Tammy's Breast Reconstruction Journey - Part IV: Preparing For Surgery

I was preparing for surgery and wanted to have all my ducks in a row, so to speak. I live about 350 miles from San Antonio and I was going to need stay in San Antonio for about ten days following my discharge from the hospital until I could see Dr. Chrysopoulo for my post surgical follow-up before returning home to East Texas.

I organized my stay at the Marriott TownPlace Suites and a friend loaned me a recliner to sleep in while I was there. It was important to my peace of mind to have everything organized and in place before my surgery. I also had to prepare and organize my son’s care since he has nurses that help take care of him.

I had my pre-operative appointment with Dr. Chrysopoulo’s nurse two weeks before my surgery was scheduled. She took me through some paperwork and told me what to expect and answered all my questions. She had a bag full of “goodies” to show me like a surgical drain, a medicine ball, a container of the antibacterial soap that I needed to pickup, etc… She also gave me the prescription for a chest x-ray, EKG and some blood work to be done before surgery. I got a packet of information to take with me and I read it and studied it so that I would remember everything.

ARRIVING IN SAN ANTONIO

My surgery was scheduled for Thursday, August 13, and I arrived in San Antonio on the 11th. I had to have a test done at Methodist Hospital on the 12th, so this would give me time to be relaxed and take away the stress of traveling just before surgery.

The test I had to have done was the lymph node injection and scans. They injected radioactive dye into my breast in the tumor site to see what lymph nodes were feeding from this area. That way they could determine which lymph node (or nodes) would need to be removed and biopsied during surgery the next day. I had been warned that this injection was very painful from a friend who had just had it done. I was prepared for that. Once I got in there and they injected me, it did not hurt nearly as bad as I expected! It was uncomfortable but was not terribly painful. I had to return 1-½ hours later for the scans. Once I returned for the scans, they marked my skin so the surgeon would know a basic location of the nodes that showed up on the scans. That would help the surgeon determine what node or nodes were in question.

I was told that my surgery would last about 7 hours in all. I knew that the General Surgeon, Dr. Johnston (by the way, he was really great) was going to take about 1½ hours to do the bilateral skin sparing mastectomy and sentinel node biopsy. As soon as he was done with his part, Dr. Chrysopoulo and Dr. Ledoux were going to come in and begin the reconstruction.

Once I met Dr. Chrysopoulo and also Dr. Johnston, I really had a peace about my surgery and I didn’t feel nervous about it at all. I do believe that the Lord led me to them and I had been praying a lot. I also had a lot of others praying for me. My church gave me a prayer pager and every time someone prayed, they would call my number and my pager would vibrate. It was vibrating a lot! I kept thinking that I would find myself feeling nervous, anxious, or having a stomach full of butterflies… but that never happened.

Continued:

My Surgery & Hospital Stay

Back:

My Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Making The Decision

Finding My Surgeon