After waiting over a month, I finally had my WLE yesterday. I think the worst part of the whole thing were the injections for the lymphscintography. Good grief those sure did smart! Lying on a table for over two hours was no walk in the park either, but at least the Rad Techs in the room were funny and informative.
I actually ended up with two sentinel nodes which lit up almost simultaneously (on the same round of scans at least). One in my right groin and one in my right axilla. It was obviously a learning experience for the two Rad Tech students and the Med student that were there. The Radiologist marked both spots and off I went to the surgical center.
Prior to surgery my surgeon came in to discuss his plan. He would indeed biopsy both nodes to my great relief since the Radiologist wasn’t sure what the surgeon would ultimately do. The surgery went fine, and I pretty much slept the rest of the day.
This morning hasn’t been as bad as I feared. My abdominal and groin incisions are tender but I hardly notice them when I’m moving around. The axillary incision is another story. It doesn’t really hurt if I reach up or out for something, say like a cup, but it burns like fire when I pull it toward my body to take a drink. They gave me some pain medication, but it just makes me feel weird and doesn’t really do anything for the pain. I’ve been icing all incisions regularly which seems to help the most. I switched to ibuprofen this morning which seems to be more effective than the Norco. I think I’ll just stick with ice and ibuprofen for pain control.
I was wondering if anyone else had two sentinel node biopsy sites? I know it would most likely be limited to melanoma on the trunk. I just haven’t found anything about it on any of my searches.
.
