldiering On Through Chemo

I wrote this post in May 2015 and it never posted to the blog... so here it is, one year later:

Today I had my second AC treatment -- so now we're 2 down, 6 to go. The nurses brought us over and sat us next to a really nice 31-year-old woman there with her sister for chemo. She has two young kids and was diagnosed about a month ago with Stage 3 estrogen-receptive invasive ductal carcinoma. We chatted about our experiences and got to know each other a little bit. She was really nice and positive, and it was so nice to meet another woman going through this at the same time. She has already lost her hair and had on an adorable hat, so I asked her where she got it and ordered a couple for myself on Amazon. It's amazing that everyone you meet along this journey can be a source of knowledge and support!

I have already been hit with the queasiness tonight, but it's not too terrible. Going to stick to tea, fiber toast and Miralax this evening, haha. Tomorrow I have to go get my Neulasta shot to increase my white cell count, but other than that we'll be laying low. Ashlyn woke up this morning with the bright red "slapped cheeks" rash on her face that means she has a virus called "Fifth Disease", so she ended up having to stay home with Shayla and Donna last minute today. You can't make this stuff up. At least it's nothing too serious, and by the time the rash appears, the virus is no longer contagious.

I returned to work last Saturday, and shockingly this week went really well! It was so nice to see all my coworkers again, and to be a doctor again rather than a patient! It feels good to use my brain, help people, and of course, snuggle the cute animals. A really wonderful couple in their 60's came to see me with their brand-new puppy on Tuesday and the woman looked at me with tears in her eyes. "We don't know if we should be doing this whole puppy thing right now. Our 37-year-old daughter died last year of breast cancer, and we're raising her 3- and 6-year old kids." My stomach dropped out my you-know-what, but rather than running out of the room like I wanted to, I sat next to her and we talked. She was obviously overwhelmed but looking for some comfort and healing in her life, and for those sweet children. I examined the cute little pup and he was adorable, gentle, and healthy. I reassured her that he's a great little dog and that I think he will be therapeutic for them. She seemed to leave feeling happy and relieved after we talked. THAT is the kind of thing that makes my job worthwhile and makes up for some of the bad days.

The next puppy I saw that day was an 8-week-old Eskimo Spitz who was beyond adorable. I love this breed because of the Eskimo my mother-in-law rescued when I was in vet school. Puppy kisses just have a way of making everything seem better, don't they?

A Rough Few Weeks

I feel super guilty about not updating this blog in the last few weeks. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Basically what happened was that I got some less-than-ideal biopsy results after my surgery and really, really didn't want to talk about it. I'm going to try to give a quick(ish) summary of a rough couple of weeks.

So about a week after my surgery, I was snoozing on the couch (my new occupation) when the phone rang and it was my breast surgeon, Dr. Weber. She was calling with the results of the analysis done on both of my removed breasts (that sounds weird), and the two sentinel lymph nodes removed from my left axilla. The final diagnosis was: the tumor was 1.2 cm - still pretty small - and the margins were clean; however, one of the lymph nodes she removed was found to have 4mm of cancer in it. The other lymph node was clean. This news sucked the breath out of me. Kevin was listening in on this call on the other side of the living room, and we locked eyes as Dr. Weber spoke and silently screamed together. Crap. Spread. Metastasis. This means I'm Stage II. I was SO DESPERATELY HOPING to have caught this at Stage I. Like, I really really really really needed that win. Like, really bad. Way to kick me while I'm down, Cancer, you asshole! I was so mad. This basically means that there is more of a chance that cancer cells got out into my body and are trying to set up shop. Very very scary stuff to think about. When I went to see my oncologist a few days later, she started to rattle off numbers that mean lower survival rates and higher recurrence rates and I burst into tears that just wouldn't stop. I was completely unable to stop picturing myself dying and leaving my girls. The reality of this cancer sank in in a way it hadn't up until then: I might die. This might NOT be curable the way all those smart people at Dana Farber had told me it would be.

I spoke with my midwife Lisa and told her I couldn't stop thinking about dying, and she had me increase my Paxil dose to what I think of as the "Mind-Numbing Dose". It has done the trick in getting me to stop feeling so hopeless and negative, but it has also made me a bit... blah. I started sleeping ALLLL day long in a way even I had never done before. Right now I'm working on backing down again to a normal dose and I hope I don't become miserable again. I think I'm okay now. I really think I can do this.

Now that I'm Stage II, I have to have the longer, more aggressive chemo protocol - which my oncologist was actually leaning toward anyways, so no major change. The protocol will be: 4 doses of Adriamycin/Cytoxan ("AC") every 2 weeks, and then 4 doses of Taxol every 2 weeks. Of course this schedule depends on my body's cooperation with keeping normal blood cell counts and all that good stuff. I've planned the chemo treatments to happen on Thursdays, since I normally work Monday through Wednesday, so that hopefully my work schedule can stay on track. My bosses understand that things may not work out this perfectly, and are also letting me cut back on my weekend shifts while I go through chemo, which is awesome.

In preparation for starting my chemo on May 7th, I had to undergo a barrage of tests and procedures. I had an echocardiogram to assess my cardiac function, since the Adriamycin drug can damage the heart muscle and you have to have a very healthy heart to start this treatment. That was easy and the test was normal. Then I had a PET scan, which is a test to look for any other tumors forming throughout your body. AKA - THE SCARIEST TEST I'VE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. The test was funny because they inject you with radioactive sugar for the scan, and make you drink a barium shake, and you become radioactive for 24 hours. I had to limit my proximity to the kids that night, which was hard because they didn't understand what was happening. I explained to Ashlyn that Mommy had invisible waves coming off her body that could give her boo-boos. That seemed to appease her, and the next day she announced how happy she was that I wasn't radioactive anymore!

Mmmm.... sweet creamy vanilla Barium. Blech.

Praise be to Jesus, my PET scan was negative. Perhaps the most amazing news I've ever heard. They would have had to ship me directly to the psych ward for long-term sedation if that test had shown more bad news.

In order to safely get my chemo, I had to have a Port placed as well. This is a little doohicky that they implant under the skin just below the right collarbone, with a tubey-thingy that tunnels under the skin up to the neck and dives into the jugular vein. They put the chemo right into the port (which is like a little plug under the skin) and it goes directly into a major blood vessel. This gets rid of the need for constant IVs in my arm and also decreases the risk of the drugs causing serious tissue damage. This procedure seriously skeeved me out, so I insisted that I get some sort of sedation for this. They gave me Versed and Fentanyl... I highly recommend this. I was not fully asleep, so I was vaguely aware that they were hacking away at the right side of my chest/neck, but did not have pain or really care. Good drugs. The problem arose when they took the drape away from my face and the radiologist's assistant told me that they *may* have just ruptured my right tissue expander. Umm.... excuse me?? How on earth does that happen? I was groggy and out of it but knew this could be major bad news. Long story short (we'll scan past Kevin punching the wall in the men's room after the doctor delivered this news to him very non-chalantly)... once the doctor spoke with ME, I was able to figure out that the gush of fluid he encountered while placing the port was not my tissue expander rupturing, it was just a pocket of fluid left behind after my surgery called a seroma. File this under Things Melanie the Vet Figures Out When Human Doctors Fail. Anyways, now the port is in, and while it's not the most attractive or comfortable thing in the world... it serves it's purpose.

The catheter going up my neck is pretty gross. Looks like a parasite!

So the big day finally came -- I had my first AC chemo last Thursday, 5 days ago. The treatment itself was a piece of cake - I sat in a comfy recliner with warm blankets with Kevin by my side, and read, slept, and chatted. After the 5 hours at the infusion center, we had to go car shopping because - get this - my car decided to die last week. Awesome, right? I kinda need a car. That went well and I ended up getting a gorgeous blue 2014 Subaru Outback... same as my old car but a new model. It's fantastic. Anyways, back to chemo. They gave me steroids and anti-nausea meds to prevent side effects and overall I've done pretty well. I basically have times when I feel queasy as though I'm pregnant, or have an achy feeling in my stomach. And - try not to be too shocked - I've been pretty tired. It's been quite the process trying to figure out what to eat that will not make me feel nauseous, and will also not completely clog my colon (sorry for being so graphic - the struggle is real). Fruit and Fiber One cereal are my new best friends. I'm trying to take it easy and stay well hydrated. My other issue is that my right Foobie (let's be honest - they're not Boobies anymore) is very painful at times. I think the tissue expander is rubbing against my muscle. I have an appointment with Dr. Gannon today so hopefully she can help make this better.

 

Hooked up to my infusion. Chemo Mel.

 

The "Kool-Aid" red Adriamycin. Creepy, right? Also turns your pee pink. TMI?

Jello shots, anyone?

Now we just hope that the chemo continues to go well and we stay on schedule. I return to work this Saturday (yikes), so hopefully my energy level continues to improve. I'm working on staying positive and, as Ashlyn says, feeling like I will "kick breast cancer in the body!" which I think is her school's solution to kids not saying "butt". Next weekend I think I'll invite my family over for a head-shaving party since that's about the time my hair will start falling out. Last weekend we had a fabulous Mother's Day at the local park just relaxing, eating and playing all day. The kids loved the ice cream truck that came by, and their sweet, sticky smiles just made the day perfect!

Life's greatest gifts.