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estaraUpdate on my mother's operation - and may I say I'm sitting here with a wet shimmer in my eyes from all the well-wishing. Thank you so much, whether we have had a lot of contact or not here on the internet, for thinking of her. Thank you also to Amy and her regular monthly prayer offerings!
Kai, my brother, had come late in the evening yesterday, to take my parents to the big breast centre in Nuremberg hospital (certified by all kinds of institutions and with a large number of these operations per year; a place even her local specialist had encouraged my mum to go to) as she was to check in around 6 a.m - they were early which is always a relief to my mum's Prussian genes.
There was a bit of hurry as the lady who got the second bed in the two-bed-room actually was hurried into pre-op and taken there forthwith, but while mum had to hurry to unpack, etc. then there was suddenly quite a bit of a wait and they told her it would likely take until 11 a.m. until she got into the op theatre.
So she sent dad and Kai back home (which is where I was chewing the furniture a bit, because mum will always put up a brave face to make it easy on us - I know my dad wouldn't be useful and they only had taken one car, but Kai could have sent dad home in the car and taken a taxi to the train station - and I rued the fact I hadn't asked for time off after all, they're pretty good with that at my school if you can make it clear why it's necessary), but Kai says she was still really tired from lack of sleep the night before and the early trip, so she was on the verge of sleeping for a bit anyway.
They returned in the afternoon when she was waking up from surgery and it seems to have gone as well as it could have gone - they did take off the right breast, and the sentinel lymph node, which has shown no sign of cancer. So the current verdict is that they are pretty hopeful of having gotten all the malignant matter out at once.
She'll still have to be checked for bone cancer cells I believe, but no awful surprises in this operation.
Again, thank you all SO MUCH for your good wishes and prayers! I love you, my dears! *hug-in-thought*
Addendum: Kai has advised me that she was much too groggy to be aware for much, and that I should wait until tomorrow to phone, and I haven't spoken to her yet. I think I'll phone just for a very short while, so she knows I'm thinking of her.
ETA2: I spoke with her for about five minutes and she's still pretty groggy, but I told her of all the well wishing from as far as the US and New Zealand, and she was a bit amused/surprised/grateful/embarrassed about it. She wants to sleep mostly, so I tried to be short and loving.
Kai, my brother, had come late in the evening yesterday, to take my parents to the big breast centre in Nuremberg hospital (certified by all kinds of institutions and with a large number of these operations per year; a place even her local specialist had encouraged my mum to go to) as she was to check in around 6 a.m - they were early which is always a relief to my mum's Prussian genes.
There was a bit of hurry as the lady who got the second bed in the two-bed-room actually was hurried into pre-op and taken there forthwith, but while mum had to hurry to unpack, etc. then there was suddenly quite a bit of a wait and they told her it would likely take until 11 a.m. until she got into the op theatre.
So she sent dad and Kai back home (which is where I was chewing the furniture a bit, because mum will always put up a brave face to make it easy on us - I know my dad wouldn't be useful and they only had taken one car, but Kai could have sent dad home in the car and taken a taxi to the train station - and I rued the fact I hadn't asked for time off after all, they're pretty good with that at my school if you can make it clear why it's necessary), but Kai says she was still really tired from lack of sleep the night before and the early trip, so she was on the verge of sleeping for a bit anyway.
They returned in the afternoon when she was waking up from surgery and it seems to have gone as well as it could have gone - they did take off the right breast, and the sentinel lymph node, which has shown no sign of cancer. So the current verdict is that they are pretty hopeful of having gotten all the malignant matter out at once.
She'll still have to be checked for bone cancer cells I believe, but no awful surprises in this operation.
Again, thank you all SO MUCH for your good wishes and prayers! I love you, my dears! *hug-in-thought*
Addendum: Kai has advised me that she was much too groggy to be aware for much, and that I should wait until tomorrow to phone, and I haven't spoken to her yet. I think I'll phone just for a very short while, so she knows I'm thinking of her.
ETA2: I spoke with her for about five minutes and she's still pretty groggy, but I told her of all the well wishing from as far as the US and New Zealand, and she was a bit amused/surprised/grateful/embarrassed about it. She wants to sleep mostly, so I tried to be short and loving.
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Date: 2011-02-23 06:51 pm (UTC)Wish the best for your mom and send you hugs for comfort.
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Date: 2011-02-23 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-02-24 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 11:21 pm (UTC)Thanks so very much for letting us know!
Wishing her a quite and complete recovery, and wishing the rest of you some good nights of sleep.
(Do you think she would like to be sent a card? I don't want to embarrass her with anything extravagant, but cards can be nice when a person is having a rough time.)
(And the procedural details were interesting. In my U.S. hospital experiences, you don't get assigned a room until you're ready to leave recovery after the surgery, which is very awkward because either your loved ones have to hold your personal gear or it gets put onto a shelf on the bottom of the gurney, and you have to hope that no one loses track of it. The way your mother had it done sounds more sensible.)
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Date: 2011-02-24 07:08 pm (UTC)She's also in a health insurance company (because that is mandatory unless you are self-employed, and the government is thinking of making it mandatory even for them) which offers a lot of benefits (we have probably around five or six big ones - all of whom have to guarantee certain levels of service, but some have more paying customers and some have less - and then various small local ones or specialist ones (hi companies that offer additional services as if you were a someone in care of a private hi company - patients who are ensured there get better treatment because they have to pay the bill directly and then get it back from the company later - the state mandatory insurance companies pay to the hospital or doctor directly and only for certain services and it takes them longer to pay - so the better off people go for that kind of insurance, although it's more expensive).
The insurance will pay for rehabilitation if it is needed to, and for any of the expensive, but necessary pills. In the case of cancer they will accept that her local specialist sent her to the special centre in Nuremberg and that highly qualified specialist teams are taking care of her.
I wrote it down in detail to clearly imagine it in my mind for myself and out of relief ^^ - and because you all were well-wishing, so would like to know what happened.
She had a short visit from a psychologist already, to talk about how it is without the right breast, a volunteer visitor to hospitals came to talk to her a bit, a lady who talked about the special brassieres and how that all will work (she'll get a silicon replacement of similar shape AND weight as the left breast, there's even a special swimsuit - she told me this package usually comes to 500€ and because of her insurance she will only have to pay 70€).
She'll have to come in for the bone cancer check yet, as she thinks they'll let her come home next Monday or Tuesday. I'll visit her with my dad on Saturday, and she'd like me to sleep over (and check what he has done with the household ^^).
Thank you for the thought of writing her a card, but she wouldn't feel comfortable to receive one from a person she doesn't know personally. I don't usually tell her much about my online community experience, because it just makes her worried that I do not have real life people who share my interests - which is true, unfortunately, in this small town.
She's very popular (because she herself loves helping people) so I'm sure she'll have lots of cards/calls and maybe even visits - depending on whether people think she's up to that.
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Date: 2011-02-24 12:29 pm (UTC)thinking of you and yours.
♥
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Date: 2011-02-24 07:11 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for your kind thoughts ^^, and best of luck to your friend!
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Date: 2011-02-24 07:26 pm (UTC)