Pre-Op: Part 1

On Wednesday (Jan. 7th) I had my sentinel node dye injection.  Thank you again to Beth for accompanying me!  One of the best things about this visit was when I told one of the techs who my surgeon was, he said, "She's great.  She's who the other doctors send their wives to see."  My nurse navigator had made this exact same comment so now I believe it really is true!

We checked in at St. Luke's and then went down to Nuclear Medicine (NucMed, I learned the insider lingo from my sister-in-law who is a nurse there).  A nice tech named Brian led us into the room with all the equipment and gave me a gown to change into (just for my top, I got to keep all the bottom stuff on).  However I had to take off my boots because I have this thing that I don't like being topless (even with a gown) but having shoes on.  It just feels wrong.

Then I had to wait just a bit for a doctor to come to do the actual injections of the radioactive isotope.  Here I am waiting on the strange camera contraption.  

We asked Brian lots of questions which he was great at answering.  This machine/camera uses gamma rays to detect all sort of things.  In my case it would show where the radioactive isotope (tecinium or something like that) was traveling in my lymph system.

Dr. Citrone got there and I lay down and the fun began.  Now when someone tells you that you have to get two injections into your nipple, you are NOT excited.  It sounds like it would be extremely painful.  But I can now tell you from (my own at least) experience that it actually isn't as bad as as sounds.  They numb it first and it doesn't take long at all and then you just lay there under that camera and wait...  I had been told it could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.  The worst part was probably keeping my arm above my head all that time, but lucky for me everything was traveling in my lymph system quickly.

Right away there were two big white dots on the camera screen.  Brian said those were where the injections were.  Then after several minutes there was another, slightly smaller white dot.  Brian said that was most likely a lymph node but you have a wait because it could also be a bend in the channel.  In my case it did end up being a lymph node.  Then Brian made a sort of "chalk" outline of my upper body.  He had a little thing that had some of the radioactive substance in it and slowly traced around me while under the special camera.  This way the camera recorded my outline and gave the doctor reference points on the pictures.  Weird!

A little later the doctor returned.  This is where the process gets really technical.  He basically used a sharpie to put a great big purple X-marks-the-spot where the lymph node was located.  Then they put some tegaderm tape over the X (looks like saran wrap) to make sure it wouldn't rub off before the next morning.  That probably wasn't necessary because I still have purple marker on me.  And that was it... Brian told me that the radioactive substance they use has a short half-like (I felt pretty smart because I kind of remembered what that meant!) and so it leaves your system fairly quickly, but it lasts long enough that it would still be in my system for the surgery the next day.

So I was officially radioactive (well they said not really) but whatever.  Beth and I decided we should "celebrate" this with a drink so we stopped for a margarita.  She started to worry when I got a freeze headache and thought maybe it was dangerous for me to have alcohol when I had that substance still in me.  Luckily though, it really was just a freeze headache and then it was gone.

My parents got in to town right around the time we finished our margarita and so then my mom joined us to get a pedicure (mom is not a pedicure virgin anymore!).  That night we had dinner together at Sockey and then home to bed.