By the weekend I was experiencing some swelling, numbness and general discomfort (not pain) in the area of the sentinel node surgery. I hadn't been given any information about normal consequences of this surgery, so I was pretty alarmed by this. After the surgery I was only given a checklist of signs of infection.
I called the on-call oncology resident and described the situation and she convinced me come to the ER and let her look at it. She took me into a consult room rather than having me check into the ER. I had my first emotional reaction to the whole situation, and I explained that this was the first time I started thinking about things that could go wrong. She had a medical student with her and I told him it was a very good experience for him to see the emotional side of things! The resident told me that my surgeon is "brilliant," that everything looked fine, and it was normal to have some swelling.
I left there feeling reassured but a little annoyed that I hadn't had enough information to know it was normal. I really hadn't wanted to do a lot of research because there's a lot of alarming information on the internet. However, when I got home I spent some time looking for info and found this very helpful document about sentinel node surgery from the UK's healthcare system, which included some recommended exercises.
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