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Diagnosed with DCIS: How do I decide on treatment?
Breast Cancer | Last Active: Mar 20 10:00am | Replies (345)Comment receiving replies
Call your insurer if your doctor isn't addressing home help. Most insurers cover benefits for extra post-surgery home care as it reduces the rehospitalization statistics. Also ask the hospital social/case worker or patient onbudsperson for any and all eligible services that apply. I'm sorry that you're going through this with scant in-person help and hope your doctor(s) become be more helpful but maybe they need to be made aware of the exact circumstances.
I live alone, after moving out of a long relationship, and have had to start building a new ' support team' from scratch in a new state and worry about needing medical help so spent time checking resources 'just on case' I ever need them. I hope that the Mayo Connect Community are helping you feel connected and cared about, as I'm sure you are.
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Thank you callalloo very much. I kept calling my doctor’s office for visiting nurse care until I finally started receiving calls from visiting nurse services - a lot of calls. There seemed to be a mix up. As it turns out I did request Visiting Nurse services before the surgery (a suggestion from a support group member) but the request was never sent through. I finally received a call from one very honest nurse who said, “I’m calling to aggravate you.” I laughed and asked Why? That’s when I found out about my request not going through. She said she had to start from scratch. That was Wednesday - 2 days after the surgery and then Friday I saw a visiting nurse! She was lovely, got all the information she needed, I signed consent forms and then she carefully examined my breasts.
Good news - I don’t have a fever and there’s no infection. Also my racing heart rate (almost 100 bpm) is considered normal after surgery - something like a “normal tachycardia”.
The not-so-great news is that I still have a huge, hard right breast and a huge not-hard left breast and the tugs at the incision sites are creating a weird nauseating, stinging pain.
The nurse said that what I was doing was okay and proceeded to do the same - carefully remove the blood stained white Bounty napkins (they don’t stick) from under and around my breasts, replace them with fresh napkins and carefully reposition me back into an old bra that has a big enough cup size to hold everything and still offer some compression.
I sure wish the doctor or someone would have told me of this possibility so I could be more prepared. No one told me about the possibility of a huge hard breast or what to do in the event of that happening. If it wasn’t for rene1636 and others from this site, I would have gone mad!
I got another call last night telling me to expect a visiting nurse again on Monday. I think 6 visits have been approved. 🤞
Hopefully, hopefully, the swelling will go down, the horrible bruising will fade and the nauseating weakness will subside.
Thank you again for your reply. 🥰