a week post op

Hi Everyone

Ken and I are almost back to Eugene. AND I am so excited to see my garden, I have been dreaming about it.

All and all I think I have done well post operatively. The first day I was pretty sore, but I have done pretty well since then. I woke up from the surgery with an ace wrap (in Canadian :tensor bandage) around my chest, and two drains.

The way it was explained to me, he removed each of the implants and the capsules around them, leaving the entire area of raw tissue, and the purpose of the wrap is to keep the two sides of this raw tissue together with the hopes that they will heal together and not leave a space. The purpose of the drains is to make sure that all the bleeding and drainage gets removed, otherwize the fluid would get in between the two surfaces, preventing them from healing together. These fluid collections are called “seromas” and it sounds like they can be a real problem in healing.

So the drains are basically tubing about the size of IV tubing with multiple holes in them, placed in the operative site, and then stitched to the skin. At the outside end of the drain is a ball that collects the fluid and you can drain the fluid from this ball. (I guess it is a bit like a turkey baster, you squeeze it and it sucks the fluid up)

Anyways, they leave the drains in until the drainage becomes minimal. I saw the doctor again yesterday and he removed the drains.

He seemed to think that everything looked pretty good. To me it is hard to tell, lots of swelling and bruising, so time will tell what it will look like. I have decided that I think I like this new “flat” look. Seems like much lower maintenance

I think that this is going to create a huge gap in my closet.

I went through this phase 10 years ago when I had them put it, and I bought all kinds of low cut tops etc, but the funny thing, for the most part, it took me years to become comfortable enough to even wear a tighter fitting top, let alone something very low cut. So now there will really be no reason to wear any of this stuff.

It has been kind of interesting since I “came out of my closet”,......

Several people have commented about why do women in our society feel the need to do this sort of thing. I guess I have never seen it like that. I always saw it as much the same as I would dying my hair, or having peirced ears, or even wearing a different type of clothing. It is always “ I wonder what I would look like in that”. I have to say I only did it for me, for no one else but me. In defence of my actions, I would have to say that there are many things we do in life to alter our appearances. I for one have almost never worn makeup. I guess I just so much wanted to have breasts, and though looking back, I can see it was a mistake, at least I know now that like so many things in life.......... “That as they got closer were not what we visioned at all”

Now as I write this I realize that one of my songs describes this much better than I can here. So I will enclude a link to that song.

ilver dollars

Written by: janet bates

Silver dollar Janet Bates 2007.….. How many times have we chased silver dollars That slipped through our fingers like slow flowing water (does) How many dreams have we seen in the distance That as we got closer they were not what we visioned at all How many plans have we changed by the time They got close to fruition, our plans then are different So many times have I thought of what might have been Looked at was has been, glad of the life that I lead Ads I'd seen in magazines, thought that could be me It's only now I can see So many things that I thought that I wanted I found what I wanted only, what I already had REPEAT You cannot learn too soon If you reach for the moon Even though its what you wanted It won't fit in your pocket Stars may seem bright As you gaze out at night In the light of the day They just all go away ….And when you dream Just of pastures of green They will all turn to brown When autumn comes around http://janetbates.com/music.html open the "for all of his wealth" album and scroll down to silver dolllars there is a downloadable form there. love Janet jankenb @ gmail.com

post op 3 hours

just a quik note to let y"all know i had surgery today, i am fine, and "nurse kenny" has come out of retirement to give me top notch care

I am going to try something unique for me, and I am just going to lay here until tomorrow and do absolutlely nothing, which is what the doctor said to do.

Doctor had some trouble getting the ruptured implant out, as there were "issues", but as you know....... I will give you ALL the details tomorrow or the next day.

Love to all of you and thank you so much for all the wonderful notes I have received.

Love

Janet

jankenb @ gmail.com

What a difference a year makes

Ken and I took the same trip this year as last, and thought we would stop at the same little place beside Duffy Lake to take the same picture again.

What a difference a year has made........

Well somethings do not seem to change that much at all. I think that Ken looks like he just changed his shirt for the second picture.

AND the weather changed a bit too.

Just thought I would share the photos

Love

Janet

jankenb @ gmail.com

back in ca na da

Hi Everyone
Ken and I (and the dogs) are on our way to Whistler, from Vancouver. I met with the surgeon today and the surgery is planned for next Wednesday. I feel so much better that I have waited to have the surgery with this doctor. He even showed me a little video that he has on his phone (that he uses when he lectures) on how the implant is removed without anything being left behind.
He specializes in reconstructive surgery after mastectomy. He seems to think it will just look fine once he is done. The first surgeon basically told me how horrible it was going to look and STRONGLY encouraged me to just replace the implant with another one.
I am so glad I decided not to go with him.

I am also booked to be starting back in the hyperbaric unit, (the new one that will be opening at Riverbend hospital) in November. I will be one of the first patients in this new unit. This unit goes up to 3 atmospheres (however I will be treated with 2.4 atmospheres.
I finally heard back from my oncologist about my PET scan and he said that the increased take up of the dye in the base of the tongue was most likely because I was talking between when the injection was given. Active muscles take up the dye in greater concentrations. Can you imagine me talking too much?????
The tech at the PET scan place was telling me that that is why whey have this little room that you basically sit in the dark after the injection. He said he had a guy once that brought in a computer game and sure enough all his arm muscles “lit up” on the scan.

I have had an incredibly exciting week for an extremely “unexpected” reason.
I got a call from the physician recruiter from Peace Health to ask if I would be interested in a position as hospitalist at the old Sacred Heart hospital (which is now called the University District hospital)
I was totally shocked, and said that I never would have expected that they would ask me to work, being as Peace Health has a bylaw against hiring non board certified docs.

Well I guess Peace Health ( which is a large non profit organization that owns several facilities) They have two “campuses” in Eugene, one at Riverbend (RB) which is the new hospital and the other at the old Sacred Heart (University District)(UD).

All the hospitalists rotate through both facilities, but since the unit at UD is only about 35 beds and Riverbend (RB) is much larger, none of them spend much time over there at UD. The unit is mostly geriatrics, with a high percentage of Alzheimers patients and all the unique problems that they get.
They have been thinking of having one or two physicians JUST work over at UD They noted on my resume the 9 years I cared for all the patients in the locked Alzheimers unit at Heritage Place, combined with the 3 years I worked as a hospitalist in Bandon and thought I would be perfect for the job. So I spent all day Monday being “interviewed”, and then a dinner to meet me and Ken at one of the doctors house.
It is not totally straight forward but they have found out that there is in certain circumstances a way around the bylaws if a physician came along with the kind of experience I seem to have.
They are also short of physicians in the hospitalist group, as a few of them have recently left. I am pretty excited about this as from all I can see this job could be my “dream job”, the one I left in Bandon, without the politics.........

If it does not work out, that will be OK, I STILL have my 73 tomato plants......

It was extremely hard to leave my garden, and in my “notes to self” book that I need to write about this years successes and failures, a few paragraphs will definately be devoted to “when NOT to leave the garden”.
I would say that the first 2 weeks of September would qualify. I have canned 9 pints of tomato sauce, 5 pints of dilly beans, and 5 of dill pickles. We have dried many bags of sliced apple and one bag of dried mushroom. I picked every tomato that had even the faintest red colour to it, to bring with us on this trip.
It may not have been the greatest time for surgery, but
Ken and I have this idea that perhaps getting this done AND the hyperbarics in November, perhaps by Christmas I will be perfectly healthy.

Maybe I can start running again then
Love
Janet
jankenb @ gmail.com .

another operation

Hi there everyone

This blog is one that I have tormented over for a very long time, ie whether or not to write it.

However since I have always seen this blog as both an accurate update on my medical situation as well as a means of explaining medical issues as they arise, to further the readers medical understanding, I feel compelled to also share my current situation with my readers. I will be having an operation in about 2 weeks for a problem I can only describe as "self induced". I am sharing this only with the hopes that I might spare someone else needless procedures and pain.

It is a very personal situation, but I feel I have shared a lot of stuff thus far, why not this?

Part of the reason for my trip to Canada next week is to have surgery to remove breast implants, one of which has ruptured and is leaking silicone. I was advised over a year ago that this needed to be removed, but with being on chemo, and also having a low blood count, I opted to delay this until now.

AND NOW THE STORY.......

I am telling this with the hopes that someone might read this and perhaps opt NOT to do this.

10 years ago, whilst training to do that Boston marathon ( this is a marathon that you have to qualify for, which means you have to have achieved a certain time in another marathon), I subsequently lost a lot of weight. In doing so lost what small breasts I had (or so I saw it).

At the time, being inundated with Victoria Secrets catalogues etc I decided I wanted to look like those models, well at least be able to fill out the clothing. ( I should add here that I have long believed that Victoria Secrets is likely responsible for MUCH of the whole breast augmentation craze)(just a thought)

I found out that having a breast augmentation (breast implants) was not a huge procedure. I went and saw a surgeon and he also agreed that I could have the procedure done under local anaesthesia (not how it is usually done, but hey, I did not want to risk my life with an anaesthetic). I had saline implants put in and immediately developed capsular contraction of the worst kind.

AN EXPLANATION: When a foreign object of any kind is inserted into the body, the body forms a capsule around it. Capsular contraction is when this capsule shrinks and forms a tight constrictive wall around the implant, making it as hard as a rock and quite painful.

Now I should have learned at this point that perhaps I was not meant to have implants, however I felt still that I wanted to have breasts....

So I found a surgeon in Portland who would repair this, and since I had had capsular contraction, I would qualify for silicone implants.

Again I had the surgery under local anaesthetic. He removed the capsule around the implant and the implant and put in silicone implants. I should add here that this is all placed under the muscle of the chest wall. True breasts sit on the outside of the chest wall muscle, but to get a better effect, often breast implants are placed UNDER the pectoral muscle.

Well things went well for 9 years and I really had no problems..

Last June amidst chemo and the fears of this cancer, I went to see a surgeon about having a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy, (my mother AND my grandmother had breast cancer and I was NOT wishing to go through this cancer thing again) I was quite emotional at the time.

The surgeon said that at that point, I was more likely to succumb to the endometrial cancer than breast cancer, so she would not consider the surgery until at least a year after my treatments. She did order an MRI because she felt a lump.

The MRI showed that the breast implant was ruptured, but that it was still contained in the capsule.

I was in the middle of chemo and radiation at the time, so nothing I could do about it.

I did see a plastic surgeon in the fall about removing it. He advised removing them and replacing them. I found that he was quite dishonest about the whole situation and decided not to have the surgery. He had described the surgery he was going to perform, and I signed the consent. I later went for my presurgery appointment and in reading the consent in detail, I found that the surgery he had described to me was NOT the surgery he had put on the consent.

This was around the time that my radiation problems began so I did not do anything about it. I DID start reading though.

I found that the ONLY way to totally get rid of the silicone was to remove the implant AND the capsule enbloc which means to remove the whole thing as one. This not at all what the surgeon here had planned.

To make a long story short, the closest plastic surgeon that removes the implant AND capsule as one is up in Vancouver BC, and that is why I am going there for the procedure.

I thought I would also outline some of the things I have learned about breast implants that I think more people should learn.

Over 50% of women who have breast augmentation (breast implant insertion) require another operation. Bear in mind that the surgery is expensive and many women save up for the operation and cannot afford to have surgery to repair whatever the problem is. The other situation that often comes up is that while someone might be able to pay for the surgery, when the time comes that they need it repaired, they are in a different financial situation..... ie retired.

Of asymptomatic women (women with no symptoms), at 10 years 50% of breast implants have ruptured. (saline implants deflate immediately when they rupture, but silicone implants remain as a gel inside the capsule) So my situation is not unusual.

Once ruptured the silicone can leak out to various parts of the body.

The studies done years ago disproved that breast implants have anything to do with rheumatological problems, HOWEVER women with ruptured implants were never studied, so it is unclear what happens once they rupture.

After you have had breast implants for a long time the shape of your chest changes somewhat in that having them removed you will be much smaller appearing than you were to begin with.

You cannot get private health insurance if you have breast implants. I was refused because of mine. I have long said that the reason I was refused was because of the vaginal bleeding, but what happened was that the vaginal bleeding made the insurance company look closer at my files, and the fact that I had breast implants made me uninsurable. Fortunately being in Oregon they have a plan for those refused insurance for a medical problem.

Most states do not have this.

SO there it is.... I have revealed all.

I hope that in reading this someone else can pass on this info. I will more than likely add other info about this as I remember it.

The cheapest way to deal with all of this is to throw out all the Victoria's secret catalogues. Kind of funny, after my sons became teens, somehow the VS catalogues just disappeared on their own.

Janet

my garden

I saw the ENT doctor yesterday, and he said that the redness at the back of my throat/tongue, had pretty much resolved and that he did not feel that this was a cancer, more an inflammation from the sinus drainage. This is my basil garden.

Crook neck squash, green beans, apple tree

August update

Hi Everyone.

Been awhile since I wrote, life has been hectic, with many back and forth trips to Bandon etc. Ken and I are finally back together in the same place AT the same time.

We are on our way to Llamapalooza, which is a small "festival" some friends of ours have out at Middlecreek (east of Coquille). It is at the studio that we recorded our first cd at. We are looking at recording another cd out at this studio in the fall as well. We are performing again at Bullards Beach amphitheatre on August 21st at 7pm.

As far as my health, last time I posted I described the increased takeup on the PET scan from the base of my tongue. One of the faithful readers of this blog just happens to have a husband who has just completed chemo and radiation for tongue cancer, so she urged me to at least have it examined by an ENT (ear nose and throat doctor)

So I did.

In order to see the base of the tongue, you need a special scope that uses the same technology as for a colonoscopy, fiberoptics.

They numb the back of your nose with spray, then insert the tube down the back of your nose. ( its not as bad as it sounds). I had the same thing done a few years ago, to make sure I was not abusing my vocal chords with my singing.

He looked down and said that the base of the tongue and the area around were red, but he said it did not look like cancer. (he could not say for sure)

So he basically gave me 4 drugs to treat the problem (whatever it is) and then suggested he have another look in a few weeks (this next Friday)

Well the drugs were an antibiotic, a nasal steroid, an oral steroid and mucomyst which thins secretions.

I took the antibiotic for 4 days and developed severe diarrhea, the nasal steroid gave me nosebleeds.

We went out for dinner the 4th day of the diarrhea and I stopped at the pharmacy on the way to pick up some lomotil to stop the diarrhea. It occurred to me that this whole story is somewhat like the song:

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog, I don't know why, she swallowed the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat she swallowed the cat to catch the mouse, she swallowed the mouse to catch spider that riggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.............

SO hard to know when to say "enough already!!!"

I have noticed that I do wake up during the night often with what seems to be drainage down the back of my throat. I have never thought that I had allergies, but perhaps I do, after all Eugene is the allergy capital of the country apparently.

If this is due to allergies, then what I have is what is known to most as post nasal drip and the constant drainage from the sinuses causes inflammation at the back of the tongue and throat.

So I have started to take the allergy meds, just to see if this improves the situation and clears up the redness at the back of my tongue, so I can forget all about cancer.

On the endometrial cancer front, I had a followup CA 125 done 6 weeks after the one that was a bit elevated and it was back down to 7, which was a huge relief to me.

The rectal bleeding is pretty stable, it is not getting any better, but it does not seem to be getting any worse. I have not heard back from the hyperbaric doctor yet, but he DID say he was going on holiday. That suits me well, as Ken and I have a trip up to Canada planned for the first few weeks of September.

My garden really is a dream come true, I just love watching all those different things grow. I recently purchased a canner, more as a defensive move than anything, seeing all of those tomatoes starting to ripen. I just know that one of these days there is going to be dots of red all over my yard and I am not going to be able to keep up. I have used the canner once, as we had so many green beans, we decided to situate ourselves squarely amungst the group known as canners BEFORE the tomatoes ripen. SOoooo much harder to perform new tasks under pressure. So the beans were the dry run. We pickled them.

I feel that I am at least at "a tie" with the zucchinis finding many recipes to use them up with all the basil I have grown. The zucchinis I have are seeds from Italy (where they can guarantee no GMOs) and are much more tender even when they get to be huge. The skins are still tender too. Monday I have set aside to make zucchini/turemeric bread. Hope it is not too hot.

I have been meaning to post garden pictures, but with all the back and forth between Bandon and Eugene, the camera always seems to be elsewhere when I am ready to take a picture.