GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER #50…Drain Pains, and Chest Wraps, and Pain Meds, OH MY!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Well, it’s over.

The surgery, anyway. Now we’re coming up on the end of the first week, post-operative. It’s funny, the routine is so similar to the radical mastectomy, and the implant surgery, that it feels like no time has passed at all; almost like we’re replaying a milder version of the whole experience like a movie; and back at the beginning.

But 11 years ago, I was only 54 and had a lot more energy than I do now. OTOH, the kids were 19 and 23 when my wife was first diagnosed, they’re 34 and 31 now with spouses and kids of their own. Everything the doctors told us that would happen was mere speculation; a dream (or nightmare if, you will); and not truly comprehensible. We’d nothing to compare it to…

The implant surgery two years later, was also not truly comprehensible, but it lacked the raw terror of the diagnosis and demand for instant-if-not-sooner from the hospital and her doctor of the diagnosis and headlong rush to stop the monster from eating my wife; their mother, sister, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law, friend, neighbor....

During those days, we measured the time from the morning we checked into the hospital for the double mastectomy surgery to the end result as a matter of a few hundreds of hours. Then there was the benevolent abuse of chemotherapy, as hair vanished and weariness was the order of the day. Breast reconstruction two years later lacked the terror and seemed to be a good thing.

We find ourselves 11 years later, wondering what happened, and the images of my wife with chest drains and on pain meds (all the while worry that if she takes too many she’ll become an ADDICT!!!), chest wrapped in an ace bandage, and a visual inspection of the end result and being impressed by the neatness of the stitches; glad that it’s over…again. Those same intentional, healing wounds inspiring a shortness of breath in me and tears and countless phone calls from our kids, kids-in-law, and foster-kids.

And yet…and yet…when the doctor made the incision to remove the implants and their scar capsules, there was a faint fear that she would come out and say, “I’m sorry, but we found more cancer.”

But that’s NOT what she said. She said, “The surgery went very smoothly and we’re done a bit before we estimated we’d be done. She’s doing very well.” Those were the only words we needed to hear and so today I write from a place where my wife is steadily healing and growing stronger every day!

For those of you who are Christians, please join me in thanking God…He is worthy…please sing along with congregation of Christians in giving praise to Him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs7Kah6wnY8

Image: http://wrex.images.worldnow.com/images/23784252_SA.jpg