The first surgery was to remove the tumor and determine how much if any lymph node involvement there was.  My surgeon went in under my left arm and removed several sections of the lymph nodes and sent them to pathology to determine if the cancer had spread to the lymph system.  It is important to determine how much lymph node involvement there is because once cancer gets to the lymph nodes it can spread to the other organs very rapidly.  The amount of lymph node involvement will also determine how aggressive your chemo and radiation treatment will be.  While the frozen sections of lymph tissue were being examined by pathology, my surgeon removed the tumor and surrounding margins.  Now what do I mean by surrounding margins?   Well, you want to be sure that there is no cancer left in your body, therefore the surgeon will remove a margin of healthy tissue surrounding the tumor to make sure that all of the cancer is gone. 

Sometimes the post surgery pathology reveals positive margins and additional surgery may need to be done to remove any remaining cancer cells. In my case the margins were negative as was the pathology on the lymph nodes.  If the pathology had come back positive my doctor would have removed the remaining lymph nodes as well.

The surgery was a day surgery, this way I could recover at home where I was comfortable and spend as little time in the hospital as possible.  You never know how you’re going to react to your treatment and you may end up spending a lot of time in the hospital so it helps to start by spending as little time there as you can.  I was in a lot of pain for a while and I sleep on my belly so it was almost impossible to get used to having to sleep on my back.  A couple of times I turned over in my sleep, OH MY G-D! Does the word ouch mean anything to you?  And the weirdest thing ever…well, the doctor removes a rather large portion from your breast and there is a space where that tissue used to be.  While it is healing there remains a space in there which is filled with a liquid anesthesia to kind of dull the area.  Well, no one told me about this and once the pain killers wore off I noticed a, I don’t know sloshing sound coming from my breast.  I freaked out!  I mean that is not a sound you expect to come from inside of you.  I called the doctor and found out it was perfectly normal, after that it was all my mom and I could do to keep from laughing about it.  All in all it wasn’t so bad, I was home that day and up and able to do little things like make myself a cup of tea.  My mom came in from L.A. to help me after the surgery, and though I didn’t need her there to do things like make me soup, I really needed my mommy just to be there.  To be there for when I couldn't handle being strong and needed to be a baby for a while.  Just knowing she was there if I woke up in pain or needed help with the laundry, made things so much easier.  Having her and my Papa come in the beginning made it much easier for me during chemo and radiation when they couldn’t be there.  Having their encouragement made me brave somehow and determined to be able to do what I had to on my own.