Hair progress

Saturday marks 2 months since my last chemo. Just wanted to share how the hair growth is going. My eyebrow hairs look so dark. Makes me wonder how dark my hair is gonna be when it all comes in. 

I am continuing to heal after surgery. I am doing my stretching and movement exercises to losen up my left arm. Mobility is improving. There is still numbness under my left arm. I have to look in the mirror when I am putting on deodorant on left armpit because it is numb and I can't feel it. That should regain feeling as I heal more.

My sister and I went to Zaza's today and had pedicures. I have not had a professional pedicure since I started on chemo. It was to nice to get my toes done. Now I have pretty toes for sandle season.

Yesterday I had lunch with my Auntie Betty. She is a breast cancer survivor. It is nice to be able to talk to her about side effects and know I'm not alone in experiencing some of these things. 

My doctors are really happy with how I have been handling things through this entire process and how well I did during chemo. I have been doing my best to keep a positive attitude during this time. I was not gonna let cancer stop me. I have plans for my future and we gotta get through this and get back to working on my plans. My surgeon asked if I would be willing to speak to other cancer patients who are having a hard time. Of course I would! She did say we had to wait until I have all my hair back before I do it though. I am not saying it was always easy but I did try/am trying to live as normal a life as I can during treatments. 

Visit with my Surgeon

I had an appointment with my surgeon. She removed the drain that was under my left arm. I can now move my left arm all I want.... YAY! My arm is stiff so she gave me some exercises to do to help loosen it up. Things are looking good. She also gave me a print out of the pathology report from my surgery. I jokingly asked if she could put an A+ on it since it was so good and she DID along with a smiley face :D

It was nice to get out of the house today. I have not left the house since my surgery. I put makeup on and everything. It was nice to feel kinda like a girl again. I've just been wearing baggy button down shirts (because I had the drain and could not lift my arm) and no makeup along with the buzz-cut look I am sporting with my hair starting to grow back I have been seeing myself as a boy for a week. My mom, sister, and I even went out to lunch after the appointment. Still not ready to drive yet, I think I need a few more days of healing before I try that. 

THIS JUST IN... Part II

I just received a call from my surgeon's office. They got the pathology results back from the tissue and lymph-nodes they removed during my surgery last Thursday.

THEY HAD NO CANCER IN THEM!!!!!

WOOT!

Nails

I am not sure if I have addressed this in previous posts but chemo jacked up my nail beds which means I will be sporting nail polish more now then before. Most of my nails have partially detached from my nail beds during the last few rounds of chemo and they are no longer pretty. :-(

It was time to remove the nail polish I had on and trim my nails so I decided it is time to share.

Things are getting back to normal

Sometimes coming up with titles to these posts are the hardest part. Anyways, I am noticing that my oily skin is coming back which is a bummer. I really enjoyed the way the skin on my face was during chemo, smooth and not oily. More and more eye brows are appearing everyday and with that means stray eye brow hairs. I actually plucked some stray eyebrow hairs this morning. Looks likemy vacation from the usual hair removal processes will be over soon. It was nice not having to pluck, shave, or wax anything for a few months. 

Look!!! Eyebrows!!!

In other news, my throat no longer hurts from the intubation from my surgery on Thursday. Yay! It is hard for me not to be able to do things for myself. So I must be patient and ask for help when I need it.  Fine! Life!!! I will TRY to be patient while I am healing!

Surgery... done!

I had my surgery yesterday. All went well.

I had to check-in at 6:15am. First they had to do a wire loc so my surgeon knew where to cut out since there was pretty much no more tumor left. That required me being wheelchaired to the breast center next door. They have a tunnel going from the hospital to the building where the breast center is. During the wire loc they so a bunch of mammograms. They do two before to find where they need to place the wire and then after they measure and place the giant needle in (they numbed my breast so it did not hurt) they do another Mammogram to check. They had to do an adjustment so after the adjustment they did another mammogram to check it and it was good. they insert the wire through the giant needle and then tape it down so it was not in the way of my gown. Then they wheeled me back through the tunnel and at 11:30am I headed to the operating room.

I had partial mastectomy also known as a lumpectomy (which really means they removed the marker that was placed when they did the core biopsy plus a margin of good tissue since the chemo did it's job there really wasn't much of a tumor left which is awesome) and they removed a few of the lymph-nodes that had cancer in them.

I am attempting to type with one hand since I am not allowed to lift my left arm just yet. I have a drain in my armpit where they removed some lymph-nodes. I have to empty it 3 times a day and measure it and log it on a form the doctor gave me.

I don't really have pain where the incisions are, but I do have soreness. If I don't move I am fine... of course I can't not move. They want me to get up and move whenever I can.  My throat hurts because they intubated me during the surgery. That should go away in a few days.

In other news, my ankle is getting better. I can walk on it. It will probably be another week before it is back to normal.

and....

HAIR!!!!! I can see hair growing on my head and eyebrows and eyelashes!!! Soon I won't have to draw eyebrows to have a face.

I see you!!!!

I see signs of hair growth!!! I can tell my eyebrows are starting to grow back... There are tiny hairs and it kinda looks like my eyebrows have a five o'clock shadow. Soon little hairs, soon you will be eye brows again!

Waiting...

Today I lost the last of my lower lashes so I officially have no more lower lashes. I had my last round of chemo a month ago and i hear say that my hair should start to  grow back soon. No signs of it yet. So I am waiting for that and waiting for my ankle to heal that I sprained last sunday. It's a pretty bad sprain. I had my mom take me to the ER on sunday night because it hurt so bad I could not walk. They x-rayed it and gave me an air splint and crutches. I used the crutches on monday and it was exhausting. My muscles hurt for days after. Proving how out of shape I am. My mom had a knee scooter from when she had ankle surgery a few years ago so I have been using instead of crutches. My thigh muscle in my left leg and the calf muscle in my right leg are getting used a lot.