Discussing Breast Cancer

The last thing I shared about my personal experience was that time period immediately post-op: the pain, the immobility and the fear that I’d never recover.

The hospital staff (doctors, nurses, all of them) consistently told me the first 24 hours were the worst and each day would be better than the next. I was anxiously awaiting the time when I’d notice things were improving. Instead, I felt worse, because I started to feel feverish. You know how you can tell when your temperature isn’t normal? I couldn’t move but I certainly could distinguish between malaise and discomfort and fever and illness.

So when a nurse came in to take my vitals, I told her I was sure I had a fever, and I was right. 102 degrees. So then not only did my body hurt like hell but my head and my eyes hurt like hell as well.

I was still a bit loopy from all the morphine but unsure how to better manage the pain I was in. Someone from ‘pain management’ asked me what my pain goal was on a scale of 1-10 and I couldn’t believe the question. Hello? ZERO please! I was still in the double digits on that one and the pain was just compounded by the fever I’d developed.

It was worse than being between a rock and a hard place. It was like being between a rock and a hard place and the two sides started to push in one you so you can’t get out.

And of course, I just wanted to see my kids … and I knew I couldn’t because I didn’t want them to see me like that. I missed them some thing fierce. But to take away their fear, I had to be in decent shape when they came to see me, and that wouldn’t be for days.

Over the course of that first weekend, my mother and father visited me, my mother and father in law visited me, my two sisters visited me, and of course my husband was with me almost continuously. (One of these days I’ll share his point of view about the entire experience.) But I wanted no other visitors — so much for the plans my friends had to come and cheer me up.

Gradually the pain did diminish — I switched from morphine to codeine to Percocet to Tylenol.

Gradually the fever did go down — honestly, I don’t remember what caused secondary infection caused that one.

So plans were made for my kids to come and visit.