I’m a little late on giving an update on my cancer journey.
So this past Thursday I had consultations with both the breast surgeon and the plastic surgeon. Unfortunately I still don’t have a date for the surgery yet because the breast surgeon would like to get a better look at my left breast to be sure everything is clear with it before setting a date.
In an earlier post, I talked about how my breast tissue is really dense, mostly because I am young when it comes to breast cancer. Because of that density, she really just wants to do everything possible to be sure that we are taking care of everything. So to that end, I have a breast MRI scheduled for this coming up Thursday. Once the results from the MRI are in, I will get a call regarding either scheduling the surgery, or what the next steps may be if anything is found with the left breast.
I also got more information about what the surgery looks like including recovery times. The surgery will be done in two phases. The first surgery will be the mastectomy(ies) and the plastic surgeon will insert something called a tissue expander. I will keep the tissue expander for at least three weeks before we can do the reconstruction surgery. The recovery for the mastectomy(ies) is roughly 3-4 weeks. Depending on when I can get the mastectomy(ies) done, we will either go straight into the reconstruction phase after those three to four weeks, or we will delay the reconstruction until after the Italy trip in June. The recovery for the flap reconstruction is about 8-9 weeks.
The kicker is that the first week of that recovery is in the hospital, but the next three weeks of recovery are in a hotel on site. That means that I will not be home for four straight weeks which will definitely be challenging for the boys and husband.
That is what I have so far! I will post again when I know more.