Recovery and Waiting

April 20, 2009

While I was waiting in the recovery area, Dr, Smith came to check in - he said he had removed all of the tumor and 3 lymph nodes (correction - I later found out that he removed 12 lymph nodes, which were in 3 clusters). The lymph nodes looked healthy to him, but he would have the pathology results in 7 - 10 days. However, he would be out of town at a conference so we would have to wait 2 weeks to get our results.

Recovery was not too bad, however I was surprised when I discovered that after a couple of days, my left arm was numb, from my incision site in the pit, down to the elbow. It was on the underside and the backside of the arm. About 4-5 days after surgery, the nerves began to awaken and the numbness turned to pain. I had not anticipated this but did some research and found that this was normal, and caused by the nerve damage during lymph node removal.

This was not going to be as easy as I thought.

My Mom and her husband, Tony, came to stay in their cottage which is next to our house, to help with recovery. I was amazed by the outpouring of support I received - we had friends and neighbors delivering meals for a week, flowers, gifts and lots of chocolate. I truly felt like Mrs. Aquafest that week!

On Monday, April 20, 2009, Dan & I went to see Dr. Smith to learn the pathology results of the tumor and lymph nodes. The lymph nodes were all three negative, so there was no node involvement - this is great news! However, the tumor was about twice the size they originally estimated - so over 2 cm, instead of 1. This is significant, in that under 2 cm it is Stage I, but now I was in Stage IIA. A surgeon considers the procedure successful when he removes the tumor with a mimum of 1 mm of healthy tissue all the way around. This is called "clean margins". The Path report did not show clean margins all the way around, so I will be having another surgery on May 5, to remove some more tissue in the area where the tumor was removed. Additionally, since the tumor is now over 2 cm, when we meet with the Oncologist, chemotherapy will now be part of the discussion.