I finished my chemo on November 25th, and it certainly was a great Thanksgiving.  I was so grateful to have made it through the chemo...I was excited to have a few weeks feeling great, before I had my surgery.  However, the joke was on me.  Thanksgiving night I went to the casino with my parents, friend, and aunt.  I started feeling pretty crappy...when I got home, I took my temperature and realized I had a fever.  The magic number when you are a cancer patient is 100.5...they want you to call if it gets that, or higher.  Well, for a few days, I monitored it, but it went higher...I ended up in the emergency room, where they checked me out fully, sent me home, and basically, found nothing wrong with me.

Later that week, I ended up calling Oncology...it had been several days since I'd had a fever, and went to see Dr. Trimble...he was the doctor on call while my Doctor was out of town.  He was convinced I had an infection in my port.  I had to come in the week before my surgery, 5 days a week, for IV antibiotics.  The fever finally went away, the weekend  before my surgery.
I had my surgery on a Monday...I learned that there is a procedure called a "double needle biopsy" which is done before a lumpectomy.  A few hours before your surgery, you go to an ultrasound room, where they use the ultrasound machine to find your tumors.  They then will mark them with a wire, placed in your breast with a needle, and a shooting of blue dye.  My doctors had a problem...they couldn't find my tumors!  They were actually both completely gone.  One of my doctors called Dr. Frantzis to ask if he still wanted to perform my surgery, as they couldn't see any tumors.  Dr. Frantzis said yes, use the little clips that had been dropped in last May as markers, and put the wires and dye inside.  That procedure was the most painful part of all...the numbing agent didn't work that well, and I had to have two needles dropping wires put deep into my breast on two locations.  One of my doctors spoke very broken English... I had a difficult time understanding him.  But what was crystal clear were his words, over and over, "I so sorry I hurting you.  I so sorry I hurting you," as he completed his procedure.  I was wheeled back into my room to await my surgery.

My surgery was, in my eyes, extremely successful.  While Dr. Frantzis claimed he removed a lot of tissue, my two incisions and stitches were menacing, but my breast was, in my eyes, completely normal looking.  I would be able to wear normal bras.  I would still have cleavage.  I could wear tank tops and v-necks.  I wouldn't need the "little filler" he thought I might need in my bra.  And most importantly of all, he claimed to have "gotten it all." I went home the next day, after meeting with a physical therapist who took me through various exercises to stretch the muscle in my arm area, a drain tube hanging from my armpit and instructions on how to measure and empty my discharge.  Told not to shower for 48 hours, I went home and vegged on the couch.