Finally, Some Good News
A Happy Cancer Update
Hello Dear Readers,
I’m now 4 weeks out from my double mastectomy. It has been a wild ride. I wasn’t allowed to do very much for a week or so after surgery and I lost a lot of range of motion initially. I was, however, still able to wipe my own bum. Something I’m sure everyone who was helping me post surgery was thankful for.
Going into the surgery was pretty nerve-wracking. It’s not my first surgery. If there were a bingo sheet of procedures, it would look like I’m trying to blackout the whole card. Nevertheless, this procedure was intimidating because it has the most visual impact on my body since I have opted to skip reconstruction and remain flat. I wrote a little comic to get some feelings out two weeks before the big day.
Happily, I made it through. There is a funny story from surgery day I want to share. I was told that I wasn’t going to be able to knit for a few weeks after surgery. This was a problem because I had been working on my “cheer myself up about having no boobs” sweater and I still had half a sleeve left to knit the day of surgery. My big fear was that my gauge would change after surgery and the last bit of sleeve wouldn’t match the rest of the sweater. So I knit like mad during the hour and a half drive to the hospital, but I still wasn’t done. Then I knit like mad while in the waiting room, but I still wasn’t done when they called me back. Then they told me I could knit while they prepped me, but I still wasn’t done. Then I was told they were behind schedule, so I could keep on knitting.
Friends, I kid you not, as they came to wheel me into the operation room I said, “I have four stitches left! Can I finish?” I finished knitting my sweater exactly before my surgery. Someone joked how they didn’t have a code for being a little late because the patient was finishing a sweater.
I’m quite proud of myself. I even managed to keep knitting after they inserted the IV into my hand.
The rest of the day is largely lost to me. I vaguely remember Connor trying to feed me, but my throat was swollen from the breathing tube that had been inserted during the procedure. I managed to get some mashed potatoes down.
I think most people don’t sleep well when they spend a night in the hospital, but those people probably don’t have a young child who shouts in the night every time she turns over. I slept great! I got sent home the next day to recover and I felt mostly ok until the nerve block wore off. It was a little less great after that.
I didn’t get to try on my sweater until recently because I haven’t been able to lift my arms over my head.
I have been very excited to look cute in my new sweater, but I am even more excited to share the results of my pathology. They didn’t find any evidence of cancer in my breast tissue or in the lymph nodes that were taken! I am, as far as we can tell, cancer free.
Now this doesn’t mean I am done with treatment. There is no imaging technology sensitive enough at this point in time to tell if there are any cancer cells that got away and are circulating through my body. If there are, they could settle somewhere new and make me a stage 4 cancer patient, which is every cancer patient’s worst nightmare. My pathology would suggest that the treatment worked, but as insurance I still get to do immunotherapy for the rest of the year and I get to have hormone suppression (ie medically induced menopause) for the next five years. None of that is a fun time, but it is worth it to try to make sure I don’t get a reoccurrence. I also get to be monitored closely for the next five years, although because there is nothing to scan, I get to skip the MRIs and mammograms. Instead I get physical examinations.
Now that it looks like I’m not imminently dying, I’ve gone back to planning projects and developing new hobbies. The future looks brighter indeed!
A Few Obsessions From This Week
Lost Art Press has so many cool books about, well, lost arts. Even better, they offer many of them free to read on their site! I am working my way through Sharpen This, a book about sharpening tools.
I recently came across Babette Cole’s picture books. Or should I say, I came across them again because I remember checking them out from the library as a kid. I bought a copy of The Trouble With Grandad and I was happy to discover that it still lands great as an adult.
Ready to read more comics? Check out audrywithoutane.com
Interested in what other projects Audry is involved with? Go to audrynicklin.com
Enjoy knitting? Visit Audry’s knitting pattern site at bear-ears.com
Dearest Audry, I'm sosososo happy you shared this good news! (Another piece of good news is that you look great with short hair!)
I love the sweater and am amazed at the various talents and skills you have.
I know what it's like to stop planning for the future because you wonder if you'll have one. It's a wonderful thing to have a future to look forward to. I hope that you feel better each day and that you, Connor and Bub have many glorious adventures ahead of you.
I still miss you and our art group so I thank God for this letter whenever you send it. I'm also thanking Him for your successful surgery and asking for a full recovery.
Fabulous! One of the nice things about getting older is that I have more experience with how to comfort myself. It’s an important and overlooked skill. Knitting through a trauma sounds like a fine strategy. Onward.