Hysterectomy is scheduled for Monday....

Ho! Ho! Ho! Hey everybody! Christmas time's a comin'!! I've gotten a jump on my shopping this year because, as you can see, I have surgery scheduled soon. I am very pleased that my surgeon could squeeze me in (and that's literally what she has done!). I am scheduled to be at PCMH Monday morning at 0930 for surgery at 1230. Of course, that is a tentative time; I will get the definite time on Friday afternoon. My surgery is being performed by Dr. Paige Fisher.

Remember, the type of cancer that I had had estrogen receptors on it, meaning it was fed by my estrogen. As an attempt to prevent reoccurrence, I need to at least have my ovaries removed. The plan is to remove my uterus and cervix as well, but Dr. Fisher will make that decision during surgery. Evidently, not having had a baby before makes it harder to remove your cervix. Oh, I failed to tell you that she is planning to do the surgery laparoscopically (by making three very small incisions versus one long one).

Hopefully, she will be able to do it laparoscopically; I don't want to lose any more time at work than I have to. Right now, I am scheduled to be off for two weeks. By the time I go back to work, which should be the 21st, my patient will be out of school for Christmas. Instead of accompanying her to school, all I have to do is go to her house. That makes it much easier. If I were to have one long incision, recovery would take much longer.

When I was at Dr. Fisher's office this morning, I was running a low grade temp of 99.2. She told me to let my oncologist know in case she wants to put me on another antibiotic. I had just finished Augmentin about a week ago. This concerns me considering what my chest CT results showed. I was glad that Dr. Fisher ordered a chest xray today, and I'm anxious to see what it shows. Of course, that's not as good as doing a CT, but at least we'll be able to see a pretty good picture of what's going on in my lungs. I'm pretty sure that's where the temperature is coming from, but I'd like to know for sure.

For those of you wondering why I was so glad to get the surgery done before the end of the year:
(1) I have a large deductible that was long ago met. (2) I want to enroll in the cancer survivors' exercise program in January. (3) I'm tired of being out of shape, overweight, tired, stiff, etc., and I'll have a month to recover before the program begins. (4) I can wake up on January 1st without another surgery hanging over my head. All I'll have to do is continue taking my Herceptin treatments every three weeks until the first of May.

So that's it for now. I'll post again if anything changes......

Thanks,
Cindy