The Whole Story

Hi Team,

So, been quite the eventful past week. Had my surgery last Wednesday and as Monika gave in the quick update, everything went really well. However, not without a little drama, so let me tell you the story!

I was supposed to be there at 9:30am for my 11:45am surgery... at 12 noon I was still waiting in the pre-op cattle call area, but at least they had given me a warm-air blowing gown and shoved a small TV in front of my face. ("here look at this while we make you wait"). Finally they took me into the surgery area, gave me a little versed, the drug they give you for conscious sedation. I felt it surge right through my body and make me totally relaxed, whether I was ready for it or not. It was great, they could definitely have a market for that on the street. Then on to the operating room and after not long, I was out like a light. They didn't make me count down or anything, they just started going around the operating room introducing themselves, and had me breathe some oxygen and I don't remember them actually getting all the way around the room with the introductions.

Next thing I knew, it was 7pm on the clock and I was in the recovery room. They almost immediately put me on a morphine drip since I had a lot of pain right away. I had my whole chest wrapped super-tight with gauze and an ace bandage. I had a bulb of local anesthetic (lidocane I think) with tubes going under my ace bandage that constantly bathed my cuts in a local anesthetic. I also had a cut on my side from my lymph node biopsy, which was not getting any local anesthetic, so was causing quite a lot of pain. Also, I had two drainage tubes going under my skin into the empty areas that used to be my breasts draining out the fluid that your body creates when tissue is removed. Quite a tangle of different tubes and drains and areas that were hurting and the wrap around my chest making me feel at times like I was being suffocated.

Mom and my friend Corey kept me company, feeding me ice chips and making sure they yelled at the nurses for anything I needed. At about 10pm, the nurses notified me that the hospital was at capacity and it looked like I would not be getting a room that night. Now, the recovery room that I was currenly in was constant chaos. People were coming in and out, yelling at each other, lots of nurses since I believe it has to be at least 2 to 1 (nurses to patients), lots of general noise and light. I cried when I found out I would not be getting any peace and quiet - I was tired, frustrated, in pain, and just told that I wouldn't be getting any more comfortable until at least the next day. To boot, it seemed that they were having a staffing problem because the nurses seemed to be extremely pissed off that they had been asked to stay overnight as well.

The next morning, after a pretty constant pushing the button for morphine all night, I got to have a long talk with the manager of that area of the hospital, of course him kissing my butt as much as he possibly could so he didn't have a lawsuit on his hands. I think he was surprised that although I was firm and angry and told him my situation was simply not acceptable, I really did spend a while trying to get to the root of the problem with him and asking him how I could use my voice to enable him to create a solution so this doesn't happen again. I will follow up on that after I'm feeling a little better, but he seemed to be relieved that I didn't threaten to sue. Not long after that, I got up in a room and slept off my pain and drugs pretty much the rest of the day and night.

Dr. Langer came in to visit me on Thurs. morning and told me that the surgery went really well, she did not have to make very big incisions to remove all my breast tissue, so she thinks eventually, the reconstruction results will look really good. She said they didn't see any signs of cancer in their initial dissection of my sintenal lymph node during surgery, but of course the final results of that will come in my pathology report (still waiting on that but should be a few more days). The final pathology report will also give us the important peice of information of how much tissue they found still with cancer in it - it's possible that the chemo got rid of all the cancerous tissue, or that there still was cancer, but the important thing is that they have healthy margins around all the tissue they find that was cancerous. I will be sure to give an update on that information once we get it. They did place tissue expanders under my pectoral muscles, but weren't able to expand them much since my muscles and skin were so tight already. It will take time and many sessions of expansion to get my implants back up to where we want them to be. As I told my friend Danielle, it's like those "pump it up" shoes back in the 80's. So overall, surgery went really well even though the hospital situation was a nightmare.

Today I had my follow up appointment with Dr. Langer and she just had the biggest grin on her face the whole time. She said I am already healing so quickly and well she is just thrilled. The drainage tubes out of my sides came out already today, when originally they had told me 2-3 weeks. This means I can start trying to stretch my arms and get back some of my range of motion - but not too much! Don't want to re-open any scabs that are trying to heal up. I am still not supposed to lift anything over 5lbs or drive for a while. I got to have my first look under my ace bandage today too. It was the weirdest thing. My chest almost looks concave, with two long scars where I used to have nipples. It's very shocking. But, I will have breasts again, it will just take a lot of time and patience.

I can't help but feel mutilated and scared - scared of what people see when they look at me, and just scared of not being self-confident, even though I've pretty much always been pretty self-confident. For example, one of my anesthesiologists in the hospital was tall, handsome, dark hair, blue eyes, no ring... and I talked a little to him, but as he was walking away, I actually thought... I need to wait a while on this flirting thing, who wants to flirt with a bald cancer patient who just got her boobs cut off. He probably just feels sorry for me. I know it's self depricating, but I am just going to have to start working on this with myself and my friends, being dumped 5 days before my surgery certainly didn't help. But I do have faith that I just have to be patient with myself and it will come back, let's call this my 2nd puberty. And this time I am going to get a therapist to help me.

Next appointment is next Tuesday, I have my first follow up appointment with my plastic surgeon and I think we will talk more about next steps then too.

Thanks to everyone for all your love, thoughts, prayers and positive energy for a successful surgery - it worked! Now more of the same for a quick and successful healing of my wounds (both physical and self-image wise).

Love,
Amy