Sparhawk's wife's journey
- Thread starter Sparhawk
- Start date
Renea got to come home yesterday. She's tired, but feeling good, everything is going great. Lots of incisions that have been glued/stitched up.
She started with 5 wound drains, they were able to remove one before leaving the hospital yesterday. Literally has an incision that runs from hip to hip across the front where they removed skin and fat to rebuild her breast, incisions that run completely around (well duh, it wasn't there before) her new left breast, and incisions around the bottom/up the underside/around the nipple of the right breast where they did a reduction and lift. Heaviest pain killer than she's on is Tramodal, they offered heavier stuff but she refused. She's resting and recuperating here at home now, and looks forward to being able to sleep a night in our bed again in the near future, but that's still at least a couple of weeks away.
She started with 5 wound drains, they were able to remove one before leaving the hospital yesterday. Literally has an incision that runs from hip to hip across the front where they removed skin and fat to rebuild her breast, incisions that run completely around (well duh, it wasn't there before) her new left breast, and incisions around the bottom/up the underside/around the nipple of the right breast where they did a reduction and lift. Heaviest pain killer than she's on is Tramodal, they offered heavier stuff but she refused. She's resting and recuperating here at home now, and looks forward to being able to sleep a night in our bed again in the near future, but that's still at least a couple of weeks away.
Everything has healed beautifully. Several months to go on getting everything stretched out correctly. She may go back to work this week, not sure her mom will like that, because she's been enjoying getting to spend time with her each day.
Next up will be what they call revision surgery, they go in and take care of the little things that need adjustment. This usually involves some liposuction, since they have to use her own tissue to do anything. This will possibly be more uncomfortable than the reconstruction since lipo bruises such a large area. Watch a video of it and you'll understand.
Next up will be what they call revision surgery, they go in and take care of the little things that need adjustment. This usually involves some liposuction, since they have to use her own tissue to do anything. This will possibly be more uncomfortable than the reconstruction since lipo bruises such a large area. Watch a video of it and you'll understand.
Well, she's gone back to work, which is great, but it's been a wild ride with illness of coworkers and discovering what they DIDN'T do while she was out.
Revision surgery will be October 9, little lipo, little snipping of a couple of areas that have retained too much mass, but all good news.
Revision surgery will be October 9, little lipo, little snipping of a couple of areas that have retained too much mass, but all good news.
Today is the day for her (hopefully) final surgery. She’s at MD Anderson right now, I’m in a hotel room a couple of blocks away. It’s 5:42am and we’re getting rain from Hurricane Delta. She should be in surgery around 7am and if all goes well, we’ll be heading home later today.
Surgery will be “touch up” type work, removing a little here and there, lifting a little more there, and some liposuction to clean up odd ways that her body basically redeposited fat around the big surgery area back earlier this year.
Surgery will be “touch up” type work, removing a little here and there, lifting a little more there, and some liposuction to clean up odd ways that her body basically redeposited fat around the big surgery area back earlier this year.
Ext week, the 18th, Renea has her three year cancer free checkup at MD Anderson, and for the first time in two years I’ll be able to enter the hospital with her. She’s had two major surgeries (boob reconstruction) and several doctors appointments in that time. We both have to pass Covid protocol to get in, but MDA didn’t start allowing caregivers to accompany patients until this past June and the last checkup was in May.
She’s going to have at least one more surgery to correct a “balance” issue and adjust some fatty tissue that didn’t settle correctly and gives her a lumpy area where she’s very self conscious about it. We’ll have to see when the surgeon will be able to schedule this.
She’s going to have at least one more surgery to correct a “balance” issue and adjust some fatty tissue that didn’t settle correctly and gives her a lumpy area where she’s very self conscious about it. We’ll have to see when the surgeon will be able to schedule this.
Today we are back at MD Anderson, just the 6 month checkup. But today is also the 4 year anniversary of being done with the 1st round of chemo. The hospital is looking a little more normal than the past few visits, no longer doing temperature checks, just a verbal checklist, still having everyone wear masks in the buildings (makes sense here) but you can choose how close you are to other people. Expecting the same news that we’ve had the past visits, no cancer and one visit closer to these being yearly visits.
My wife is currently in surgery for her final time with all this stuff. Doing what is called a revision surgery to get everything “touched up.” It consists of a little liposuction to reduce one area, a lift on the natural breast to even them up, and all new incisions are going back through existing scars and any excess scar tissue removed. Then on to healing from this and starting to try to design a scar covering tattoo around her rebuilt boob. Her idea is to do a Tinkerbell pixie dust trail and including her life verse (Psalm 118:24) and probably a Mickey of some kind. All is going well.
This is currently my wife’s hair.
I knew about it before she did it. Since it’s breast cancer awareness month she decided to color her hair as bright a pink as possible. She’s using it as a way to talk to other women about making sure they get their mammograms done instead of just putting it off, like she did most times before December 2017. That mammogram saves her life, and her campaign has been successful because at least three women have gotten their testing done and one of them resulted in the woman getting further testing due to an area of concern.
She’s not going back to purple until November, and we’re attending a Pentecostal wedding next Saturday. It’s family, and they already know, but we’re expecting some funny looks from non-family since Pentecostals don’t believe in coloring hair or women purposefully cutting it short.
Wildly so. It even shocked her a little the night she did it.
I love her hair!
Today is the 5 year anniversary of Renea’s final radiation treatment for her breast cancer. She has a checkup the Monday before Thanksgiving. According to the doctors at this point, in this whole journey, if she has some type of breast cancer show up, it will be a completely different type of cancer. They say if you haven’t had a recurrence by this time the odds are infinitesimally small that it will come back.
Follow up on last week’s doctor visit, she has officially entered the survivorship program, one visit a year, to a whole new part of the breast cancer clinic (new to us at least) and a new set of doctors/PAs for her mammogram and tracking information. Her oncologist told her, that statistically, she has less than a 2% chance to ever develop the same type of cancer ever again.
Hug delivered. She saw your avatar and said “Ah, the Transmetropolitan guy.”
Happy to hear this. Wish you both well!!
Wow, been a whole year since I posted here. Today was Renea’s first visit to the survivorship portion of yearly checks, basically no labs though, and her annual mammogram. Everything is clear, no issues, and just a a simple visit and a stop at the best Chinese place we’ve ever eaten at. Even with the needed rain we’re getting, not a bad day at all.
