Initial surgery

  On April 17th I went into surgery for a port placement and sentinel node biopsy.  I had to arrive at 10:30a.  I was scheduled to be at Nuclear Medicine at 11:30a and my surgery was scheduled for 12:30p.  As I mentioned before, my veins are very hard to thread.  After my nurse tried to insert my IV and couldn't, she requested an anesthesiologist to come in and try.  He was successful and said that he got THE ONLY vein that was left!  By the time they prepped me and inserted my IV, it was about 11:35a.  So they walked me down to Radiology where the Nuc Med Tech inserted radioactive dye into my breast.  It took all of 2 minutes, but it stung pretty bad as it went in.  The dye they injected is suppose to tell the surgeon if any of my lymph nodes are feeding off of the cancer.  Apparently, the surgery took about 2 hours and 15 minutes.  I was told that it took me about an hour to wake up from the anesthesia and I was SUPER groggy.  I did NOT want to wake up. Once they moved me from the bed to the chair, I got nauseous and started vomiting.  I also vomited on the way home in the car ;) We didn't end up leaving the surgery center until 6pm!  So of course I slept the rest of the night, and most of the next day.
  Apparently, three of my lymph nodes lit up with the dye, so they removed those and sent them off for pathology to make sure the cancer isn't in those nodes.  I am pretty sore in both arms....the port was put in my left chest, and the nodes were taken from my right armpit.  The first two days my wonderful mom had to literally feed me like a baby because I couldn't lift my arms.  I have a huge bruise under my right arm, but luckily both surgery sites have very small incisions.  So, I am just waiting now for the soreness and pain to go away so I can return to work.
  I have received some more test results in the past few days.  My BRCA was negative, my Echo cardiogram was good (60-65%), and my PET scan was clear!  So far all my tests are coming out great...I hope that continues.