Surgery - In detail

Terrible! That pretty much sums it up. We knew the day would come and we knew that it would be tough, and no matter how much Victoria or I mentally prepared ourselves we knew that it was going to be an emotional day. Driving to the hospital in the morning Victoria expressed to me how much she loved me and how much she loved our son, she was very scared about the surgery and as positive and strong as Victoria is she was worried that she might not make it through. It wasn't Victoria's first time having a major surgery, but this one especially worried her. I tried to be strong, encourage her, and tell her that she wasn't allowed to think those thoughts. But then I decided to let her be as emotional as she wanted, she needed to get it out and I believe it calmed her down a little. We arrived at the hospital for Victoria's pre-op appointment and she seemed okay. I didn't ask her how she was. Instead I just told her that it would be okay and she had a lot of people rooting for her. I had to turn my head several times away from Victoria as my eyes swelled with tears. This was the worst thing that we have had to endure thus far and all I could think about was how amazing she has been through it all. It hurts to see her have to go through this, but words can't describe how proud of her I am for being so brave and strong. Victoria was wheeled off into surgery and a long 4 hours of waiting was ahead of me. It was a relief to finally see the surgeon. He said Victoria was doing fine, she remained stable through the surgery, and the blood loss was minimal. Three lymphnodes were removed, biopsied and they tested negative in the early pathology report. We won't know for a few days whether any cancer cells remained in the breast tissue that was removed, but at this point I would like to think that she is on the road to recovery and putting this terrible disease behind her. It wasn't for another two hours or so after speaking with the surgeon that we were able to see Victoria. The first thing she told me was that it was horrible. She describe to me that when she came to she was in the worst pain of her life. Just telling me about it brought her to tears. They did finally manage to get her pain under control, and then... Well, it was later in the day and the nursing staff was getting ready to rotate out. Victoria's nurse needed to draw some blood and decided to disconnect her morphine drip and pull it from the IV line in her arm. However, she failed to reconnect the drip when she was finished. About 3 hours later Victoria's pain got progressively worse. She kept buzzing the new nurse and telling her that the pain was escalating rapidly. The nurse kept pushing the morphine and eventually was able to give her another muscle relaxer. Victoria's pain was only getting worse. I know how high her pain tolerance is and this just didn't seem right. I felt so helpless because there wasn't much I could do. As I was standing by Victoria's bed side trying to comfort her I felt behind her head. It was soaking wet, I then discovered that the bed had recieved a good dose of fluids and morphine, and not Victoria. I quickly brought this to the nurses attention, the line was hooked back up and Victoria slowly started to get some relief. It was getting late, so I decided to lay down as victoria was starting to fade. About 3:30 a.m. Victoria's pain was back. The line was still connected, but the meds weren't doing the trick. The nurse and I sat Victoria up to try to get some blood flow, then moved her into a chair, this only made things more painful for Victoria. We moved her back into the bed and Victoria just continued to suffer through the pain. 7:30 a.m. couldn't come fast enough and we were really happy to see our surgeon's physician's assistant. She prescribed some better pain meds for Victoria. Victoria has felt little pain and has been in and out of sleep for the majority of the day. She was able to get out of bed and go for a very short walk this morning. I was able to see Victoria's chest today and it looks very good. Her skin looks good and she was put back together nicely and with a lot of care. Victoria is an incredible fighter! We remain optomistic that this is the beginning of the end and that Victoria is well on her way to a speedy recovery.