Last Thursday, Mom, Dad, Viv and I took a short hike down to Meadowdale Beach Park by my house, the same place we went for Charis’ baby shower. It was a gorgeous day and it felt great to be out doing some mild exercise. On our way back, I also tried driving a short distance from the beach park parking lot back to our house. I still do not have enough strength on the operated side, so I need to use both hands to release the hand brake and to move to reverse and first gear. Making left turn is a bit hard for me as well…. Probably not a good idea to go on the freeway by myself yet…
This morning, Siang decided that my scar has healed up enough to withstand water. So I finally got to take a shower this morning! Yes, I did not shower for 11 days… …, but thanks to Sharon, Esther, Vivien and Mom, I’ve been receiving salon-style hair wash for the past two weeks, or else I would have gone nuts.
I still do not have full range arm/shoulder motion on the operated side. I’ve been doing some stretching exercises, but probably need to be more disciplined about it. The book recommended that I do them 3 times a day.
Just got a call, Daddy has safely arrived Taipei. He’ll be back to work Monday morning. Mommy will stay here till May 22. Then Siang’s parents will be here. I’m so blessed to have so many people available to take care of me non-stop.
Prayer requests:
* Dad will be able to adjust to the Taipei time zone soon and have enough energy to resume his duties at work.
* My surgical area is numb. Please pray that I’ll gain my full sensation back.
* I’ll be disciplined to do the stretching exercises to restore my arm and shoulder motion.
* I’ve scheduled to see two medical oncologists next week. Pray that the meetings will be fruitful and that we’ll be able to make the best decision regarding my follow-up treatment.
* I said something very inconsiderate that hurt my mom’s feeling today. I feel awful right now, and I have not been a very good witness for God. Pray for wisdom and strength and good temper.
Today, Annie got to go "out", meaning to venture further than short walks around the neighbourhood! Good for her!
We went to Pike Place market and walked around for an hour or so for lunch, and drove to Gelatiamo to have some gelato. That was probably enough of a workout for her :), we came home and she got in bed and conked out. I dearly hope she recovers fast and strong, so her body's tough and strong (not that she isn't already) when chemo starts. (or if. but it seems like it may be likely... hope not... but likely recommended... we'll know next wed)
we got the pathology from the surgery. for the curious, in short:
Sentinal lymph node: no histologic evidence of metastatic carcinoma.
Breast: Infiltrating ductal carcinoma with prominent mucin production, 3.5cm, Nottingham grade II/III (7/9), moderate tubule formation, moderate nuclear pleomorphism, high mitotic activity, ER/PR+ve, Her2neu-ve, p53-ve, intermediate Ki67.
The appointment with the surgeon’s nurse went well this morning. She peeled off the tegaderm (a transparent, plastic dressing that had been covering my mastectomy wound for the past week.) It was a bit sticky, like removing a huge piece of really old band-aid. It hurt a little. Then she went on to remove the drainage tube. She asked if I wanted to sit up or lie down. I asked which way hurt less? She said it didn’t really matter, choose a position that would make me relax. So I chose to lay down.
I’m ashamed to say that I was much more nervous about the drain removal than about the surgery last week. Sleeping through the surgery was much easier.
I didn’t get any local anesthetics or numbing medicine today. I knew exactly when the nurse was going to pull the stupid plastic tube out and that didn’t really help me relax. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
The nurse asked Siang to hold my hand and I closed my eyes. She said “Ready?” and started to yank it out! Ouch! That was it. It was out. Whew! I’m so thankful that it went so quickly. It didn’t hurt as bad as I thought.
Yucky stuff continued to flow out through the hole on the side of my body after the tube was pulled out. The nurse let it drain for awhile and then put new dressing to cover the hole. Siang said the hole closed up after the tube was removed. The human body created by God is simply amazing.
We regret we didn’t take a before and after picture though.
For some reason, I feel more pain today after the tube is removed. I think I’m going to rest a day or two before doing any stretching exercise.
After we went home, Erick and Vivien were already waiting at our house. After a simple lunch, we spent the afternoon playing mahjong. It was a good low-impact arm exercise for me. :-)
Can’t believe it’s already been a week since the surgery.
Sorry for not updating the blog earlier. I thought I would have lots of time but I guess I’m fortunate enough to be able to sleep and nap very well and have many good friends to keep me busy and making sure that I would not be bored while resting at home. :-) I’m feeling good and very well taken care of by Siang, Mom& Dad and lots of friends. My house is filled with flowers, cards and fresh fruits. I really feel super special!
I’ll be going back for a follow-up visit with the surgeon’s nurse tomorrow and hopefully to remove the drainage tube that has been sticking out of my body for the past week.
Had a brief phone conversation with the surgeon last Friday. The sentinel node is confirmed negative, margin is fine. However, they see the tumor is primarily invasive ductal carcinoma (original biopsy results indicated that the tumor was mostly ductal carcinoma in situ with invasive components). This means some sort of chemotherapy would probably be recommended. We’ve made an appointment with a medical oncologist on April 28 to discuss the pros and cons of different types of chemotherapy.
Prayer requests:
(1)The scar will continue to heal properly, with no infection and no complication.
(2)I’ll experience little pain when the tube is removed.
(3)My digestive ‘issues’ will be resolved (the pain medication and anesthetics has slowed down my bowel movements) :-)
(4)I’ll be able to restore my arm and shoulder mobility.
(5)Wisdom in determining what the best follow-up treatment plan should be.
(6)Continue to pray for family and friends who have yet to know our Lord, Jesus Christ.
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This past week has gone by so quickly. I better write down my thoughts before I forget, though I can honestly say this has been one of the most memorable weeks of my life… this part is mostly a record to remind myself of God’s goodness, I’d like to share this with you all if you’re interested in reading about what happened to me, read at your own leisure….
Surgery Day – April 12:
God has been extremely gracious. His provision is more than what I have asked for… …
He arranged Teresa, a fellow sister-in-Christ, to be my nurse assistant during pre-surgery. She normally goes to a different church. But for some reason, she visited my church on Easter Sunday. So when Pastor Sam asked Siang and I to go up front to be prayed for that Sunday, Teresa was sitting at the back pew, wondering if she would see me at the hospital the next day. And what do you know? God’s plan is perfect. Teresa took care of everything for us during pre-op and made my parents feel very comfortable. The only hiccup was the other nurse couldn’t find my vein the first time when she tried to hook me up to the IV, so now there’s a big bruise on the back of my hand…
The sentinel node mapping was really swift. Though it was quite painful (the numbing medicine didn’t really work and I got poked quite a number of times), I thank God that the tracers filtered through my lymphatic system very quickly and they were able to locate the sentinel node within 15 minutes. I was told that it might take up to 3 hours for some people.
I was the last patient to be operated on that day, so after the sentinel node mapping was completed, I basically just lied in the pre-op area for almost 5 hours waiting for my turn. Normally, only 1 family member/friend is allowed to be with the patient in the pre-op area. But Teresa was kind enough to let lots of people come in and see me. She said I have broken the hospital record. She has never had a patient with so many pre-op visitors before. Thanks to all who dropped by to see me, pray with me, and cheer me on before surgery and thank you Lavina and Ivy for taking the day off from work to be there the whole time! It must be the on-going pre-op party that had made me forget about feeling nervous.
At around 3pm, the surgeon walked in. He took a purple marker and marked on my body where he was going to put the incision. Amazingly, I was quite calm at that point, just felt very ticklish as he drew arrows on me. Then at 3:30pm, two very loud and funny anesthesiologists walked into my pre-op room. They put a ‘shower cap’ on me, measured my blood pressure, asked me if I had any body piercing, asked me when was the last time I had anything to eat/drink, I told them since 10:30pm last night. They then apologized for making me starve and said they wanted to give me some ‘tonic and gin’ as they pushed some liquid stuff through the IV. They then asked my family and friends to take turn to hug me before they wheeled me away. Everything was a big rush. When I got into the other room, I asked them “is this the operating room?” They said “yes”…And that’s the last thing I remember.
When I woke up, I was already in the recovery room. The first thing I said to the nurse next to me was “are my sentinel lymph nodes negative?” The nurse said he didn’t know. After awhile, I asked the nurse again “did they get a clear margin on my tumor?” The nurse then said I should quit asking him b/c he didn’t know anything about the surgery, these were not communicated to him. So I decided to shut up. After awhile, the nurse said, “Annie, you’re too healthy to be in the recovery area, we’ll take you to the regular hospital room now.”
So I was transported to the other side of the hospital. 5 minutes after I settled in the new bed, Siang, Mom & Dad walked in.
My throat was hurting a little bit b/c of the respiratory pipe they put in me during the surgery. So the first thing I ate after surgery was my favorite orange flavored jello to sooth the throat. :-)
Daddy told me when they were in the waiting room, a gentleman we don’t know walked up to him and shared two bible verses with him. This is so cool! God is forever faithful. I know my parents’ heart have been touched by all the love and prayers of all my brothers & sisters in Christ. I know that the seeds sown would not be in vain. It is my sincere prayer and hope that their hearts will continue to be softened and receive the love of Christ.
God granted me another post-op party in the hospital room, I think there were more than 12 people in my room at one time. It was quite fun! I wanted to stay up and watch Miss USA on TV but was too tired, so decided to just sleep.
Thank God that I had the double room all to myself, so Siang could stay in the hospital overnight with me. When I went to relieve myself the first time after surgery, I was astonished by the dark blue pee in the toilet. What happened to me? Then I remember it must be the blue dye they injected during the sentinel node mapping. It was so weird. Siang wanted to take a picture but I flushed it.
….. to be continued …..
The last few days have gone by pretty quickly. Annie's resting well and in good spirits. She had a stare down with her "battle scar" for the first time last night in the mirror. It got the better of her for a brief moment, but no-no, the strong gal turned the tables and came out the winner this morning. Oh, wait, that was one of annie's prayer requests on 4/11. hmm. wow. cool. Annie's even taking a walk around the neighbourhood with Jennifer and Vivien as I blog.
Feel free to visit if you'd like to, you're not imposing and Annie enjoys having friends around. She just takes a nap around 3ish to 5ish in the afternoon and turns in 10ish in the evening. To all who've visited (I'm gonna miss someone here.... Esther, Viv, Ling, Tim, Sammi, Sam, Katie, Jennifer, Garth, Joseph, Sharon, Stella, Karen, etc), thanks, your visits infuse such energy into her. And for the flowers, cards, errand running, soup/food, guitar playing, hair washes, stuff, laughter, etc.
Thanksgiving:
1) Annie's drainage tube has flowed alright the past few days.
2) Annie's been feeling well and good
3) God's faithfulness
Prayer requests:
1) She heals quickly and well from the surgery. That the wounds/scar heal up nicely and will not have any infection.
.. hmm.. just realized what I was going to type is the same as 4/11 items 3,4.
3) That the pathology report will be favorable.
Day 2 after surgery:
Just want to drop a quick note to let everyone know that I'm doing well. I'm thankful that the sentinel lymph nodes are negative. And the tumor seems to have pretty good clear margin. Will know more details when the final pathology report is ready.
I'm experiencing very low pain level, just a bit sore in the right chest and arm area. Siang is a very capable nurse and it feels great to be treated like a queen. :-)
Thanks for all the flowers, cards, warm wishes, delicious soups, and all your love and faithful prayer. I definitely can't go through this without you all.
I'll write more later this week!
We're home now! Annie just woke up from a nap after coming back from the hospital (the pain meds made her dizzy). We're going to go for a "short" walk around the neighbourhood and then have her late lunch/early dinner. I'll write up and post the happenings from yesterday this evening. Annie's doing well, the drainage tube is not draining much so the prayer request there is that it isn't clogged and fluid wouldn't accumulate in her but flow out the tube instead.
cheers. God is good.
(written day after)
I won't be able to do justice to Annie's sharing of her experience, so I'll just give a quick rundown of the day to give everyone an update. And Annie will probably hop on the computer late this week to update the blog. She's feeling well.
Many have told me how strong Annie is through this. After yesterday... it sure does hit home... actually it did as early as 10am in the morning. Wow, my wife is tough. Annie herself says "that's not the usual me". A testament to the power of Christ, whom we draw on, and the prayers of so many faithful friends and family.
Well, the day started with us praying and God reminded me that morning that "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Rom 8:28). And yes, no doubt, the surgery day ended with such a clear reminder of God's faithfulness.
We got to the hospital around 9am to check in at the surgery pavilion. While we were checking in, an asian lady wearing scrubs came up, said she'd get us settled in for the day. And guess what? God had already put things in motion. Her name is Teresa. She usually goes to Grace ___ church (erm.. can't translate the cantonese, and no one has for me yet... ). Anyways, she happend to be at ECC for Sunday easter service! So she was wondering when the church prayed for us if she'd see us the next day. And there we were! She found Annie a comfortable area, got her blankets, talked about the surgeon, checked our schedules through the day, made sure we were fine, etc...just really made Annie and family feel at ease.
We went over to Nuclear Medicine to get the radiactive tracers injected into Annie's breast so that they could find the sentinel lymph node. They say that for some people, this is easy and it's found in 15 mins and for some, it takes a long time, up to 3 hours. Annie was done in 15 mins. Annie sure was tough. Since I got to keep looking, boy, the doc poked her quite a bunch of times (8) to put all that stuff in her. The funny thing about this part (at least for the geeky part of me), is that the procedure took 15 mins, but the doc and tech assistant had printer problems for 40 mins. The printer wouldn't print (the box connecting the printer to the network was turned off... heh)
It was back to waiting.
(oh, and there was a steady stream of visitors, friends that hung out through the day, brought us lunch, brought us dinner, called, left messages, prayed (wherever you were), cheered annie up after surgery.... the works. Annie felt so loved. I'm so thankful. Thank you...)
It was quite a long wait, but all fine. The surgical nurse came by around 2:45, followed by the surgeon, etc. And the anesthesiologists showed up at 3:30 and they two of them were great. They were funny and that sure made Annie relax. (Other than giving her some "cocktail"). We wished her well and off they went. With an estimated 2.5 hours to completion.
Surgery good news part 1. The nurse called the waiting room an hour later to say that the initial tests of the sentinel lymph node was negative so they wouldn't have to remove all the lymph nodes.
Surgery good news part 2. 5:15 or so and the surgeon (Dr Anderson) appeared. All done! He said things went smoothly and Annie was on her way to the recovery area.
Neat happenings at waiting room. We went over to another waiting area as Annie went to recovery. And while we were there, a gentlemen came up to where Annie's dad sat, knelt beside the chair, asked if dad had a relative in surgery and shared with Annie's dad a piece of paper. He had written 2 versus down (Exodus 23:25 and Psalms 107:20). Since the girls hanging out were doing BSF homework, there was a bible handy, and doubly handy was the presence of one of those chinese-english bible.
And after an hour.. off to the room!
God is good. And the power of His love, and the love of all our friends, who are vessels His love, indescribable.
(..will edit and post more details later...)
“This is it. Let’s do it!”... I sound like a contestant on fear factor.
Thank God for giving us such wonderful weather these past few days, the sunshine has definitely helped keeping my spirit up.
Surgery details:
I’ll be checking in at 9am tomorrow at the UW Medical Center – Surgical Pavilion. At 10am, they’ll start injecting some radioactive tracers into my body for sentinel node mapping. The actual operation will begin probably around 1 – 2 hours later depending on how fast the tracers are moving inside my body.
I’ll be staying at the surgery recovery room for about an hour after the operation and then move to 4 South of UWMC for an overnight stay. The plan is to check out of the hospital by noon the next day.
I will have a drain sticking out of my body after the surgery to drain the fluid inside the surgical area. If sentinel node biopsy shows cancerous cells, the doctor will perform an axilliary lymph node dissection, and I would have another drain sticking out from under the armpit as well. Hopefully I’ll only have one drain to deal with. The drain will be removed after one week if everything looks normal.
Items of thanksgiving:
(1) Mom and Dad arrived safely yesterday and to my surprise, they willingly came to our Easter worship service today.
(2) Esther, Ivy, Lavina and Vivien for making me healthy food and fresh fruit juices. I feel so pampered.
(3) God took care of Siang’s agonizing toothache. He actually had a surgery before I did. (He had a root canal 4 days ago.)
(4) The power of God’s love manifested through everyone around me. I feel so overwhelmed with God’s love that I had little time left to worry and to feel scared.
Lesson learned:
Vivien made an appt for me to meet with a pastor she met at the ancient path seminar. His ministry is to pray for healing for others. It was a sweet time meeting this gentle 73-yr-old pastor. I know God has the power to heal, whether in a ‘supernatural’ way or through conventional medical means is totally up to Him. If God wants to, He can heal me just like that and make the tumor disappear. My selfish desire is of course is to avoid surgery and not to lose my breast. But if His perfect plan is for me to go through the operation because He wants to build my character, I will willingly submit. I trust that His plan is the best and that I will go through whatever way that will bring the most glory to Him.
Romans 5:3-5: “… but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
Prayer Requests:
(1) Cancer stayed contained and do not spread – that there’ll be a clear margin for the tumor and negative sentinel nodes.
(2) Pray for a smooth, successful operation, for wisdom for all the docs and nurses that will be involved in the surgery and my after surgery care.
(3) Pray for speedy recovery and I'll be able to do some simple exercise to keep my arm and shoulder mobile after surgery.
(4) That I'll be emotionally prepared to get used to my body after the surgery.
(5) God's love will touch the hearts and minds of family and friends who do not yet know Him.
Thank you all!