Steps forward, steps backward

I'm a little over three weeks post-op and some things are going well and some things are problematic. First the good. I ran for the first time on Sunday. It was exciting! I mostly walked and then tried some light running and then some real running and I felt really good! I'm feeling fairly normal in my surgical areas quite a bit of the time now, though I know all the deep healing isn't done and I still need to be very mindful. But my surgeon said to listen to my body and if it hurts, don't do it. It didn't hurt to run so a couple days later I went out again and ran for nearly all my run and felt super great.

We were actually in Mexico visiting my mother-in-law and her husband. They spend 12 weeks a year in Mexico and we've often visited them. This was our first time since 2019. The resort they stay at has a lot of cool walking/running pathways and it was beautiful to run there. I tried to enjoy that time. Otherwise the trip was a little subdued. My mother-in-law had a stroke about a week or so before my surgery so that was kind of not great. She's very slow now and not talking much. She's working on rehab there. They actually leave this week and head first to New York (where they keep and apartment in the city) and then back to North Carolina (home). While in NYC they'll see a specialist to further assess the situation. No, you really can't make up the stuff that's happened to me and the people around me these last couple of years.

Okay, bad news. Well, it isn't so much bad as just feels like a setback. Last week I felt like my range of motion was decreasing and I was feeling a really strange pulling in my arm. Almost like a tight thread or string pulling in my arm on the surgery side. At first I thought it was some kind of pulled muscle or something but it started pulling all the way to my wrist and there isn't any one muscle that spans the entire length of the arm. It's very tender all along that area and is worse in the morning when I wake up but gets better through out the day as I move it. But it's really painful and really limiting my range. It hurts to extend my arm al the way and hurts to lift it overhead. 

By Saturday I was really starting to have enough and was sort of scrolling through a Facebook group I'm on for people with breast cancer who are also into fitness and one of them mentioned something about "cording" and described something very similar to what I was feeling. I googled and it's exactly what I'm feeling. So I sent a message to my doctor through the Texas Oncology portal. I described everything that I'm feeling but I didn't mention I had consulted with Dr. Google. I just described it the same way I did to Roger so as not to color anything. 

She replied back that it sounded like textbook axillary web syndrome aka cording. She said it should resolve on its own or we could fast track it with some PT. I reached back out and asked for the PT referral. I want to get this mess sorted out. It's been really painful and not having my range of motion is making me nuts. 

I also scheduled an appointment with Dr. Wagenblast at Active Sports Therapy in Round Rock. He's helped me with a number of sports injuries and issues over the years and I asked him if he was familiar with this. He was and said he had helped other people deal with this. I went in for an appointment with him today and he did some serious ART (Active Release Technique) to break up the mess and it's already feeling so much better. My range of motion is improved significantly and the pain is greatly reduced. It was not fun while he was doing it, but I can't believe how much better it is after just one session. I've been so grateful for the work he's done over the years, but today I was so grateful I nearly cried at the end of my appointment. 

The other bad news, and I think I mentioned this in my previous post is that chemo isn't off the table until my Oncotype DX pathology report is back, which is basically any day now. Well, today my oncologist called and said she needs to have an appointment with me next week. I sort of don't like the sound of that. I mean, if I just needed radiation, why isn't the radiation oncologist calling me to schedule like they said they would when the path report was back. Why does the oncologist need an entire appointment with me? Usually positive path results have been relayed by the nurse or NP and the bad ones by the doc so now I'm feeling a little low and worried that chemo is in my future. I'll find out what that's all about on Monday.