The Surgery Is Booked!
I officially have my surgery date booked! Which means we can start planning the crazy that will be our life for 4-6 weeks while I recover. While I am super happy to finally have a date in the books, it does seem hugely overwhelming to be prepping for such a large situation. Matt is headed back to work in a few days, now that his paternity leave is over, and then I go for surgery on the 12th!
What Surgery Looks Like
After meeting with my amazing surgeons, we have a pretty solid plan that will hopefully get me through the surgical section of my diagnosis with only the 1 surgery (ALL FINGERS CROSSED!). Providing everything goes well, they’ll do the full double mastectomy with axillary lymph node removal and then go direct to small implants. As long as I heal well, I should be able to avoid a second reconstruction surgery. If for some reason it doesn’t work, or there isn’t enough tissue during surgery, then I’ll just stay flat for a while before I can schedule reconstruction later (though those options are significantly less attractive since they would need to either take my stomach tissue or my back muscles, and the recovery would be like 3-6 MONTHS!) I am really REALLY hoping for this single surgery to go smoothly. Either way, I will wake up without the breast tissue that's trying to kill me, and that is REALLY all that matters.
What Recovery Looks Like
The hardest part of this cancer journey is definitely going to be my surgical recovery. Throughout chemo, if I had a bad day and felt like shit, I was still able to cook, clean and hold my babies. I was still independent and able to parent, and at worst, Matt was on paternity leave and had the time and energy to pick up my slack. Now that he’s back at work, we will have less help at home in terms of the kids and the house, all while I’ll be pretty much useless for 4-6 weeks. I’m really not excited about that, and I’m grieving not being able to hold Charlee during the recovery period.
From what I’ve been told, it looks as though I’ll spend Day 1-2 in the hospital after surgery. Luckily we have my mom staying with us for the first 3-4 days to help with the kids while I get settled at home, and then my mother in law will come in for the next week to help with everything while Matts at work and the kids are back at school. That first week, I’ll mostly be in bed, with extremely limited upper body mobility and T-Rex arms for the first 2-3 weeks. Nothing heavier than 5lbs and no driving. I can tell you right now, I am NOT excited about the lack of independence and the amount of “downtime” I’m about to experience.
Admitting We’re Going To Need Help…
While we know we have in-house help for the first 2 weeks (THANKS MOMS!), there are a lot of aspects we know we will need a hand with as I work to recover. Whether it’s help with meals and snacks, evening daycare pickups for Charlee, cleaning, or even just entertaining the kids for an hour or 2, we're definitely going to need to lean on our people for these next few weeks.
If you’re one of our people who has asked us “What can we do to help?”, now is the time! We’re working on stocking our freezer (and our UberEats account) with meals that Liv can easily toss in the oven or heat up on the stove. Anything that can help make life a bit easier, and lessen some of Matt’s workload while I’m useless would be HUGELY appreciated.
Luckily, we have a spectacular family that has hugely supported us through this and is helping relieve some of the financial pressures while I recover and am unable to work. I honestly do NOT have words for how grateful we are for that safety net and the amount of stress that was relieved by knowing I can take my time and actually focus on recovery rather than NEEDING to be back to work financially.
THANK YOU!
To all our people who have seen us through what is arguably the hardest stage of life we’ve been through, we couldn’t do it without you!
