Sitting at home for a few days with the instructions of no lifting, no stretching, basically sit and do nothing. That is hard to do when the rest of your body and mind feels and works just fine. I decided to go back to work on Tuesday and for the most part went well. I was a little slower than normal but was able to get caught up on a lot of things. I woke up this morning and was sore, maybe over did it a bit on Tuesday. I put in almost a full day today before I needed to take a break and relax at home.
I am listening to the doctors and not lifting with my right arm - well as long as I catch myself in time - and not stretching at all. To assist with this, I have created quite a cocoon on the bed with pillows to help me keep from rolling around and splitting the incision open. If I'm not careful, I might get used to this and officially claim the entire thing as mine! At night is the worst time since I am not conscious enough to know if I'm stretching or rolling too much pulling the incision around. Because of all this focus and less comfort, it is healing quite nicely. Once I get a few weeks out, I'll put silicone strips on the incision which will help to keep the incision flat so the it doesn't scar badly and also lighten the scar up. I did this with the last and it helped the healing and aesthetics of the scars a lot. Worth the extra effort and money - works better than Mederma.
Right now, we are waiting for the results of the tumor to come back. I can only hope that it was a false positive with the FNA (fine needle aspiration biopsy). A friend of mine is going through Proton radiation therapy and I am looking at it online. It is fairly new to the breast cancer treatment arena from what I can see and still considered slightly experimental since they haven't been able to observe the long term effects. The main positive points are:
- Treatment time goes from 7 weeks (1x day for 5 days for 7 weeks) to 2 weeks (1x day for 5 days for 2 weeks).
- Focused to a specific point - less radiation to the surrounding tissues. With photon radiation, there is a risk to the lungs, heart, and other breast but with proton radiation there is a less risk of radiation to those organs. This would also protect my ribs - I am ultimately sacrificing the implant on my right side to protect my organs and ribs. The radiation will be right on my rib cage, for this reason it will weaken my rib cage dramatically on my right side. I could be reaching to pick up the remote and crack a rib in the future. Actually, very possible per the radiation oncologist.
- Skin issues, implant issues reduced. Possibility I won't have to have that major surgery in 3-5 years to reconstruct my entire chest again. This would involve taking skin and tissue from my stomach or back, pulling my shoulder muscle around to the front of my chest - very painful and extensive.
Down sides:
- Be away from home during this entire time. Apparently there are only 8 places in the nation that have a proton radiation device.
- Costs 5x more than standard photon radiation treatment. Will insurance cover it?
- Still consider "experimental" for my type of cancer, are the short term benefits worth not knowing the long term?
- They aren't sure of the effects of the scattering neutrons are... will the neutrons go off and create a cancer somewhere else in the body versus keeping any additional cancers in my chest/breast area?
I called my radiation oncologist and she said I could reach out to 2 locations that currently have the treatment option and ask their options for my situation. I will start the calling and asking process soon. At least this way, I can hear what the options are and if it is a viable option for me. Long term effects of radiation treatment since I'm so young is that radiation can cause "radiation induced cancers" for me in the future. The chemo I had previously, has the side effect of increasing my risk of lymphoma in the future. Trying to treat the body for one thing, may inherently cause a whole nother issue later. Fun times in the neighborhood.
