That last month my sister finally had her mastectomy!

YEAH!!!!!!

She easily made it through the surgery. The doctors removed her left breast tissue, pectoral muscle, another small chest muscle and 15 of the 19 lymph nodes in her left arm. She still has the tumors in her neck (one on the collarbone and one near a big artery) and the one in her chest that's wedged in her ribcage.

However, even with those three tumors left in her her pathology report from the tissue removed is that she has absolutely no cancer cells at all in her body. Excellent.

The tumors still in her are effectively dead but she is still going to receive radiation treatment to obliterate what is leftover.

So she had the surgery on March 26th and it started at 8:00am PST and was finished by 11:30am PST or so. Because the oncological surgeon couldn't get a standard operating room as quickly as he wanted he played a trick on the hospital and scheduled my sister's mastectomy in the Same Day Surgery OR.

So she had the surgery in Same Day Surgery OR then while she was in recovery he told the hospital that she needed to be observed by staff for 3 days more. But by 2:00pm my sister was up, wide awake in her hospital room (in the hospital where she is a nurse and on the floor where she normally works) and walking around talking to her co-workers. She felt good and very very happy to have the breast finally removed. She said she felt so good that she didn't need to stay in the hospital at all but the doctor said she had to stay.

The next morning at 8am she called me at her house. "COME AND GET ME! I CAN GO HOME NOW!" She was really yelling in the phone.

So I booked it over to the hospital and she was dressed in PJs and darn near waiting anxiously by the elevator door. Because she works at the hospital and is a well liked nurse she didn't get a wink of sleep. Every single nurse, aide and doctor stopped in to her room all day and night to wish her a speedy recovery and to ask for her counsel on some patient matters.

So I got her home and she finally slept. For the first time since October when she got her diagnosis she slept peacefully for 8 full hours. Until she realized that the bandage made her itch and that she needed to take her pain medications BEFORE she had any pain cause the JP drain is an annoying thing.

Anyway, my sister is cancer-free now but not free of her usual b*tchiness. Radiation starts at the end of the month. She thinks it's cool having only one boob (she calls herself Cyclops now) but since the remaining breast is a G cup and the mastectomy side is about an A cup (the surgeon left the skin so that he could use it for reconstructive surgery later) she finally decide to go ahead and have the reconstruction and reduction on her breasts. That should happen in June and she thinks she'll be back at work by July 2009.

We'll see, I think its too early to know if she'll be able to do the heavy lifting and deal with the very physical situations she faces as a med/surg nurse. If she starts working out with the physical therapist the doctor got her then maybe - if she does as she did when she had spinal fusion and a broken foot, she won't work with the Physical therapist and she won't have the strength or flexibility to resume normal activities.

PS. On my side - my first mammogram was absolutely clear. And genetic cancer screening shows that my sister's triple negative breast was not genetic but environmental and that I do not have the same pre-disposition as her. However, I will continue with yearly mammograms even though I am not yet 40 and I will get blood tests looking for cancer signs or new genetic anomalies.