Thursday, May 7, evening

Here I am in Palo Alto after talking to three plastic surgeons (one a resident) at Stanford Cancer Center. The best option presented is implants that get started right after the surgery in the operating room. Then I go home after three days at Stanford Hospital, and I continue to visit Stanford for follow up care. Then radiation begins which I will do in Marin.

To all of you who have offered to help, I want to save my chips for daily radiation drives over the hill five days a week for four to six weeks. I will get quite tired of the drive and that is when I will need help.

My mood has been optimistic until last night when I realized I was really going to have both breasts removed and there would be a concave space on my chest. A friend wrote to me about her reconstruction and told me she was really pleased with it and loved not having to wear a bra. I made it clear to the plastic surgeons I did not want the size breasts I have now; each one looked relieved when I said that.

Prudence, my sister, has been a huge help and good company. Though we haven't made the progress I wanted, her visit has been fun. Rigdon and Prudence will be picking up her daughter, Kirsten, at the airporter tonight and I am staying in Palo Alto and will have a sonogram of my right lymph nodes tomorrow to see if they are involved. If  the sonogram shows they are involved, I will come back for a core biopsy of the lymph node so the surgeons can have as much information as possible before the surgery.

I am constantly asked, "When is the surgery?" and I finally asked the doctor today when and he said they were working on a date. Meanwhile, I am not anxious to have both my breasts removed so I am willing to wait.  The gravity of double mastectomies is finally registering with me and I am afraid what my reaction might be post-op.  I imagine lying in bed, wrapped in white bandages from my clavicle down to my waist and not able to roll over or lift my arms or even sleep. My son, Christopher (works at Children's Hospital in Houston), will be here for the surgery. He knows his way around a hospital and was very helpful last year when I had my back surgery at CA Pacific in San Francisco.

Here I am at Anne and Chris's in Palo Alto while Anne prepares another fabulous meal. She goes with me to all the appointments and asks questions and is totally involved in my medical odyssey. It is wonderful to have someone so close to me to know what to ask and knows how I feel about many things.

Alexis arrives tomorrow, I get some time off until May 11, a bone scan of ribs, stomach and pelvis and then I should be done with tests. I never anticipated this would take as long as it has. It is comforting that the tumor in the right breast (over 7 cm) is growing very slowly and the one in the left is only 2 cm. 

I hear Anne cooking downstairs and I am getting hungry.