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.