The Sling is the Thing

We saw Kym's plastic surgeon, Dr. Doug Forman, on Monday (one drain down, one to go!). One of his staff members commented on how they recommend their patients wear a sling, but most don't heed the advice.

I bought this $12 sling at CVS for Kym after her latest breast biopsy. Then as now, it has really helped keep Kym comfortable postoperatively. It is easy to put on and take off, is reasonably stylish ("Black is always in fashion" according to Kym), and helped remind her to keep her arm to her side even after the immediate pain subsided.   

Plus it makes a great pity bandage! People know to hold a door and to avoid giving you a tight squeeze when they say hello. Maybe it can also get you out of a speeding ticket if you really work it (though I'm not sure it will show up on one of those dastardly speed trap photos).

And can I just say how amazing my wife looks? I never grow tired of gazing upon her beauty...

Breast Cancer Couture

Kym and I made a quick stop to see the plastic surgeon the day after Kym's mastectomy.  We wanted to make sure her Jackson-Pratt drains were working properly as one of them seemed to be blocked. Everything was working fine and we got a chance to take a quick peek under the dressing to see Dr. Forman's handiwork. The site looked great. We had been concerned about the integrity of Kym's skin since her tumor has infiltrated the skin's surface forcing her surgical oncologist, Dr. Wright, to make a wider skin resection than we hoped. Thankfully, Dr. Forman had the necessary room to spare to insert an expander, which he will gradually inflate with saline to stretch Kym's skin in preparation for her permanent implant when the time is right.

With her post-operative harness and two drains on her side, I thought Kym looked like a bustier-wearing gunslinger...

Drains aren't too much fun to manage, but they are fairly simple to handle once you get the hang of it. Just as you can find a video on YouTube for learning how to do everything from French braiding hair to wrestling alligators, you can find videos for how to care for a JP drain. I put in a few of these drains during my brief stint as a clinician and was comfortable with them, but seeing how to handle them on a video can really help the uninitiated.

Kym and I are committed to chronicling our experience on this cancer journey. There are many directions I can imagine going with these posts -- from providing perspective on the caregiver experience to delving into the emotional side of it all. Our goal is to be helpful to others on the journey and to help ourselves keep perspective through our own. If you have thoughts about what you want to see here, please share.

Kym's Drive-By Mastectomy

In my brief career in obstetrics (in the early '90s), HMOs were coming into fashion. The big patient advocacy kerfuffle was all about "drive-by deliveries" -- where the HMOs were pushing to get new mothers out of the hospital in 24 hours.

How times have changed! Kym's 7:30am mastectomy and the first phase of reconstruction went off without a hitch. She rolled out of the OR before noon and we rolled into our driveway at 4:30pm -- exactly 11 hours after we arrived at Suburban Hospital in the pre-dawn darkness.

Our surgeons both encouraged us to go home without an overnight stay if we felt ready for it. Kym never had a Foley catheter -- they just told her to call if she couldn't void by 8pm.

But in contrast to the cost-constraint HMO mentality of the '90s, the focus was all on quality and outcomes optimization. The routine use of catheters in surgery ends up increasing the risk of infection. And spending more time at the hospital increases the risk of hospital-acquired infections too.

It turns out that quality care and cost-effective care aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

We were thrilled to be home eating our own food and pampering Kym. We couldn't be happier with the care we received from the physicians and staff at Suburban. They focused on getting the job done and treating Kym with respect and care -- including respecting her OCD issues (more on that another day).

We are home, Kym is enjoying her meds, and we are so very grateful for the prayers and support of friends and colleagues.