she's a fighter

Hi Friends. 

Stephan here, standing in for Belinda. After a harrowing three days, Belinda is recovering from what turned about to be two surgeries, not one.

She’s a fighter.

But you already knew that. 

As I write, Belinda is receiving a blood transfusion. She says she’s “feeling weak.”  Of course with her personality, Belinda’s version of “feeling weak” is pretty perky :) True to form, when we asked her how she felt about the transfusion, she said, “I’m really grateful to the person who gave me blood.”

Belinda is receiving a transfusion because her hemoglobin dropped below the redline of 7.0. Hemoglobin can drop for a lot of reasons, but especially when you loose too much blood. Normal is 12 to 16.

Belinda lost too much blood. 

But let me back up and tell the story.

The double mastectomy on Monday took about five hours. Two surgeons, one a breast surgeon, the other a plastic surgeon, did the work. You may know that COVID changed how they do surgeries in a lot of hospitals. Belinda’s surgery is normally a 3 to 5 day stay in the hospital. COVID changed it to an outpatient surgery. 

Yeah, I know. We were a bit trepidatious too.

But the St. Mary’s staff helped us understand their success rates with similar cases over the past two years, along with some efficiencies in their health management system that seemed to make surgeries like Belinda’s possible without an overnight stay.

In the end, we phoned a friend.

Actually, Belinda’s closest friend, her sister-in-law, Chris, who is a first rate nurse. When our son, Caleb, introduced Chris to his girlfriend, Anya—who we absolutely adore!—he said, “This is Chris, my mom’s blueprint!”

Chris has mentored Belinda since she was seven years old.

Superstar.

Belinda was already nauseous before we drove her home from the hospital Monday night. It had just turned dark with all five of us cozied together in the car—Joshua, Caleb, Chris, Belinda and me—celebrating the successful surgery. Several stops and two vomits later, we changed course, focusing instead on just getting her home so she could get her pain meds and sleep.

(Not to dwell on vomiting, but imagine vomiting with hundreds of brand new stitches across your chest.)

When we arrived, Belinda developed an internal bleed on her right side. Turns out it was bleeding fast but we didn’t realize it until Chris and I drained her wounds after arriving home. Belinda collapsed and began vomiting uncontrollably while moving in and out of consciousness.

I propped Belinda on her side to clear her trachea. Joshua called 911. Chris drained the bleed while Caleb helped his Mom breathe and remain conscious as much as possible. We were worried she was going into shock.

We live in the sticks, thirty minutes from the nearest hospital. So getting rescue services is, well, a little iffy. Somehow Joshua pulled out some magic with the 911 operator: two paramedics teams arrived within fifteen minutes.

Belinda’s heart rate was good, even her oxygen. But her blood pressure was dropping precipitously. The EMT team transported Belinda to the Emergency Room at St. Mary’s in record speed given where we live.

We spent the night in the ER while the team prepped Belinda for surgery to repair the bleed. By the next morning she was stable.

Her hemoglobin kept dropping, however, thus the transfusion.

Now for the good news: the preliminary pathology test on six lymph nodes was negative. Which means the twenty weeks of Red Devil and “Taxhell” did their work. While we won’t get the full pathology results until next week, right now, she’s cancer free.

Thank God.

Belinda sends her love and tears and joy. She strong because you’ve given her strength.