The last 36 hours

**I started to write this post Monday morning (10/7). How quickly my day changed. It is now 11:15pm, and I am coming back to this post. Title has changed from the last 24 hours to the last 36 hours.

10/7 at 9:00am-ish. The last 24 hours has been for the most part of a positive whirlwind. Our goal was to have a slow, chill day, but it was anything but that.

I attended my first breast cancer event and it was awesome. Lanie, UT Women’s Rowing Assistant Coach, decided to put this organization together: Connect Clinic. The purpose is to help women regain their physical and mental connection to their body. She connected with my surgeon, Dr. Potter, who was a collegiate rower in college, to help bring the people in. My surgeon also helped sponsored this event along with Stryker. I wasn’t too sure what to think of it as we walked up, especially as I saw everyone wearing a purple shirt. My natural instinct “Oh geeze, I am in this pink club” and I kind of just wanted to go hide. But my extroverted part took over, we walked up, and everyone greeted us with big hugs and greeted me by name. And when I say everyone, I was referring to my medical team at my surgeon’s office! They all showed up! What a way to calm your nerves before a huge surgery. My dad was blown away by the charisma of her team and how each person knew who I was and my medical story. I feel like that not only brought peace to myself, but also to Antonio and my dad. These people CARE about me! How rare is that?

And then I got to meet real, actual people living through this with me. Some people have just started others are finishing up. It was quieting to my soul to see how far I’ve come and where I get to go. Everyone was so incredibly kind and it was as if we created a family on the spot. I really hope the connections we built the day continue to grow. There were two people who had the DIEP surgery done SIX WEEKS ago!! It was so calming to my nerves to see that they were out living life 6 weeks post op! They told me to take a mental picture of this, and to hold that as my vision as I make it through the first two weeks. They said the first two weeks will be hard and you will get through it. Then I met a couple other people who were about 3-12 months out. To see smiles on their face, grounded me to be like, I got this!!! Then I met a lady who is getting surgery on Tuesday, right before me. She is getting the AFC (Aesthetic Flat Closure). We hope to run into each other in post-op! But we probably won’t remember seeing each other, but we will be texting each other checking in. Then there was another girl who chose implants. What I loved about this group, it was a group of women who all made different choices on what felt right for them, and they were all living and supportive of everyone. At that time, I realized there is no wrong choice in this whole ordeal, there are only right choices - I just have a lot of good choices. I think no matter what, I’m going to be happy. This next phase is about rebuilding and making myself whole again in whatever way feels right to me. Ah, such a wonderful morning and a sense of peace about this surgery!

Oh, and how was the rowing part? Since I did something to my expander on Wednesday, I opted not to row. My chest is feeling so much better and I’m no longer having to take Tylenol, but since my surgery is so soon, I decided not to piss it off right before I go in. If I didn’t have surgery coming up, I might have risked it and powered through it. I would have loved to been out on that barge learning how to row! Gia, an Olympian rower and UT coach, was out there coaching us. She was so good! I was impressed how quickly everyone learned how to row! They put us in training boats to learn the skills. They had me sit my O-G spot as the Coxswain. I was the coxswain back in the day (20 years ago) when I rowed for Texas Crew. It was so fun being back out on the water. Someone from Team Survivor was also there. Another organization that catches my interest as something I want to join.

Meanwhile…

Antonio, Javi, and my dad came to support me and to walk the lake looking for turtles. Afterwards we were going to have a family day in the city and go visit our favorite gluten free treat spot, OMG Squee! But things took a turn. Javi was appearing fine, and once we show up, he got real clingy, which has been his typical behavior lately. And then he started complaining about how he didn’t feel good and wanted to go home. Antonio and I took a deep breath. Took him to the bathroom, and then I went to join the clinic, Antonio continued to care for Javi. Well, evidently he ended up throwing up three times during their stay! After the third one, Antonio decided he needed to take Javi back home. The throw up wasn’t your standard disgusting throw up with your previous days meals, it was just a bunch of mucus. So Antonio took Javi home and my dad stayed to take me home afterwards (thanks, Pops!).

By the time I got home, Javi was back to feeling like his normal self. He then asked us, “are we still going to OMG?” Antonio and I looked at each other, and said, “Sure.” So we loaded the car and went to OMG Squee!

On the way home, he fell asleep and he started to say his throat was hurting.

So with our busy week coming up, and our caregivers that will be watching him all being autoimmune compromised, we decided to take him to urgent care. We were curious about pneumonia or strep. Turns out it was his asthma! They ended up giving him an oral steroid and a breathing treatment.

Now it’s 11:28pm on 10/7.

Well, today did not go as planned. I was supposed to chill in the morning and then hang out with Antonio’s family. After last night and not getting my Sunday afternoon chore list completed, I decided I was going to stay home and just take care of myself. Well, good thing I stayed home, but I felt like we ran around all day like chickens with their heads cut off!

So around 9:30am today, we got a phone call from Javi’s pediatrician following up from our urgent care appointment yesterday evening. We were shocked that he was calling and learned the severity of Javi’s asthma. He was incredibly kind and methodical about what he wanted our game plan to be. We had to alter our day to make sure these needs are now being met, which included going to his school and having him take his inhaler (we are on an every 4 hour he must take it regimen), talking to the school to create a asthma action plan and finding out what we need to do to get this plan into place before 7:30am, call gymnastics inform them and see what their medicine policy is (thank goodness we can leave an inhaler with them), and then go to HEB to pick everything up and then deliver everything tomorrow by 7:30am. Oh man, it was an eventful day filled with emotions, of course. Thank goodness my family is an expert in asthma and they were comforting. I’ve learned it is hard to recognize asthma in kids, it is not obvious, and each kid can look different. (I was feeling some mom guilt for not knowing his asthma was super bad). Over time, we will learn Javi’s signs and he will too. He will be okay, we will be okay, but it was a lot to take in today. And now he has a strict asthma plan that we have to follow to keep him okay.

And I totally had to use my cancer card today while picking up his inhalers. I went to pick it up and they lady told me it wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow. I told her I got a text saying it was ready (the spacer for his inhaler was ready, but the medicine was not). So I told her I was getting breast cancer surgery tomorrow and my child needs an inhaler to have at school and I will be in the hospital for a couple days, any other options. Magically, they were able to find an inhaler in 20 minutes, but they would only allow me to get one. I was not able to understand the reasoning in that, but at that time, I was like just give me the inhaler so I can go, please.

The reason I had to go so quickly was because during all of this, I get a phone call from urgent care saying they accidentally put his swab for a viral panel in the wrong tube and we need to come back in to get swab. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!? That was the whole reason why I went to urgent care in the first place was to get the viral swab, and then we got the added bonus of learning how severe his asthma was. Thank goodness Javi was a champion at getting swabbed a 2nd time, but most of all, for sitting in rush hour traffic to go get the swab.

Then of course, tonight was rough. Not sure if Javi was having big emotions connected to my surgery, tired because he only got 6 hours of sleep last night, or the steroid rage decided to come through in the final hours. Not sure which one was the culprit, but it was rough. Tears all around from all of us. He eventually got into the shower and eventually fell asleep in our bed. Once again, that wasn’t our plan, but it became a survival necessity for me. I just wanted him 1)take a shower 2)go to bed as quickly as possible 3)and have some peace with him before we leave for the next 36 hours or so.

So on that note, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent texts or called today. I am sooooo sorry, but there was no time today to call people back. I hope to respond to text messages tonight before I go to bed, but we will see how sleepy I am after my Hibiclens shower. I look forward to reading those messages in the next 30 minutes or so as I finally have time for myself. Time to ground myself. Time to prepare myself for this surgery.

I’ve been thinking about what do I want my intention to be for this surgery and I think over this rainbow, finding my xanadu. Like I had mention earlier, my grandma, Grammy, has been an inspiration to me. She lived on a street called Xanadu and my definition of xanadu is a beautiful place. So I hope to start a new path tomorrow finding my xanadu and then living in my xanadu when I get out. Wow, journaling is so powerful! I’m so grateful I gave myself this time and space because I really haven’t had time to come up with an intention, just a theme of what I wanted, until now. It just came to me so quickly! Thank you Grammy! I feel so much better going into tomorrow with a direction.

So on that note, I’m going to go take my Hibiclens shower and then just think about my xanadu 🙂 

Antonio will take over the postings from here. We have to be at the hospital by 8:30am for a 10:30am start time.