The day and night before the day of the surgery, it took a fair amount of deep, slow breaths in order to not freak out slightly, but when the time came, after the trials and tribulations since diagnosis, I was actually relieved to meditate myself far away and be knocked out cold by the anaesthetic.

The day before, I had been booked in, prepped, undergone the usual tests and interviews, and had everything explained to me in more detail than I actually cared to know.

Since then, I have been getting better and better. They take such good care of their patients here, especially the first 24 hours after surgery with very regular checks of blood pressure, temperature, drains and compresses all through the night. They also came round a couple of times to take me walking a few steps since I was still very dizzy. How women in some countries are sent home on the same day is beyond me, and most of them are even happy to. Perhaps that says more about the hospital than about the women ….. In the same fora I read about horrible post-op complications and I can’t help thinking there might be a correlation between the care and vigilance during the first couple of days and the rate of complications.

The first thing I checked after I woke up after surgery was the number of drains I had: Two. This was positive, since I had read that if during surgery they had needed to remove more than the closest lymph node, I would have another one or two drains. Shortly after I was back in the room, one of the surgeons (of which there were two, working in parallel, one boob each) came round to say everything had gone really well, no unpleasant surprises, and the main lymph nodes were clear. There is one test remaining which takes a bit longer to perform, but in my case that seems to be a routine formality. This morning the other surgeon came round with the same message.

I expect to go home on Monday, with a bit of luck sans drains, and – if things turn out the way they seem to be expecting, also sans cancer and – miracle of miracles – sans need for radiation. If that turns out to be true, I have been really lucky.