Surgery is scheduled!

The date for my bi-lateral mastectomy and reconstruction is November 6th - Election Day. The surgery coordinator said that I should expect to stay in the hospital for 23 hours unless there are complications....this way it is still considered an out patient surgery as long as I am not there for over 24 hours. I am glad to have the date set. I feel great about my decisions on doctors and feel like we are starting to move forward. I am glad to have a little time to mentally and physically prepare for the surgery. I love fall and I am thankful to have this time to enjoy with friends and family.

Last night Bret and I hosted our neighborhood's first Dinner Club of the season. We had a tailgate theme and had approximately 25-30 of our neighbors attend. It was a perfect evening and we even had a fire in the back yard (thank you Galberg's for bringing your chimnea (sp?) over the fence for us and walking the trail to gather fire wood!!). Tyler worked his first evening as a babysitter and had nothing but positive things to say about that....I think we are going to have a harder time getting him to do his chores now....he would rather get paid to babysit for the neighbors! Today the four of us went in search of the perfect carving pumpkins....it was a great day to get out so we visited a local pumpkin patch that also had all kinds of farm animals to pet and Tyler made a quick trip through the corn maze. Those were the bright spots of the weekend - the rest of the weekend has certainly been life as usual....Jillian has been very cranky all weekend. I swear that she has wined or cried at least 5 solid hours....gotta love those temper tantrums with a 4 year old!

Last Thursday I attended my first meeting at the Wellness Center. This is a great support center for people in Cinci with cancer. Genentech (drug manufacture of Herceptin) was putting on a presentation. I didn't learn anything new about the drug but they did have a woman speak that is currently taking Herceptin. She has done very well with it but her story was pretty scary since she was originally diagnosed as Stage II but they did a body scan and found several tumors and she was moved to Stage IV. That was two years ago and she seems to be doing well. I also had a chance to meet with a representative of the Pink Ribbon Girls. It is a young woman's breast cancer support group that was started here in Cinci but it is quickly growing across the nation. I have signed up for the group but I have not attended any events. The girl that I met with was so great and made me feel better about getting involved. I know that they will be a great resource and support system for me. The worst part about the night was that I had a horrible dream about my stage of cancer being changed to IV......when I woke up in the morning I felt like someone had dropped a brick on my head....I just wanted to pull the blanket over my head and hide for the day. Eventually, I got myself together and made it to work......the nights are certainly the worst and hardest times to get through. I can only hope that even that will get better with time....Love to all, Jan