Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog

     I did my best to present Part 3 as concisely as possible.  I am aware that my family and friends, who have been incredibly supportive to me, may be approaching the point of "Luna Fatigue".  As exhausting as my health complications have been to me, I see that supporting my recovery is taxing to them, too.   Our Conversation with Dr. R., (my first surgeon) :           -Several days after my second, reconstructive, surgery, Dr. R. came to my hospital room.  It was around 7pm and Wynn was with me.  We had looked forward to meeting with him.            -One of the reasons I chose Dr. R. as my surgeon was because he has a gentle manner.  Although that night he did not say the words, "I'm sorry,"  his demeanor was that of contrition.  Appropriately so. Whatever he said to us that night, it has been enough for me to work toward finding my peace w...

       As I sit down to try to write Part 2, I'm finding it difficult to put my thoughts together.  I haven't yet wrapped my head around the events of Part 1, and even wonder if I don't have some post-traumatic stress going on.  Thinking that, with the home physical therapist's directions, I was walking around, including stairs, with a broken femur for four days makes me cringe .  On top of that, due to the fracture, I bled so much into my hip that my hemoglobin fell to 5.0 g/dL, (normal range for women is 12.0-15.5 g/dL).  The American Association of Blood Banks' guidelines recommend transfusion at  7-8 g/dL. Although I received four units of blood before the second surgery, as I said good-bye to Wynn, Nathan and Nina, I worried that I would not make it out of that surgery OK.            The second surgery with my new orthopedic surgeon, Dr. J., went well.  Here's the X-ray:   ...

       This is a long and windy story so the skinny, metaphoric version is this...I was hit by a Mack truck, and didn't die.  The long version is this...(and it is long so I�ll post it in parts).        For the past decade, or so, I have struggled with arthritis in my left hip.  Given my stage 4 cancer status, I didn't think a hip replacement was possible.  However, because I've done so well on my oral chemotherapy, Xalkori, I've been able to be pretty active...cycling, Pilates, workouts, etc.  My ongoing, progressive pain was starting to get in the way of my life.  After meeting with multiple orthopedic surgeons, including an ortho-oncologist, I was encouraged to get a hip replacement, despite my cancer diagnosis.  I ended up choosing Dr. R. because he offered a minimally invasive procedure (back to work in 6 weeks), has successfully done several friends and colleagues hips, and I liked his bedside manne...