Author Archives: Loretta Stanton

Hi all!

Hi all!

Just thought I would write a bit about today.  I know some of you are very upset about the additional surgery.  But, it was always a possibility because the margins did not meet the acceptable minimum.  I would rather have more taken than not enough.  I will have the surgery a few weeks after I finish chemo and before I start radiation.

Having the scans themselves were ok.  We don’t have the results yet.  I had an IV that was used to inject the radioactive tracer used in the bone scan.  They also used the IV to inject the contrast for the CAT scan.  (I still consider myself more of a dog person,)  I did have to drink a liter of mostly water stuff.  It really tasted like water.  Since I was not able to eat or drink for a while, it all went down just fine.  I did have to pee a million times (maybe that was TMI?)  The weird thing about it all is that I am radioactive for the next 48 hours.  I have a piece of paper to carry around with me in case I set off alarms or whatever.

Thank you all so very much for your comments!  While I haven’t answered them I have read and love each and every one.

Vanna, I’d like to buy a vowel.

My BooBooBooB has a booboo.  I am calling it my BooBooBooBBooBoo.  Poo!  As you can see, I bought an “O”.  Yes I actually have a spot that has decided to show its ugly head.  The other night I said “Hey Scott, come and look at this.”  (He is my nurse after all.)  “Hmmmmm looks like a spot”  So we decided to leave it alone and look at it in the morning.

Morning comes and you guessed it, the spot did not disappear.  So I called the surgeon and BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH go see my primary care physician, BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH, find an appointment buddy, BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH, you have a skin ulcer, BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH……….Didn’t think you needed to hear the boring details.  I have a skin ulcer.  It is on the right breast which is now definitely not my favorite of the two.  We are not sure how it formed, but needs to be treated with basic wound care, Bacitracin and bandages.  Yucky.

Scott comes home from work and I say, “Hey honey!  Guess what you get to do!  Along with stripping the drain tube and measuring the output you get to take care of my skin ulcer.”    I don’t think the last part of the previous statement was exactly what he had in mind when I said the whole hey honey, guess what you get to do part.

As I am being ministered to, I looked at Scott and said “You know, some couples just have drinks before dinner.”

 

Some fun jokes

Today I will share with you some of the jokes I have heard over the last week.  They have all made me laugh.   Here it goes:

What do Billy the Kid and Winnie the Pooh have in common?  A middle name.

Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the body of Marco Polo. It was found at the bottom of a swimming pool…………..blindfolded.

A bear walks into a bar and says “give me a gin and………………….tonic.” The barman asks “Why the big pause?” The Bear replies “born with them, I guess.”

What do you call a guy who never farts in public?  A private tutor.

What do you get when you cross a fish with an elephant? Swimming trunks……..

Why did the cookie go to the hospital? Because he felt “crummy”!!!

That should be enough for today.  Will post more later.   I hope each and everyone one of you have a day filled with laughter!

Cancer Bingo – by David Stanton

You know, normally when you or you’re loved one gets a cancer diagnosis you can turn some of the activities that aren’t so fun into ones that are. Bingo is a perfect example. You have a bunch of procedures or diagnoses which are kept on a sheet in a random order and when you get one or do something like “group breast exam” you get to take your dorky looking magic marker for grownups and place with great gusto a splotch on your sheet. See? Something fun to do with cancer. Normally you can start small, say with “first mammogram” or “headache”. Over time you realize that something bigger is going on behind the scenes of the clinical presentations. So you go to the doctor and get “the news”. Then you can go from there. You are gradually brought into the game. You begin to see that some of your splotches are going to make something of themselves and you’ll eventually win that pack of glow in the dark earrings you’ve been secretly coveting since you were ten.

But with my mom, she didn’t even have time to mark “surgery part 1” or even “the initial worry”. All of a sudden we had a Cancer Bingo Card in front of us with no warning of any kind and a bunch of splotches already filled in. Kind of like when someone decides they have to go to the bathroom and hastily puts their card in front of you with a brief “Here! Play my card for this round!” before scampering away with everyone staring after them. Then you look down and you don’t see your bingo card, you see someone else’s. It’s not your cancer, it’s something that was just thrust upon you. You don’t even know if you care enough to really make sure that the card is won. It’s not yours, right?

Eventually you start hearing horrible noises coming from the bathroom and you realize that the person is probably not coming back to the game anytime soon. Eventually you look down and see a path to Bingo victory in the splotches of the card you never wanted to have. And eventually you start playing the game as if it were your own.

“Drain fluid from an armpit.”
Check…

Surgeon Update

I know a lot of you are waiting for this information.  I always like my family to hear this type of information from me first and not from the blog.  So, here it goes: There were cancer cells in the skin of the scar that was removed but was within 3 mm of margin.  They also found DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ – precancerous cells) within 1 mm of margin.  While they usually like more than 1 mm of margin, the surgeon felt that future radiation treatments will take care of that.  She is going to run it by the team for a consensus.  There were 16 lymph nodes removed and 11 were positive.  This means I have Stage III breast cancer.  I was hoping for IIB but this is it so this is what we deal with.

Thank you all so much for you love, support, prayers and gifts.  I will never be able to tell you how much you all mean to me.  I am overwhelmed, awed, humbled by the outpouring of support.  I hope that one day I will be able to give back, tenfold, what I have received.

Just Hanging

I am just hanging out waiting for the surgeon to call.  Today is the day we are supposed to get the pathology report from the surgery.  I know that no more lymph nodes will need to be removed but we don’t know whether there are clean margins.  If the margins are clean then no more surgery is needed.  If they are not, then more surgery until the margins are clean.  I have also been dealing with a pinched nerve in my upper left back which has affected the strength in my left arm.  This is a bummer as the right arm has the drain coming out of it and I need the left to push me up and around.  I feel like one of those bad jokes ‘Hey what do you call a person who can’t use their arms?   Matt!”   It has gotten lots better thanks to a fabulous PT but this morning it was on fire again.  Since I truly think this is partially stress related, I must be more stressed than I think waiting for the surgeon to call.

Honey, does this shirt make my drain look big?

Asking your spouse if any article of clothing makes anything on your body look big is just a no win situation.   It is sort of unfair to put your spouse in the precarious position of having to answer such a loaded question.  You can see the fear in their eyes, “Oh God, not this question….anything but the “does this make my _____ look big”  question.  Today I had the unique opportunity to ask Scott, “Hey does this shirt make my drain look big?”

I have a drain that comes from the depths of my chest and out through my arm pit.  It is a lovely bit of tubing that ends in a bulb like thing that keeps the swelling down.  It then attaches to the “Oh so sexy” bra that I got after surgery.  There is a velcro loop that keeps the bulb from swinging around and pulling the tubing out.  I don’t think that they sell these at Victoria’s Secret. I have to keep the drain in until there is less than 30 cc output in two consecutive 24 hour periods.

Anyway, we were going for a walk (yes I ventured out!) and before we left I asked the loaded question any women would ask “Honey does this shirt make my drain look big?”  Scott looked at me, stared fear in the face and without skipping a beat said “What drain?”    Gotta love a guy who makes you feel beautiful!

Secret wedding vow no one told me about

When Scott and I got married almost 30 years ago (yikes we were only 5 when we got hitched) we wrote our own vows.  There was one secret vow that he must have whispered.  It is the one that the husband promises to clean and empty and measure the goo coming out of a drain which is coming out of his wife’s armpit after being diagnosed with breast cancer and having A LOT of lymph nodes removed.  I swear I never heard it.  He must have said it because, that is what he did tonight.

He ever so carefully stripped the line and then emptied and measured and recorded the output.  He gently pulled away all the old adhesives and replaced the dressings.   He did it like a pro.  He never waived.   He did it after waiting with me while I was injected with a radioactive tracer.  He did it after watching me walk up and down the hall waiting for the tracer to do it’s thing. He did it after waiting with me before surgery.  He did it after waiting four very long hours, by himself, during the surgery.  He did it after spending the night with me, in the hospital, on a ridiculously short and narrow bed.  He did it because he loves me.

Even though I missed hearing that vow then, I certainly heard it loud and clear yesterday, today and tonight.