Sara has been home since the evening of February 3, and has been recovering slowly but surely. As can be inferred by the blog title, she is now staple-free, as of last Thursday. The surgeon removed them himself, and according to Sara it wasn’t as scary (or painful) as had been anticipated! The staples were starting to get a bit itchy so she is more comfortable now without them. If you weren’t brave enough to look at her surgery picture, basically she has a scar which runs across the front of her ribs/diaphragm area, almost completely across her body. It looks like it is healing very well, to me anyway, and hopefully will just fade to a thin line.

The initial days at home were definitely a bit rough – a lot of pain, which makes riding in the car to appointments a challenge, forcing tackling the flight of stairs in her house very carefully and slowly, or turning just a seemingly simple task of getting up from a laying down position into a complicated chore. On February 8 Sara went to see her oncologist, who was very happy with the surgery and the report back from the surgeon. Even though Sara is still having some pain and nausea, the doctor said that Sara has already “broken all of the odds” right now, by doing as well as she is (yay!). The chemo regimen and planned surgeries may seem very aggressive, but her medical team wouldn’t have approved this approach if they didn’t think she could handle it, especially being young and in good health. The absolute goal is not just to live with the cancer, but to cure it 🙂 🙂 .

So as you can probably imagine, Sara is keeping her fighting spirit in mind as the start date for resuming chemo approaches rapidly – February 29. The plan is that she will go back to her former schedule of treatment of alternating Mondays. In the meantime, Sara is now completely weaned off of the pain medication, and is working on regaining some strength and weight lost post-surgery. Unfortunately nausea seems to be a persistent side effect, probably related to the surgery according to her doctor, but hopefully this will pass before the chemo treatment resumes.

Sara is motivated to keep on moving through the pain/nausea, so after a few days at home she was determined to get out of the house into some fresh air, and walk next door to visit Brady (her son’s pony). Horse therapy is great therapy, as you can see in the picture below! One other reminder – for those who are (or want to) participating in the MealTrain program, it would be most helpful for Sara to receive some deliveries during the weeks that she has chemo (i.e. starting February 29, then March 14, March 28, etc). Thanks to everyone for your support!

Meeting Willow, the sweet therapy dog

 

Sara told me today that she might be released from the hospital as early as tonight – yippee! If not tonight, then probably tomorrow. Since the last update, no complications have occurred, but it took a few extra days to get the pain management under control. Even though she tries to maintain a good attitude, we have to remember that she has had a major surgery – through muscles, tissue, and not to mention her liver – she has 23 staples across her diaphragm area! Anyway she was gradually weaned off of the morphine button and the epidural over several days. Which is a good sign, but then she really started to feel the true depth of the surgery-related pain. I’m sure that all of the walking and moving around Sara did the first few post-surgery days helped her body to recover, but with the added factor of increased pain, it was all a bit frustrating. For a little while it almost seemed to Sara like her recovery was backtracking, instead of progressing. But now it is slowly improving.

As you may have seen via her Facebook posts, Sara is still pushing ahead, despite the pain; it’s just that the same tasks take more effort now. She had a very nice visit from a therapy dog, as you can see in the pictures, and is also working on Valentines cards for her class (!). So she is not just laying in bed and resting on her laurels, so to speak :). No that we would expect that of her anyway.

Although Sara may not be up to many visits in her first days back at home, she does appreciate texts from friends to check in on her during the day, especially the periods she is on her own, i.e. the middle of the day when the kids are at school and Eric is at work. When she is up to visits in person, she will be sure to let us know!