Logistics of upcoming surgery

Now here is where the blog comes in very handy for dissemination of information!

I am having my oophorectomy on Monday, October 13th...this is the surgery where they take out my ovaries and fallopian tubes. Because my BRCA1 gene is defective, I have a higher risk at developing ovarian cancer so I want to reduce that risk as much as possible...removing the ovaries and tubes should help with that.

(A short aside, I'm so lucky I have all these 3 kids at the age of 35...it makes the choice to have this done now so much easier. Plus I am no longer worried about menopause because I've had chemo-induced menopause for months and it's only slightly annoying.)

SO, to prepare for surgery, I have to do a full scale bowel prep - all liquid diet the Sunday before, plus a little regimen which involves 2 Dulcolax tablets at 10am, starting at 1pm drinking 8 oz of a Miralax/Gatorade mixture every 15 minutes until the mix is gone, and then two more tablets at 5pm. So Sunday I will be in the bathroom all day!

The bowel prep is to make sure I am totally cleaned out in case this lap bso (laparascopic bilateral salpingo oophorectomy) becomes something more elaborate, like an open surgery. This would happen if 1) SCARY! They find cancer and need to clean me out and do staging, etc. or 2) I have too much scarring from my 2 c-sections to do the bso laparascopically.

A lap bso means an overnight in the hospital and about 2 weeks of recovery. An open surgery means 1) SCARY! I will be losing my mind with sadness over a new cancer, and/or 2) It will be like recovering from another c-section, except I won't have to be breastfeeding a new child at the same time. 3-5 days in the hospital and 6 weeks recovery with the open surgery.

We won't know until I get out of surgery which one I had...they expect to do the lap bso but then do what they need to do as the circumstance presents itself.

So, for all of my kind friends who have offered to help, I do have things situated pretty well for a 2 week recovery period...it helps that both girls can take buses both ways to school this fall as opposed to last spring where Katie needed a pick-up and Emma needed rides both ways. Our soccer carpool buddy is stepping up to do Monday and Wednesday rides for Emma, and Bill can do Emma's Friday pickup. My sister Amy is coming in (AGAIN! love her) to hold down the fort, do Nathan duty, and be there for the bus for the first week. Our soccer/Brownie moms have come to the rescue with some meals for next week!

We will keep everyone posted on how the surgery goes, and if things do end up being crazy, we may send out the very lovely request for help on our lotsahelpinghands.com webpage.

Until then, I'll be busy getting everyone ready for mom to be on a cancer vacation again...it started today with 3 hours of waiting for lab work, an EKG, and a chest x-ray! Tomorrow I go back to my plastic surgeon to talk about my NEXT surgery, and when (if things go well with this one) that might be. Lori said it right, being a cancer patient can be a full-time job!