Tits Away!

Thanks for this twofer, Doug!

Tomorrow I have surgery but today I became a superhero.

Today is the Tits Away send off. I wanted to have had a party this past weekend. There are so many I would have loved to have here for a send off... but that seemed ill advised as Covid rages here.

So I spent this morning with Anna getting a few last creative moments in the air (and nailing a one-handed meathook at last!). I came home and went back through all my checklists and I've finished all my work goals: prototypes ordered, books up to date, purchase orders in, all schematics and PCBs as far as they can possibly be. Food prepped, kitchen stocked, laundry done, house clean, physical therapy check-in for 48 hr post-op.

Did my pre-op call and I can have coffee tomorrow until 5:30 am, and have to be at the hospital at 7:30 for a 9:30 procedure.

And then I went in for lymph node mapping.

What a wacky thing this is. I had no idea.

I reported to the hospital nuclear medicine department to have technetium injected in each breast.The physician assistant I saw with my surgeon had warned me that it felt like a bee sting; the technician warned me that the solution was acidic so it might burn. The resident radiologist said nothing.  

There were four injection sites on each breast. Two on each breast hurt like a mofo, but two were totally fine. No idea why. Then he was done and the tech massaged the radiation into the tissue to help it start to distribute. (Once again I reiterate: breast cancer means never going long without being groped.) Then she slid me into the gamma counter for imaging. We did these crazy 5-min images of the movement. She got various views and I think I spent 25 min lying there with my arms over my head. 

The lymph nodes were lighting up perfectly on the screen and should be nice and easy to find. She was really happy with the imaging. Tomorrow, they'll inject a weird blue dye to help visualize it during the surgery. I think I'm still awake when they inject it but obviously not awake when the cut it out. 

Since tomorrow is surgery, I expect to be not answering emails/texts/calls for a little while. Stephen or Anna will post here with an update after surgery and again when I am home so if you are absolutely desperate to know how I am, you can check in here.

Lots of friends have reached out today to ask how I'm doing and the real answer is that it's all really surreal. I made the decision a few weeks ago but it was somewhat abstract. And because I don't feel sick at all, it feels in many ways like treating something that isn't there. I mean, I know it's there, but this all feels very much like it's not happening tomorrow...but I'll come home on Friday a very changed person, and that is real.

But yall..For the next 15 so hours, I have radioactive boobs with titanium in them.

I am a superhero.