Now we wait on the results

First of all, thank you all for your comments to yesterday's post. I was actually able to go online between procedures and it made me feel really good to know that I have buddies out there in cyberspace cheering me on. You guys rock!

Yesterday went pretty well, my biggest fear was that I'd be uncomfortable with the wire in my boob during the long wait between procedures, and that actually was a non-issue. The wire is so fine, I barely felt it there. The point of the wire is to make the surgery as quick and easy as possible by pinpointing the location of the nodule in question before the surgery even starts. An ultrasound (yes, yet more ultrasounds!) is done and a radiologist will guide a very fine wire through your breast tissue so that the tip rests in the nodule. Very accurate, and I definitely appreciate the reduction in surgical time and potential slicing that eliminating this part of the procedure would cause.

Now, what I did not appreciate was how hard it was to get the wire to the right point in my boob. I felt like I was jumped by a very polite and professional girl gang. The u/s tech was friendly and very nice and the two radiologists performed the wire localization, one a little more senior to the other, were both lovely, tiny Indian women with delightful British accents. Any unlikely gang, but performed a pretty kick-ass smackdown nonetheless.

After the tech had located the nodule -- which had shrunk from both the earlier biopsy in July and probably from the progesterone during my 9.5 weeks of pregnancy -- the more senior doctor, I'll call her Gang Leader, injected Lido.caine to numb the area. The injection into the boob doesn't feel great, but not too bad. Then the more junior doctor, I'll call her The Protege, took the wire, which has a little handle on the end, and started threading it through the tissue toward the nodule; we all were watching the progress on the u/s screen. It wasn't so bad until she got about an inch away and then she just couldn't go any further. She kept pushing and pushing, to the point that the tech was basically sit on my chest from my left side and The Protege was sitting on me from the right, and pushing and squashing the tissue to try to get a way in.

I wasn't completely surprised, as I have been told ad nauseum by boob professionals over the years that I have incredibly dense breast tissue. They showed me on the screen a line of thick tissue that was just completely blocking their path. I was being a pretty good trooper but after about 10 minutes they could tell it was hurting me alot more than it should have and I think the Lido.caine was starting to wear off. So, Gang Leader took over and decided to try to come in from a different direction. They showed me the first wire, which they had to discard, because my fiesty breast tissue had completely bent it out of proportion. She gave me another shot of Lido.caine and was able to get to the area, though it didn't feel great. It turned out that the nodule was not only very deep but was basically resting on the muscles of my chest cavity, which is why they think the tissue was tougher. When Gang Leader got the tip in the nodule, I actually had some pain radiate up toward my neck. Not bad pain, just surprising, and she pulled back a little because she said that sounded like she had tapped my muscle a little.

After that was done - and again, the doctors were so nice and caring, they kept asking me through the whole thing if I was OK and immediately stopped if I said anything -- I had to go in for a mammogram. Gang Leader told me that was one of the hardest wire localizations they had to do in quite a while (Yay, me!) and that the tech should go easy on me for the mammogram. For those of you who have not had mammos, they really like to squish your boobs in the machine to spread out the tissue. With my dense boobs, you can imagine how squished they usually need to do mine, like pancakes basically. But it would have been cruel to do much more to me after they all just gave me a beat down, so it was a pretty gentle, quick mammo.

Then I was brought down to the waiting area, where I reclined in a bed along with all the other ambulatory surgery patients -- each in our own beds, obviously ;). NoodleGuy was able to keep me company and we chatted, read and surfed the interwebs. I was able to get some laughs and good sympathy for my beat down by the radiologists. The wait actually turned out not to be too bad -- by the time I was back after the wire localization, it was about noon and they started prepping me for surgery around 2:30. The surgery itself was no big deal (yay for deep sedation!), took about 45 minutes and then I was in recovery for about an hour where they gave me the best tasting graham crackers ever. We got Mickey D's on the way home -- oh the guilty pleasure on salty french fries! Watched some TV (catching up on season 3 of Dex.ter) and we both conked out by 10pm.

I have a big bandage, about 6" x 2" on the outer side of my right boob. I wasn't allowed to shower today, but I am allowed to take the bandage off, leaving the steri-strips on until they fall off on their own. I'm waiting until the afternoon to remove it, at around the 24 hour mark. I'm curious to see the incision -- the surgeon told me I'd have a scar, but it shouldn't be too bad. I have to admit that I'm a little vain when it comes to my boobs, they're by far my favorite body feature. Just big enough without being too big, yet still perky. My friends always used to tell me they hated me because I could wear tank tops bra-less or with those little built-in bra shelves and not have any sagginess. Little did I know that this very perkiness was due to dense tissue which would be an albatross at a later point. Anyway, I'm hoping the scar isn't too disfiguring, though NoodleGuy said he'll keep me regardless. ;)

Mentally, I'm OK today. Relieved that this part is done. Next week will be nerve-wracking, waiting on the results for Peanut (even though I am sure it's chromosomal) and especially for the biopsy results. I took the day off from work today, which I almost never do after all these surgeries lately, I usually go back to work the next day. Since I work from home, it seems like I don't need to bother with skipping work. But this time, I'm so glad I'm not working today -- I'm going to do something fun (maybe get my eyebrows shaped using a spa gift certificate NGuy gave me) and just not deal with the emails and annoying folks at the office. The owe me buckets of comp time anyway, so I may as well take it.

So, part 1 done -- more to come on the question of when and whether I can get back on the fertility merry-go-round....