Whew, where to start? My mastectomy was 2 and a half weeks ago and despite some big letdowns, it was a success (waking up from anesthesia was pretty gnarly though).

The bad news is, they had to take out 11 lymph nodes but the good news is, they were able to remove all of the cancer and there is no more evidence of disease in my body!!!

Obviously I’m deeply grateful and relieved but I still haven’t even wrapped my head around the fact that I had stage 3 breast cancer to begin with...so it’s taking a while to sink in that it’s really gone. Plus, I still have a long road ahead of me that includes a month of weekly trips to Stanford to fill my tissue expander, 6 weeks of radiation, reconstruction surgery, and 10 years of hormone therapy so this journey is far from over. I’m also nervous about the risk of lymphedema so I’ll be doing physical therapy for that too.

As far as my recovery, I’m pretty tired and uncomfortable but the pain has been manageable and my incisions are healing well. All of my drains have been removed and I was cleared to start some shoulder exercises but I still have a more couple weeks of prescribed downtime.

Overall, I’m hanging in there but this experience has really taken an emotional toll on me (and Brandon too) but for now, we’re soaking up the good news as best we can. Thank you again for all your help and support along the way, you’ve literally kept us from drowning and we’re so grateful to have you in our corner.

I’ll keep you updated once I start radiation in a month or so.

Lots of love,
Lindsay

Link to Meal Train:
https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/r28vkw

Link to Amazon Wishlist:
https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/1XXIS31AQWS9Z