October 20, 2025 - Bilateral Mastectomy....

October 20, 2025 is the date of surgery. I have to arrive by 8am. Reminder that my surgery and all treatment is being handled by the team at VCU, which is a 3 hour drive from where I live. My "niece", Hannah (Tracey's daughter), came up Sunday to "critter sit" for us while we were away. God bless her is all I can say. 

4am Monday morning Nathan and I get ready to head to Richmond. Unfortunately emotions were raging the weekend before and he and I were not exactly getting along. The drive to VCU was quiet. I don't know what was going thru his mind on the way there, but mine was all over the place. I couldn't help but ask the "why me" type of questions in my head... what'd I do to deserve this.... and yes, tears were streaming most of the ride. Not sobbing, but quietly streaming. Fear of surgery not going well, something bad happening, fear they'll find more cancer, the fact that I'm gonna look even uglier... the inability to take care of my critters... all the thoughts and emotions were just going crazy in my head. The longest 3 hour ride ever.

We get to downtown Richmond and naturally stress levels increase. Downtown Richmond is a nightmare if you're not used to it. Construction, one way streets, traffic, rude people, homeless people, limited street parking, hidden parking garage entrances, garages that are no where near where you need to be.....I've gotten used to it but this was Nathan's first rodeo with it. Add in that GPS was saying "we were there" in the middle of the road, in front of the building that had a different address than what I was given. He's frustrated, I'm emotional... he stopped the truck, I got out and went into a building and asked the lady at the desk for assistance. She told me a few different ways how to get to where I needed to be but it wasn't processing because I was already ready to break down. I get back to the truck and try to tell Nathan what I was told but his frustration made me lose it completely. I let all my anger and frustration and emotions out, punched the dash of my truck a few times, screamed, sobbed. Everything in me exploded. I'm not really sure what exactly happened next. I remember Nathan pulling up somewhere and telling me to get out, go thru some doors to the elevators and go to the 7th floor and he'd meet me there. All I could think was my hand and wrist hurt from punching my dash repeatedly. 

I followed his directions. I'm pretty sure I was having an out of body experience. I remember thinking to myself that this couldn't be real, this couldn't be me and my life, this had to be a bad dream. I stood in the small hall on the 7th floor, staring at signs on the wall that said to press the button for access. There were "restricted access" doors to the left and the right. I just stood there, unable to move. Holding back tears. Eventually something forced my arm to push the button on the wall. The doors to my right opened and there was a "hostess" type stand just inside the doors. I entered. If you have seen the movie Beetlejuice, the part of the movie when they "draw a door" and the chimney magically opens... That's what it felt like to me... I know it's weird... 

At the "hostess" stand, the person asks if I was there for surgery, to which I heard my voice say yes and stated my last name when asked. Off they escorted me to room D. Registration took place and instructions on surgical prep were given. How to put on the gowns after the scrub down with the wipes they gave me. Q&A for their forms... it was kind of a blur. I was trying to hold back tears best as I could. I finally heard Nathan's voice asking someone where he could find me. There were tears and some conversation between us. The stream of doctors came in, explaining their role in the surgery process and what to expect. The anesthesiologist whose name I can not remember, my surgical oncologist Dr. Louie, nurses and finally my plastic surgeon, Dr. Mountziaris. Dr. Mountziaris takes measurements and made various marks on my skin. Tears fall. She reassures me they are gonna take care of me and get rid of the things that are trying to kill me. I nod. I know she's right but still.... I do recall making the comment that if my mom were there she'd be mad because there was writing on me. Mom used to get mad when I was little and would write on myself. Just a little Kira humor. The next thing I know there is a nurse telling me it's time. Nathan and I say our tearful "see ya laters" and I follow the nurse to the operating room. I can safely say that was the first time I've walked myself into surgery. They instruct me on how to get up onto the surgical table. I follow the instructions and that's the last thing I remember until about 6pm-ish Monday night. 

I had asked Nathan to keep Adrianna updated on how surgery was going since the Drs had said they would update him after each portion was complete. I gave Adrianna a list of folks to give updates to since some folks had specifically asked to be kept in the loop. 

They also added all these fun bracelets: the yellow Fall Risk one is due to being put under anesthesia, the red Allergy one is for my reactions to aspirin and codeine, the blue Exparel one is to let the medical team know I was given that med for pain management. Reason it's important this is known is because it turns my pee blue until it runs thru my system. I'll say, it was a very pretty shade of blue. The white one is my standard VCU hospital identification bracelet. They did put one on my right arm to let staff know that was the side they removed my lymph nodes on. That way they didn't try to move it or do BP checks on that arm. 

Apparently Kira isn't quite so nice coming out of anesthesia... I have no recollection of what happened, and the staff wouldn't relay what happened, but apparently it wasn't good. Staff were peeking around the corner asking if it was ok to come in and were keeping distance from me at first. Nathan saw some of it from what he said but I'm still not sure what happened. When I spoke with the nurse and she said "welcome back, Kira" I knew things must have been ugly. I apologized to everyone that came in for being hateful and everyone just kept saying it was ok. No one gave me any insight as to what happened. 

We ordered my supper at 6, that I do remember. They said it would be up in an hour. Keep in mind, I hadn't eaten since 6:30pm Sunday night. 7:30pm and still no food, hangry mode setting in, kitchen closed at 7pm, no idea if I'm actually getting food or not...... things were getting hostile. Nathan was feeding off my anger and hostility because he's trying to get me taken care of. I saw what looked like my nurse getting ready to leave. He stops her and asks about my food. She set down her belongings and somewhere along the way, it was said that there were sandwiches at the nurses station and he was asked if I wanted that. He said yes simply because at that point I would've eaten just about anything as hungry as I was. It turned out not to be a sandwich but a turkey wrap. Whatever, it resembled food. I ate most of that. When I was almost done eating that wrap, nearly 8:30pm, the food I ordered finally showed up. A cheeseburger with chips. I ate most of the cheeseburger too. As I said, I was hungry. Hangry. Bitch mode had set in. 

After eating, nurse shift change happened and things were much more calm. I sent Nathan on his way so he could try to get some rest. I know it was an emotional day for him too. I got some rest that night too. The best night of sleep I've had in ages. I had no hot flashes, no middle of the night pee breaks, no dogs needing out in the middle of the night... just the nurse waking me every few hours for meds. Easily right back to sleep after taking meds. Maybe it was the residual drugs in my system that made me sleep so well and easily. I don't know but I woke up feeling good the next morning. I called and ordered my breakfast at 7am since I knew it was gonna take a while. I giggled when she said "it'll be up in an hour" because I knew better. 8:30am I had breakfast. Pancakes, eggs, turkey bacon, grits and milk. The grits were... eh... but everything else was yummy. The doctors had all come in and checked on the incisions and told me how things went. They reassured me things went well, but the plastic staff decided they wanted to keep me another night... they were a little concerned with the bruising and one spot on my left side.  Good blood flow and circulation to the surgical area are key for being able to do reconstruction later on so that's what they were watching for. They took pictures of the surgical area, added more medication, covered it and kept me one more day. I let Nathan know so he could book his room for another night. Then I got moved to another room. 

Once I got settled into my new room, I waited for Nathan to arrive. He offered to bring Chick Filet up for lunch. Since the hospital menu is limited and doesn't change, I was ok with that for lunch. He brought me a Dr. Pepper without me even asking.. Caffeine... God bless him! He's the best I tell ya... He hung out with me, napped a little while I read my book... nothing exciting. Nurses came periodically to empty my drains and give meds as needed. Nathan went and grabbed me a milkshake at one point too... and a couple of chocolate chip cookies for later, just in case. I had kept the chips from the night before too, that way if I got hungry before food arrived I wouldn't take it out on anyone. Nathan had used the valet parking and ride share option for transportation since downtown Richmond is so stressful. It was just about supper time when I sent him on his way for the evening. I planned to eat supper, read my book some then I knew I would be asleep soon as I was getting tired. He agreed as he thought his last opportunity to get his ride back to the hotel was around 6pm. 

The evening was uneventful. Supper came, I ate, read my book, fell asleep for a bit. The nurse woke me around 9:30pm to do meds and stuff. I was awake for a couple of hours, reading my book, then dozed back off some time around midnight. I know there was at least one more wake up during the night for meds, then the 6:30 morning wake up for meds, vitals, drains to be emptied, then the plastics team came in to check things over. They pulled off the dressings, cleaned the medication off the surgical area and commented on how much better things looked. They took more pictures of the surgical areas. They indicated that I should be able to go home after a bit. They proceeded to put dressings on my incisions. The resident doctor popped in quickly just as plastics left, asked if there was anything he could do for me or anything... Then he said he was off to surgery. I let Nathan know that it sounded like I'd be going home.  He was trying to get to the hospital before the doctors did their rounds but it seemed like the rounds were done earlier today. He really wanted to hear what they had to say, which I fully understand. Luckily, there wasn't anything to report other than things looked good. But again, I totally understand him wanting to be there and feeling frustrated he missed them. Would be nice if there was a dedicated time frame that doctors did morning rounds at the hospitals.

Nathan was shown how to empty the drains and how to log them on the sheet as this was something that would need to be done at home. Virginia was the nurse handling my discharge stuff. She did make us giggle because she was trying to go over the paperwork, meds and stuff, her phone kept ringing. In the most polite way possible, we heard her tell off the person on the other end of the phone. I can only assume the person on the other end was asking if I'd been discharged yet because we heard her reply "I'm trying to get it done but this is the 3rd time I've been interrupted by you people calling me. If you'd stop calling, I could get things done". Her tone was genuinely aggravated. My care nurse had come in and was discussing meds at one point, I'd told her what Virginia had said about them, she checked the chart and said that Virginia must be handling things as it wasn't updated in the system yet. Clearly they had too many people trying to get me discharged. We giggled about it. It was obvious they needed room for someone else, which was fine. I got dressed, we packed up all our belongings. Virginia came back in and explained all my paperwork, brought my meds in from the pharmacy, went over those, brought cute little bags for my drains that had been made and donated by volunteers. She also gave us extra cleaning wipes if I had times when I felt like I needed to be cleaned but not feeling up to taking a shower. All sorts of goodies to go home with. Then the wheelchair arrived and we were on our way. Valet brought our truck around, we got in, then we were on our way home. 

The ride home was uneventful. We had to stop a couple of times so Nathan could stretch and so I could pee. I remembered to bring a pillow as the Dr suggested to protect my chest from the seatbelt. 

I know there were things that Nathan had to deal with thru this whole process too, such as traffic issues, customer service issues, rude folks, etc. Add his emotions into the mix... I feel for him and wish his side could be explained as well...he's told me about s few instances of irritations... it's always tough on the caregiver too. I truly feel for him and Thank God he was with me thru this.