Impatience

The report on Cathy is good, but we're all a little impatient.  This surgery has brought a higher degree of soreness and a greater feeling of being generally uncomfortable than the last surgery.  All of that means that Cathy is moving a little slower than she would like.  The blood and clots are still flowing in the drain.  Sometimes the clots clog the drain and the blood won't flow.  After Cathy or I strip the drain, the blood flows more freely, undoing the sense that quick healing is occurring.  Cathy and I find ourselves in a frustrating pattern that we are able to recognize and laugh about.  Cathy wants to be normal Cathy and do all of the things that she normally does.  I want Cathy to rest and heal while I do the things that she would normally do.  Neither of us are doing a very good job of either of those things!

So, we're both a little impatient with the situation.  We both had the realization that we're coming up on a year of dealing with cancer next month.  Spending an entire year or longer with this is a bit frustrating as well.  We will go as long as it takes, though!

There is good news.  So far, Cathy feels symmetrical - at least to an acceptable degree.  She did not feel symmetrical after the last surgery.  How many of us have symmetrical bodies anyway?  Her incisions seem smaller than the last surgery.  She is able to sleep and can stay on top of her pain and meds.  Tomorrow we will go to the one week follow up and see what that holds for Cathy.

Surgery Report

Cathy's surgery went as expected yesterday.  She was in the OR for two full hours and apparently had to have some pretty significant anesthesia administered to allow her muscles to relax for the best removal of the scar capsule.  She was really sleepy for about 3 hours after she was in recovery.  Today she is pretty sore, more so than her first implant exchange, but less than with her mastectomy.  Dr. Butterfield put a drain in the right side, the side with the hardest scar capsule.  She told me that removing the capsule caused more bleeding and that excess bleeding can increase the risk of future contracture.  Hopefully, the drain will be removed next week when Cathy has her follow up.  Cathy is doing well.  Her spirit is predictably good, but she would certainly prefer to not be dealing with this.

Surgery Tomorrow

Tomorrow Cathy will go under the knife again.  With Dr. Drosick's thoughts on her joint pain and psoriasis flareup, Cathy has gone with her gut feeling that another try with implants is the way to go.  Cathy will have a capsulectomy and explantation of her current silicone implants.  She will have them replaced with saline filled implants in hopes that the scar capsule won't contract this time.  Dr. Butterfield has been very straightforward in her (and the profession's) lack of understanding of what causes capsular contracture.  She has also put Cathy's odds of dealing with it again at 50/50.  We'll just hope and pray that she's on the good side of 50.  I will update her progress as the day goes on tomorrow and the next few days.  Thank you for your prayers and concerns.

A Little Clarity

Cathy had an appointment with Dr. Drosick on Tuesday.  We left the appointment feeling very good.  Cathy is thinking that giving saline implants a shot is the best move.  Neither of us is 100% sure of that, yet, but we think it is worth a try.  Here's why:

Cathy's bloodwork for autoimmune disease came back negative for everything.  No rheumatoid arthritis, no lupus, nothing of the sort.  She does have some rocking psoriasis, but Dr. Drosick feels very strongly that the psoriasis flareup and the arthritis are both the result of her body's reaction to chemotherapy.  He said that some morning about a year from now she will wake up and have no pain.  It will just vanish.  We don't completely understand because it's so complicated, but he said that the chemo suppresses the psoriasis, so when the chemo is gone the body attacks itself with an increased vigor because the immune system has been confused.  The immune system and autoimmune responses are such difficult things to understand, that I feel good taking his word for it with my limited comprehension of the information I've read.

Knowing that Cathy is negative for autoimmune disease (aside from psoriasis) and that the pain she's having is from chemo, we're thinking that her issues are not silicone related.  We still don't have an explanation for her poor vision in the right eye, but everything else is making sense.

With that in mind, saline sounds like a good solution - or at least worth a try.  We both think (and Dr. Drosick agrees [Dr. Butterfield, too]) that microvascular flap surgery is too traumatic of a surgery for Cathy to endure with too long of a recovery.  She doesn't have fat enough to consider adipose stem cell fat transfer, so it really comes down to saline or no reconstruction.  Cathy has a strong desire to give reconstruction another shot.  She's a beautiful and strong person.  She doesn't want reconstruction for any vain reason.  She just wants Clara to grow up familiar with her mom as a normally developed woman.  Cathy hopes for Clara to see herself as the same kind of person as her mom.  If that works out, Cathy will be very happy.  If it doesn't work out, Cathy will be disappointed, but I think that she is confident, strong, beautiful, and still the same person.  We both wish things could be the way they were before, at least physically, but Cathy knows that we will love her any way she is.  I'm so thankful that she's here and that she's going to continue to be here for a long time.  I praise God for healing her and I'll take her any way He'll let me have her.