The last two drains came out last Friday. I saved a couple of my last Percocets just for the occasion. It hurt like a bugger. I hate to imagine how it would have felt if I hadn't been just a little high.
I am more and more mobile every day. I still have a lot of healing to do, but most of it is superficial. Skin that didn't make it. So, the next, and final step (knock on wood), will be to have a skin graft or two, probably in the next few weeks, to fix that. I'm still pretty swollen too. This is probably a good thing. I was a little freaked out the first time I saw the new girls. They were just... Let's see. How should I word this... Let's just say they were a lot less subtle than I was expecting. After almost three weeks the swelling has gone down significantly and should go down a little more so by the time it's done, they should be a little closer to what I was used to before the surgery.
Thanks to everyone, particularly my friends and neighbors from Church, for all the love, support, and food! My family has never eaten better.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Should this post be rated???
Just as an FYI, if you are a guy or just a casual acquaintance of mine, the following post may contain more information that you want. Just thought I'd warn you in advance. For myself, I'm beyond caring who knows the details.
Last Friday I had my first follow up with my plastic surgeon. I had my surgeons do a skin and nipple/areola sparing surgery. This is when they make a small incision, remove all the breast tissue from inside the breast, but leave all the old skin, including the nipple and areola.What is probably more common is for them to remove the nipple and areola and all the breast tissue, but save the skin and at a later date, reconstruct the nipple and areola using skin taken from another part of your body.
Anyway, I probably shouldn't have asked them to save the nipple and areola. I don't think my plastic surgeon and/or my general surgeon had quite the experience or skill level necessary to do it sucessfully because I don't think they have done many of them before. When I was in the hospital, a couple of the nurses said that this was one of the first ones they'd seen. So... shame on me. I should have asked more questions, but oh well it's done. So now, the issue is that the nipple and portions of the skin around it have died because the circulation was compromised during surgery. So I have to goop on this cream three times a day to protect the wound until we know if there is going to be good skin that grows up underneath the dead skin or if I am going to need a skin graft. It's kind of nasty. I'm planning on a skin graft, probably some time in January.
Some good news is that of the four drains I had coming out of my body, we were able to remove two of them. They were longer than I expected. I only thought the tube extended an inch or so inside my body. Turns out, it was closer to about 6 to 8 inches and was curved up by my collar bone and around the top of each breast, ending around the sternum area. Of course, the two she removed were not the ones in the most uncomfortable locations, but it is still nicer to have half as many tubes and containers hanging from me constantly. The other two have just dropped to the maximum output of fluid in a 24 hour period (30 milliliters), so they should come out this Friday at my next appointment. (Unless I can find someone to take them out earlier.) I hate them. I have seriously considered taking them out myself. I watched her do the first two. It didn't look that difficult. Just snip the stitches and pull... I think I'll feel tons better once they're gone. Not so much like an invalid. I should even be able to drive since I'm off the narcotics too. I'll have to win the battle with Neil on that one first though.
So that is the latest. A little closer to what I hope will be a little calmer life. I've had three crappy Thanksgivings, three crappy Christmases, and three crappy wedding anniversaries. I'm looking forward to being able to celebrate the holidays next year without having to deal with a horrific autoimmune disease, chemotherapy, or having just been taken apart and put back together.
Last Friday I had my first follow up with my plastic surgeon. I had my surgeons do a skin and nipple/areola sparing surgery. This is when they make a small incision, remove all the breast tissue from inside the breast, but leave all the old skin, including the nipple and areola.What is probably more common is for them to remove the nipple and areola and all the breast tissue, but save the skin and at a later date, reconstruct the nipple and areola using skin taken from another part of your body.
Anyway, I probably shouldn't have asked them to save the nipple and areola. I don't think my plastic surgeon and/or my general surgeon had quite the experience or skill level necessary to do it sucessfully because I don't think they have done many of them before. When I was in the hospital, a couple of the nurses said that this was one of the first ones they'd seen. So... shame on me. I should have asked more questions, but oh well it's done. So now, the issue is that the nipple and portions of the skin around it have died because the circulation was compromised during surgery. So I have to goop on this cream three times a day to protect the wound until we know if there is going to be good skin that grows up underneath the dead skin or if I am going to need a skin graft. It's kind of nasty. I'm planning on a skin graft, probably some time in January.
Some good news is that of the four drains I had coming out of my body, we were able to remove two of them. They were longer than I expected. I only thought the tube extended an inch or so inside my body. Turns out, it was closer to about 6 to 8 inches and was curved up by my collar bone and around the top of each breast, ending around the sternum area. Of course, the two she removed were not the ones in the most uncomfortable locations, but it is still nicer to have half as many tubes and containers hanging from me constantly. The other two have just dropped to the maximum output of fluid in a 24 hour period (30 milliliters), so they should come out this Friday at my next appointment. (Unless I can find someone to take them out earlier.) I hate them. I have seriously considered taking them out myself. I watched her do the first two. It didn't look that difficult. Just snip the stitches and pull... I think I'll feel tons better once they're gone. Not so much like an invalid. I should even be able to drive since I'm off the narcotics too. I'll have to win the battle with Neil on that one first though.
So that is the latest. A little closer to what I hope will be a little calmer life. I've had three crappy Thanksgivings, three crappy Christmases, and three crappy wedding anniversaries. I'm looking forward to being able to celebrate the holidays next year without having to deal with a horrific autoimmune disease, chemotherapy, or having just been taken apart and put back together.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Surgery story
We got to the hospital (IMC) on Wednesday morning at 5:30, bright and early--and then sat in the waiting room for about an hour, waiting for our turn. (I will never understand this.) Once they actually let us back I got in my fashionable little hospital gown and they wheeled me into a little room where I met with everyone that was going to be attending my little party over the next 12 hours: general surgeon, plastic surgeon, anethstesiologist, surgical nurse, and someone else I've forgotten. We all talked about exactly what we were doing so everyone was on the same page. It was probably a good thing since the general surgeon was under the impression that we were only doing a single mastectomy when the plan was to do both.
After we got that clear, my plastic surgeon got out the sharpie and started marking me up. The fun part was when she drew the incision on my belly where they would be removing the tissue to build the new breasts. It went from hip to hip and it took it ALL. I was quite excited about that part.
The next 12 hours are a little fuzzy. I don't even remember them taking me into the operating room or saying goodbye to Neil. I'll see if I can get Neil to fill in the blanks in a different post. The next thing I remember is someone calling my name and a stabbing pain in my right calf. I vaguely remember being confused at the location of the pain and yelling, "Why does my leg hurt?" Apparently my leg had been lying on top of a small cord for 12 hours and had developed a huge knot in the calf muscle that was about 4 inches long. That was a little unexpected. So Neil spent the next little while trying to work the knot out of my leg.
The first 24 hours after I came out of surgery were spent in the Intensive Care Unit. They had to carefully monitor the transplanted tissue to make sure that circulation was well established. The plastic surgeon had to connect the dissected blood vessels in the tissue from my belly to the dissected blood vessels in the tissues in my chest. If the circulation wasn't good, then the tissue would die and we'd have to start all over again.
They checked the circulation by monitoring the color of the skin and poking me a lot. When you poke yourself, you normally see a white spot the size of your finger tip where you have pushed the blood out of the veins. After a second, it turns pink as the heart fills the veins with blood again. That shows good circulation. So I was constantly getting poked.
I also had four tubes coming from my body that were draining blood and body fluid from the surgical sites. Two were in my upper abdomen and two were in the lower abdomen. The nurses were constantly emptying these out. The fluids need to get below 30 ml per day before they can be removed.
After 24 hours, they moved me from ICU to a regular hospital room. I was hooked up to an drug pump that would give me a shot of some sort of narcotic once my pain level got too high. Over the last couple of years, I've learned to be a lot more tolerant of pain, but that doesn't mean that I won't do everything I can to avoid it, so I made sure to push that little button every time I thought of it. Fortunately for me, the machine is set so patients can't self administer too much drugs, but I still just thought I should make sure I was getting my money's worth.
I spent four nights in the hospital and as miserable as I was most of the time, I did notice that my pain levels were improving each day. Even that early on. The first time they had to move me to a different bed (when I left the ICU), I thought I was going to die. I had two nurses on either side of me and they just lifted me up in the sheet that I was lying on and slid me over to a different bed. That one hurt. I felt like someone had tried to cut me in half. Well, I guess with an incision from hip to hip, that wasn't too far from the truth. I wasn't feeling much from the chest area. Nerve endings had been severed so there wasn't a whole lot of sensation from that area. It was the tummy tuck that felt like it was going to kill me. But the next time they had to move me from the bed--when I got up to take a shower--it wasn't nearly as bad, so it got a little better each day.
So three more nights in the hospital and I was feeling well enough to come home. We left the hospital around 7 pm on Saturday night. One of my angel neices had taken my kids for the weekend so the house was quiet. It was nice. Neil, the genius that he is, set up the bed we just bought Lily so it bent just like a hospital bed. I had to have both upper body and legs elevated. It was quite the task to figure out how to make me comfortable while wearing a super, hot surgical bra--something that literally held me together from neck to belly button, a binder that was 8 inches wide and cinched around my hips as tight as they could get it to protect the incision on my belly, and 4 tubes protruding from some very inconvenient parts of my body, but he did it. I doped myself up with my old friend, Percocet, and slept like the dead.
After we got that clear, my plastic surgeon got out the sharpie and started marking me up. The fun part was when she drew the incision on my belly where they would be removing the tissue to build the new breasts. It went from hip to hip and it took it ALL. I was quite excited about that part.
The next 12 hours are a little fuzzy. I don't even remember them taking me into the operating room or saying goodbye to Neil. I'll see if I can get Neil to fill in the blanks in a different post. The next thing I remember is someone calling my name and a stabbing pain in my right calf. I vaguely remember being confused at the location of the pain and yelling, "Why does my leg hurt?" Apparently my leg had been lying on top of a small cord for 12 hours and had developed a huge knot in the calf muscle that was about 4 inches long. That was a little unexpected. So Neil spent the next little while trying to work the knot out of my leg.
The first 24 hours after I came out of surgery were spent in the Intensive Care Unit. They had to carefully monitor the transplanted tissue to make sure that circulation was well established. The plastic surgeon had to connect the dissected blood vessels in the tissue from my belly to the dissected blood vessels in the tissues in my chest. If the circulation wasn't good, then the tissue would die and we'd have to start all over again.
They checked the circulation by monitoring the color of the skin and poking me a lot. When you poke yourself, you normally see a white spot the size of your finger tip where you have pushed the blood out of the veins. After a second, it turns pink as the heart fills the veins with blood again. That shows good circulation. So I was constantly getting poked.
I also had four tubes coming from my body that were draining blood and body fluid from the surgical sites. Two were in my upper abdomen and two were in the lower abdomen. The nurses were constantly emptying these out. The fluids need to get below 30 ml per day before they can be removed.
After 24 hours, they moved me from ICU to a regular hospital room. I was hooked up to an drug pump that would give me a shot of some sort of narcotic once my pain level got too high. Over the last couple of years, I've learned to be a lot more tolerant of pain, but that doesn't mean that I won't do everything I can to avoid it, so I made sure to push that little button every time I thought of it. Fortunately for me, the machine is set so patients can't self administer too much drugs, but I still just thought I should make sure I was getting my money's worth.
I spent four nights in the hospital and as miserable as I was most of the time, I did notice that my pain levels were improving each day. Even that early on. The first time they had to move me to a different bed (when I left the ICU), I thought I was going to die. I had two nurses on either side of me and they just lifted me up in the sheet that I was lying on and slid me over to a different bed. That one hurt. I felt like someone had tried to cut me in half. Well, I guess with an incision from hip to hip, that wasn't too far from the truth. I wasn't feeling much from the chest area. Nerve endings had been severed so there wasn't a whole lot of sensation from that area. It was the tummy tuck that felt like it was going to kill me. But the next time they had to move me from the bed--when I got up to take a shower--it wasn't nearly as bad, so it got a little better each day.
So three more nights in the hospital and I was feeling well enough to come home. We left the hospital around 7 pm on Saturday night. One of my angel neices had taken my kids for the weekend so the house was quiet. It was nice. Neil, the genius that he is, set up the bed we just bought Lily so it bent just like a hospital bed. I had to have both upper body and legs elevated. It was quite the task to figure out how to make me comfortable while wearing a super, hot surgical bra--something that literally held me together from neck to belly button, a binder that was 8 inches wide and cinched around my hips as tight as they could get it to protect the incision on my belly, and 4 tubes protruding from some very inconvenient parts of my body, but he did it. I doped myself up with my old friend, Percocet, and slept like the dead.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Doing the granny shuffle...
A couple of days before I went into surgery, I went to the store to find me a house coat. I knew I would have a few cords coming out of my body for a couple of weeks after surgery, so I needed something that I could either zip or button up in front. I came home, put it on, and showed Neil and then burst out laughing. It is exactly what my grandmother used to wear every day whenever I saw her. I have my very own "granny coat."
Neil found another one for me the next day that is a little more hip because it has a hoodie and little matching socks with a fur cuff. That's right. I'm one stylyin' little granny. But that's not all. I now have an incision about four times the width of my C-section scars. It is from hip to hip. Because I am not supposed to put any stress at all on that incision, my surgeon has told me that I need to walk hunched over for a few weeks. Well, that causes some lower back pain issues, so we were able to borrow a walker from a friend of a friend (thank you, thank you!), and now the granny shuffle is complete. Granny house coat, furry socks, a hunched posture and a walker. Add the little shuffle and I am one sexy little granny librarian girl. I'm supposed to get out and do some laps around the cul-de-sac, so who knows, maybe some of you will be lucky enough to see me in action this week. If not, my mother has requested pictures. What the heck. I'll post them here once I get some taken.
More details about the surgery and hospital experience in a couple of days. For now, I am recovering somewhat comfortably at home. Thanks to everyone for all the prayers, support, food, babysitting, and healthy, happy vibes that have been sent my way. I'll keep you posted
Neil found another one for me the next day that is a little more hip because it has a hoodie and little matching socks with a fur cuff. That's right. I'm one stylyin' little granny. But that's not all. I now have an incision about four times the width of my C-section scars. It is from hip to hip. Because I am not supposed to put any stress at all on that incision, my surgeon has told me that I need to walk hunched over for a few weeks. Well, that causes some lower back pain issues, so we were able to borrow a walker from a friend of a friend (thank you, thank you!), and now the granny shuffle is complete. Granny house coat, furry socks, a hunched posture and a walker. Add the little shuffle and I am one sexy little granny librarian girl. I'm supposed to get out and do some laps around the cul-de-sac, so who knows, maybe some of you will be lucky enough to see me in action this week. If not, my mother has requested pictures. What the heck. I'll post them here once I get some taken.
More details about the surgery and hospital experience in a couple of days. For now, I am recovering somewhat comfortably at home. Thanks to everyone for all the prayers, support, food, babysitting, and healthy, happy vibes that have been sent my way. I'll keep you posted
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