I nodded. It was just a glitch. I remembered what my mom said. There was only one way to get pregnant.
Finally two weeks had passed. The swelling from the surgery had gone down, and I at last had a truer sense of the size of my breasts. They were bigger than they’d ever been, but I was comfortable with them, and wanted to keep them this size. So I decided to go for that final fill of an extra 100 cubic centimeters, and headed out for my appointments, which were at two different hospitals: one for the fill, and the other at JCC for the blood work results.
When we arrived at the first hospital, though, it was to the sound of fire alarms. I shook my head and thought, My whole cancer experience has been nothing but drama, and now there are fire alarms on top of everything!
“What’s happening?” I asked one of the people gathered outside.
“We’re not sure, but the entire hospital is on lockdown.”
“We’re going to be late,” I said to my mother, worried I’d miss my appointment.
“So is everyone,” Mom pointed out.
“True.”
Mom was right. When we got to the office we were ushered right in to an exam room, the receptionist saying, “We’ve already seen everyone else who was up here while the lockdown was taking place.”
Doctor 9 was pleased with my progress. “Your breasts are healing well.”
“I’m really happy with them. But I think the right breast is slightly larger than the left.”
Doctor 9 stood back and looked at me. “I think you’re right. Not to worry, we’ll add a bit more to your left breast today.” Once again, he and a resident injected both breasts at the same time, and Mom and I were on our way in fifteen minutes.
I tugged at my bra as we got in the car, on our way to the next appointment. “It’s weird. Even though I didn’t feel any discomfort before, today I do.”
“Maybe you’re getting some feeling back?”
“You’re right. Could be the nerves are reconnecting the way they said they might. Or maybe there’s just more pressure now because my breasts are bigger. The implant doesn’t have anywhere to go until the skin has a chance to stretch. Anyway, if that’s what it is, I know it’ll stop in a few days.”
I strapped myself in and started driving off almost before Mom had a chance to do the same. I was driving. I knew I’d be okay doing it and I wanted to get to JCC as fast as possible for my blood work.
“Why the rush?” Mom asked.
“Because I’ll likely have to wait a while for the results, and I have to meet Helen to get the metformin after.” We managed to make it to the lab just after 10:45 A.M. Luckily there weren’t too many people there, so I got my blood drawn just before eleven. Then we went in search of Helen.
When we found her at the clinical studies office, I told her, “The blood is on its way to the lab.”
“Great. I’ll ask for a quick turnaround, too.” She called. “They say it’ll be at least an hour before we hear anything, so you might want to grab lunch.”
“Sounds like a good plan.” Mom and I had a quick bite in the cafeteria, then were headed to pick up the chest X-rays I’d ordered (I thought it would be fun to have a copy of the films with the expanders) when my phone rang. I looked to see who it was.
“It’s Helen,” I said to Mom. It had been only about forty-five minutes since I’d had my blood drawn.
“The results came back showing an error,” she said. “They have to be done again.”
“Seriously?” I made a face at Mom. This was getting nutty.
“You don’t have to have more blood taken, though. The lab will test the blood they have again.”
I ended the call. We went back to the cafeteria, drank endless cups of coffee, and of course, people-watched. The wait was excruciating. After two hours and counting, my phone rang again. Mom started asking what was said before I even hung up.
“I’m not pregnant!”
“That’s wonderful.”
“That’s a different reaction from the last two times I was pregnant,” I joked.
She laughed. “I’m so happy you can go on the drug now.”
“Me too. I mean, as much as I love my kids, this is the best news I could have gotten.”
I texted Greg to tell him the news as we practically ran out of the cafeteria to meet Helen at the pharmacy.
“I’ve placed the order for you,” she said. “It should be ready in a minute. It’s a six-month supply of metformin or placebo.” She had barely finished talking and the pharmacist was already calling my name.
We thanked Helen, picked up the package and left. I wanted to get home so I could take the metformin, if that’s what it was. And whatever it was, I would be taking it for the next five years.
Chapter 35
FINAL SURGERY
I was obsessed with trying to find out if I was taking the “actual” pill or just the placebo. The pharmacist had given me a glucose meter—one of those little gadgets that pricks your finger to draw a drop of blood—that diabetics use to test their blood sugar levels, and I was convinced that I could use it to figure out which I was on. I’d been on the pills for about a week, and I was dying to know what exactly they were.
“What are you doing?” Mom asked me when she saw me with the meter.
“I’m going to test my blood sugar. Then I’ll eat lunch, test it again, take a pill and test it one more time. I want to see if the pill is making my sugar levels drop.” She watched me prick my finger and check the numbers.
“What does it say?”
“Eighty-four.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know!” We both burst out laughing. I had no idea at all what I was doing, and realized figuring it out might not be as easy as I thought. But I went ahead and tested my blood sugar again immediately after I’d eaten something, and the meter read 81. I took a pill, waited about fifteen minutes and tested my blood again, and the number was 79.
“What is it at now?” Mom asked, about half an hour after lunch. I pricked my finger and it was back to 80. “What does that mean?”
“I have no clue.” I had no idea what any of the numbers meant. The whole thing was beyond my area of expertise.
“Whatever it is you’re taking, you can’t change that.” I think she sensed my frustration. “Try to believe that it is metformin, and try not to stress about it. Let’s think about something else. How are the house plans coming?”
“Overwhelming as well.” I’m not sure she realized how that was stressful, too. But I was the one who’d chosen to be so busy. And the house was keeping me occupied, which was the point, wasn’t it? “I was getting quotes for foundations, and I honestly think they’re jacking the price up because they think I’m a rookie and don’t know what I’m doing.”
Mom gave me a look. “You know I’m the first to support you in whatever you do. You know that. But maybe this is a little over your head. There’s a lot you could mess up, and it’s a lot of work. What happens when you go back to work in September? How are you going to juggle work and kids and building a house all by yourself? Why are you putting so much on your plate?” Even though it sounded blunt, I knew she was being cautious about the words she chose.
“I know. I just wanted to save some money.”
“You just went through a major illness. Your health is important. Your stress levels are important. Think about leaving this in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. Not that you couldn’t,” she said hurriedly. “I believe you can do anything you set your mind to. I just don’t think you need the added stress right now.”
“I feel sort of empowered doing it, like nothing can stop me. Like I can do anything.”
“You can! Just pick something that’s not going to cause you so much stress. Write a book! And build a smaller house if you want to save money.”
She had made a lot of good points and usually didn’t voice her opinions to this extent. Maybe I needed to shift my focus, downsize our plan a bit.
My well-being was important, and now that I had a clean bill of health, I needed to keep it that way.
Mom was right. I cut some square footage off the plan, eliminating areas we didn’t need. I agreed to hire a builder and started looking around town to check out the work the ones I had in mind had done. I even set up meetings to price out the design. The meetings would take place after my surgery, of course, but in the meantime, that planning kept me busy. And I knew that because I was so busy, it would be time for the operation before I knew it.
The day of the exchange surgery arrived. It had been a few weeks since I had started taking the metformin. I was feeling good and was ready for this next step.
“Are you nervous?” Greg asked.
“Not at all. I’m excited.”
“Excited? It’s surgery.”
“I know, but this one is different. After the lumpectomy, I had to wait to find out what grade, stage and type of tumor was growing inside of me. After the mastectomy, I had to wait to find out if the margins were clear and if everything was gone.” I shrugged. “This time there’s none of that. It’s just surgery. No results. No life-or-death outcomes. When I leave the hospital, I’ll be officially finished with everything.” I didn’t say it out loud, but I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. I was physically ravaged.
I looked at Greg. “I’m so ready to be done.”
I felt like a pro when I arrived for surgery this time.
“I know the whole routine,” I said to Greg. “How weird is that? It shouldn’t be that way, should it?”
“No, not at all.” He left to get a coffee while the nurses did their thing. He knew this prepping process would take a bit of time, and figured he’d get out of everyone’s way. After I’d been prepped, Doctor 9, the plastic surgeon, came by and asked how I was doing.
“I wish this was all over, but otherwise good.”
“That’s understandable, but before you know it, we’ll be finished. Right now I’m going to mark where things need to be on you, starting by defining the center line of your chest.” He pulled out a black marker and began drawing on me, which tickled somewhat—I didn’t have all of the sensation back, but I could feel what he was doing a little. “Now I’m marking where the bottom of your new breasts will be, and the outer edges.” He then wrote on my left arm. “This is a note to remind everyone involved not to use this arm for blood-pressure monitoring.”
He was finishing up when another doctor came in. He explained he was a resident. “I’m here to double-check your charts and find out what pain relief you prefer.”
“Percocet,” I said before he even offered a choice.
“Percocet, it is.” Both Doctor 9 and the resident left, and an anesthesiologist and his resident arrived.
“My job is to make sure you don’t feel a thing,” the anesthesiologist explained. “I’m going to administer just enough anesthesia that you’ll be asleep during the entire surgery, which will last about one and a half hours.”
“Best sleep ever, right?”
“That’s one way to think of it. Can you open your mouth wide for me, please?”
“What? Why?”
“I just need to check that there’s room should I need to insert a breathing tube.”
Visualizing myself on the operating table with a tube down my throat scared me. I tried to shake the thought. It occurred to me that it would be best for me to stop asking questions I didn’t want the answers to.
Greg returned with his coffee. I said to him, “It’s reassuring but kind of nerve-racking realizing how many doctors are involved in a surgery like this. Honestly, it’s starting to feel like a parade. And for some reason I thought that the last time the anesthesia I was given was a type of gas I breathed in. But apparently that was just oxygen—what knocked me out was what was in the IV.”
“They didn’t tell you that last time?”
“I don’t think so. But the anesthesiologist also said a tube might need to be stuck down my throat to help me breathe. I remember having a sore throat last time and wondering why. So maybe they did need to stick it down my throat?” I didn’t want to even imagine that. Before I could freak out further, a nurse came to walk me to the operating room. Greg kissed me good-bye.
“I feel as though we’ve been playing out this same scene way too many times.”
“You’ll be done after this,” he said and squeezed my hand.
I tried to focus on what Greg said when I lay down on the operating table. I was shivering again from both the cold and nerves. I couldn’t help myself—I may have gone through this before, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared.
The anesthesiologist placed the oxygen mask over my mouth, and he must have started the IV, because I began to feel less anxious. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the recovery room. I dozed in and out of sleep, and in between, the nurses checked my vitals, offered me small sips of water, and came by to see if I needed anything. After about an hour in recovery, I was wheeled back to the ward, where Greg was waiting.
“Hey, how are you feeling? Better or worse than last time?” he asked.
“After my mastectomy it felt as though there were elephants sitting on my chest, but this time it feels different. There’s definitely some pain, but it’s less intense and the pressure isn’t there.”
“That’s great. Maybe this will be a better experience all around.”
I hoped he was right.
When I felt better, I was allowed to get dressed. A nurse removed my IV and rechecked my vitals. She said I was free to go as long as I was up to it. I knew I was, and just like that, an hour and a half after surgery ended, we were on our way home.
When we got there, the kids were there to greet me, and so was my mom, blocking them from trying to jump all over me. She looked tired. She must have been exhausted with the stress of worrying about me, and with coping with Charley’s and Rudy’s bursts of energy. Despite that, she was anxious to help me.
“Come in and sit down. Let me help you with your shoes. What can I do?”
“It’s okay, Mom. Honestly, it’s better this time.”
“Please don’t overdo it. It was surgery. You have to take care of yourself.” She glanced at me, and I knew she meant business.
I ended up feeling as exhausted as she probably was. I crashed on the couch, and by the time Greg sent the kids to kiss me good night so he could put them to bed, I decided I needed to follow suit. I’d made it till almost eight o’clock and that was late enough.
“How are you, Alana?” Mom asked when she saw me go by. “You don’t look so good.”
“Okay, except for this nagging feeling of nausea I just can’t seem to shake.” I almost made it to bed, but had to run into the master bathroom, where I threw up in the sink.
My mom came running. “Don’t worry about it. Just go up to bed. I’ll clean up.”
“I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t make it to the toilet.”
After she was done, she came and wiped my face with a washcloth.
“The nurses told me not to eat large amounts of food, and I didn’t, but whatever I ate didn’t mix well with the anesthetic lingering in my body.”
“That happens. Lots of people get sick from the anesthetic.”
“I’m going to take a Percocet. I hope that will help me get through the night.” I closed my eyes.
That Percocet was a godsend. I took another one in the night but slept for nine hours. I’d probably been overly optimistic after the operation. I’d thought it would be a piece of cake compared to everything else.
The worst thing about surgery was the constant lethargy for a few days afterwards. “I feel as though I’m sleeping constantly,” I said to Melanie when I called her a couple of days later at school. “The first day I took three naps, and today I’ve taken two so far, even though it’s only the afternoon.”
“I guess it’s your body’s way of telling you to rest.”
“That makes sense. I guess it’s just the effects of the a
nesthesia wearing off, and just surgery in general. I’m so glad Mom is here to help out with the kids again. I’m sore—not as bad as the last time—but I can’t lift anything.”
“I am making banana bread tonight, so I’ll try to swing by with some tomorrow after school. In the meantime, get your butt to bed, will ya?”
I laughed. She always cheered me up. “Thanks, Mel. And yes, I will.”
As I hung up, Mom came into the living room with the kids to announce that they were going to the park.
“Mommy, it’s time for your nap,” Charley said, and she pulled a blanket over me and gave me a kiss. I must have fallen asleep almost instantly, because when I woke up, they were back home, with my mom trying to get dinner ready.
I was taking Percocet—it helped with the pain—but the days began to blur together and speed by because of the frequent naps. Often before I knew it, it was almost bedtime and I was sitting on the couch with the kids reading a bedtime story.
One night, as I sat there with the two of them snuggled up next to me, I looked down. I thought Charley had spilled water on me.
“Oh, crap,” I said.
“What is it?” Greg asked.
“I think a drain must be leaking.” I got up. “I’m going to check.” I didn’t want to alarm the kids, so Greg continued with the story where I’d left off. I went to the master bathroom and took off my shirt. There was a large reddish circle underneath my armpit. I called the home-care nurse.
“Hi, it’s Alana. Something’s wrong,” I said and explained the situation.
“I’ll come right over.”
Greg came in. “What’s going on?”
“The nurse is going to do an emergency house call.”
I soaked through two more shirts by the time the nurse was able to come. She had a look. “I’ll patch you up to get you through the night.”
“Great.” I was relieved that she was going to be able to do something. “The drains have been pinching me every time I move.”
“Hmm. They shouldn’t be doing that.”
“It’s not too bad, it just feels a little bit like tape being removed from a hairy arm. I figured that the drain was wedging itself in between my breast and rib cage.”
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