Update 10/13 surgery/herceptin/communication post-surgery

Hi all,
Surgery....
I got a call from the surgeon's office yesterday and they've moved up my surgery time to early Tuesday morning, which is great. I'm better in the morning anyway...However, I need to go there on Monday afternoon to get a shot of radioactive dye that they'll use for the sentinel node biopsy on the left side..left side? Yes, left side. I didn't think I was going to have any lymph node removal on that side, either, so when I talked to Constance in Dr. Silverstein's office, she gave me the doc's e-mail so I could ask him about it. The reason that they're doing it, is that sometimes they find a different cancer in the breast that is supposed to be benign, but as the pathologist slices up all of those little pieces of what used to be my breast and looks at them under the microscope, if they find cancer there, then they have to determine what stage the cancer is at, and need to remove lymph nodes in order to determine how far it may have spread to accurately stage it. In the casee of a mastectomy, once it is complete, you can't go back and do a sentinel node biopsy, you can only do lymph node dissection, whihc is far more disruptive and invasive. Sentinel node biopsy is where they inject you with a special dye that follows the tissues to the one or two lymph nodes that would be likely to become cancerous if there is cancer in the breast. Then, they remove that 1 or maybe 2 nodes, and do it through the same incision that theyre doing the mastectomy on that side rather than having to take out 15-20 nodes in a separate incision, and have possible complications from this....
Therefore I am having a sentinel node biopsy on the left side in addition to the "prophylactic" which means preventitive, mastectomy on that side and having a full dissection on the right side in addition to the mastectomy there. So, I'll be headed to LA on Monday morning so I can get the shot on Monday. Then I'm to show up there on Tuesday morning at 6am for a 7:30am surgery. The whole thing takes about 5-6 hours, so I should be waking up around 11:30-12:30 assuming that everything goes according to plan..

Herceptin....
It seems the verdict on this is that Dr. Silverstein will take responsibility for me to get the infusion that I need - yes!! It's not totally buttoned up but looking more like he will than he won't. that was the word from the Norris Oncology department yesterday, so that's great news that I can keep on track with my treatment plan in that way.

Communication post surgery....
I'm going over to Glynis' house tonight for dinner and we'll strategize about what is best for communication. Debbi has already volunteered to update my blog for me while I'm unable to, so probably what we'll do is that one of my family members will call Glynis and/or Debbi so that Deb can update the blog with the info about me.
I'd like to say that I'll e-mail, but I'm not sure that I'll want to do that for the first two weeks. I haven't figured that out yet, but will this weekend and let you know what the plan is. My priority is to recouperate, and I'd like to leave the communication part of that to someone else who can do it for me until I'm back or able to do it.
Visitors - I don't think that I'm going to be up to having visitors while I'm there. I think I'd just like to enjoy the time with family and recuperate as best as I can. If that changes, I'll put the info on the blog and have a contact person for that.
I'll have a more well-developed plan to post on the communication thing tomorrow, okay?

Thanks,
Julie