Feliz Cumpleaños a ti

I'm not going to sugar coat it; yesterday sucked. We left the house for Alexandria around 7:30 and got home twelve hours later. But with Chipotle in hand, so it wasn't all bad.

We started with Chemo Class, where we learned more about white blood cells than either of us ever cared to know. But had to leave early to meet with the surgical oncologist. So we missed all the cool stuff in chemo class like about when your hair starts to release. Anyway, meeting with the surgical oncologist went well. She explained that chemo-before-surgery vs. surgery-before-chemo yields the same survival rates, and there are pro and cons with both methods. Team Cancer Sucks decided that chemo-before-surgery is going to be the best plan of attack, because it will make me a better candidate for a skin-sparing mastectomy.

I can deal with loosing my hair. I can handle loosing my boobs. But having skin grafted from another part of my body in order to make fake nipples, and then having those fake nipples tattooed so that they look like nipples....well, that's just where I draw the line.

Anyway... after all this nipple talk, it was back to Alexandria Hospital (which looked awfully familiar since we'd just spent the prior day there) to get my mediport. But not without a quick trip to the UPS in Springfield first....

This just flew in from Washington state... and boy are its arms tired.

So we picked up Rob's birthday present and then went to Alexandria Hospital. After a quick nap (i.e. twilight sedation), I woke up with a cool new chest port.

I'll add actual pictures later, mine's still bandaged up.  Until then, I"ll be figuring out how to mainline vodka through this thing.

Life was grand until the sedation wore off (sitting on 95 for 90 minutes has that effect)... and then it started to suck with a capital "S". But it was less sucky this morning. It's still very sore, but what ev. 

Now we're off to (as Alyssa calls it) a pity party with a lot of booze... a no pity. Actually, it's a "Happy Birthday Rob / Congratulations Alyssa & Chris / Cancer Sucks" kind of celebration.

Birthday boy!

So happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! Have an extra glass of sangria for me. And thanks for all the comments...I am soooooo feelin' the love!