The journey begins ...July 2013

The next day after my fall I went into surgery, I was alone at the hospital because my daughter was taking her mid-term exams in law school. But I wasn't scared. I had had several surgeries in my life including my mastectomy and felt confident I would come out ok from this one also.

Because of the lymphedema on my right arm ( due to the mastectomy and lymph nodes removal in 2010) I had a bracelet on my right wrist warning of vascular risk. Meaning no poking on that arm. The surgery went on for about six hours (they had said it would last 2).

When I woke up my right arm was bandaged up to the elbow and I was told an IV infiltration had occurred. When I (or my daughter) asked why they had placed an IV on my right arm when it had a vascular risk bracelet on it we were told I was loosing a lot of blood during surgery and they couldn't get an IV going fast enough somewhere else, but the fact is that when they were telling us this, when I came out of surgery besides the infiltration I also had a central access line in my chest.

I was also informed (actually most of this was told to me by my daughter a few days after surgery since I was too loopy from medications the first days) I was informed that when they opened the leg and looked at the bone the surgeon realized there was cancer in the bone. The real reason the femur had broken wasn't so much the fall but the fact that the bone was weak from the cancer.

I was referred to an inpatient oncologist my doctor Stefani Capone. There were pet scans and ct scans and the results came that the original breast cancer had spread to several bones in my body and I was now a Stage IV patient.

(Note.- to be perfectly honest it really hadn't sink in what Stage IV

metastasized breast cancer meant until I started blogging and reading other fighters' blogs).

I spent three and a half months in the hospital. My daughter came to see me as much as she could but with school and a 2 year old she had (and has ) her plate full. Between the injured hand, the diagnoses of Stage IV and the recovery from the surgery, the months went by slowly. Aurora you're not in Texas anymore. None of the support group I had in 2010.

As many of you fellow fighters know, Cancer can bring depression but additionally in 2009 I had been diagnosed with Bipolar Depressive-Manic Disorder. While in the hospital I continued taking the medicine for Bipolar in addition I was started on Arimidex. I was placed on levothyroxine and I was given insulin shots. The pain was controlled with morphine.

Then came the day when the hand surgeon announced an amputation was imminent. I balked. I said there had to be something else they could do. I had come with a perfectly healthy hand to the surgery and now they were saying amputation???