Pre-Surgery Day 1

Lindsay arrived Saturday night. The girls were SO excited. We grabbed some dinner that night on the way home from the airport.

We woke up late Sunday morning. I spent time packing everything for surgery while the kids drew photos for Auntie Lindsay, and we watched a movie together before heading down to Rochester. I ended up getting lost several times so we took a detour to where an old murder happened! (Linds and I are true crime junkies.) We ordered in delicious Italian food upon arriving to the hotel and ate way too much.

We were up kinda early for the study ultrasounds. They have four ultrasound machines they use to take imaging. It was a little different than the last two times because the vessels they wanted to find weren’t as easily found. I thought this was a good sign.

Then we checked in for my second appointment – a mammogram. This one was more painful than any mammogram – she said she was trying to get the lymph nodes into the image so there was so pulling. After that was done, I waited a bit more while the radiologist reviewed the imaging to see if we needed more imaging. They did, which was an ultrasound. the technician grabbed some images and went to talk to the radiologist. The radiologist walks in and says the imaging is perfect but she wanted to tell me they couldn’t see evidence of the tumor and my lymph nodes are normal size! Fucking great news.

We had a break after that and fast-walked down to an Italian restaurant to grab lunch. We left our bulky winter coats in the car so we felt like true Minnesotans. ????

After lunch was a pre-op appointment with a surgeon (a different one!). This appointment was to assess me for surgical risk (not that we knew that going in). This was the first appointment where they’d let Lindsay back with me, so she took notes. 🙂 The doc told us that when it comes to surgeries, mastectomies are LOW risk (which is why I can leave the hospital same-day). She asked a whole bunch of questions about how I sleep, if I’ve ever had a reaction to anesthesia, things like that. I’m at moderate risk just because I have breast cancer, otherwise I’d be at low risk…mostly for blood clots. The doc said to move at least once an hour to keep the blood flowing.

The doc also suggested I get bloodwork and an ECG just for a baseline. The great thing about Mayo is that those appointments were scheduled right away, and we were able to just head over to the next spot and get them done!

Now it’s time to relax and eat. Tomorrow starts with a COVID test followed by an appointment with my surgeon. Then it’s another ultrasound (we’re not really sure why) and the sentinel node injection. The radiologist (from earlier today) said it’s possible the surgeon will have me skip the node injection because my imaging showed good news. We’ll see though.

One day closer!