Day 5 post-surgery

Greetings from the world of Vicodin and recovery!

My surgery went very smoothly, Dr. Neimark said I had very little blood loss. It took about 4 hours, with the mastectomy taking about 3 hours and the reconstruction taking about an hour.

At the very last minute, a/k/a the night before, I found out that my surgery was moved from Memorial South (hospital with all private rooms) to Memorial Regional (possibility of shared rooms and guaranteed anxiety attack).

Thankfully, I ended up with a single room at Regional. It was my first overnight experience at a hospital since I was born breech 35 years ago so everything was new and everything was unknown.

Both surgeons came to check up on me Friday morning and I was released on Friday afternoon, I was released after passing the required tests at the hospital (peeing a certain quantity, walking a certain distance to and from my room down the hall, being able to be weened off the Dilaudid onto oral medication, etc).

Ah, Dilaudid. A drug 5x more powerful than Morphine. Good stuff, good stuff. I miss it already. I peeked into the world of why people get addicted to drugs. I will say that while Vicodin is nowhere near as amazing as Dilaudid, it’s still been really helpful in masking the pain. I am not sure if people want to hear the gory details about what I look like now but the short version is that I have 2 holes drains coming out of my right side under my armpit and a 3-4 inch incision where my right breast used to be.

I also must admit that I haven’t cried much during this whole journey, which didn’t surprise me much, because I have always recognized I’m a fighter, but I also was cognizant that somewhere, sometime the s*it would hit the fan, so to speak. Well, it did Friday morning in the hospital. Throw in nurses who did not treat me with the empathy that I needed, mix-ups in instructions from different nurses due to shift changes, and giving me no notice that they were switching my drugs, topped off with the first time I got to see my lovely wound where my beautiful breast used to be, and all of which led to my having a pure unadulterated meltdown at the hospital in front of a good 6 people. I felt like a baby crying in the hospital but it needed to come out at some time. Mom cried watching her baby cry. Abba stood there helpless running damage control – as he always does – with the nurses. Jason held my hand. It was sad, it was raw, but the universe always is great with its timing. As soon as I was finally starting to let go a little, Dr. Neimark walks in and made everything all better. I so needed my surgeon to acknowledge that it was ok for me to have my meltdown and that from here on out, everything would only get better.

I have pretty much been recovering ever since and can’t believe how fast 5 days have passed by. I have welcomed all the visitors who have come by since the more preoccupied I am, the less time I have to mope and focus on my pain.

Yesterday was my first appointment with Dr. Rosenbaum post-op. He said my wound is healing nicely, that 1 drain may come out sooner than the other (yay!), and that we are going to start with the saline injections a week from tomorrow to rebuild my breast temporarily until I have the reconstruction surgery in August/September. When your surgeon advises you to take a Vicodin before I see him, you know you’re in trouble. But…no pain, no gain when it comes to beauty!

I’m waiting for the pathology test results, which I will hopefully receive tomorrow when I go see Dr. Neimark. Once I receive the confirmation from pathology, then February 16th will officially be the day I was declared CANCER-FREE. I eagerly await those results which will hopefully confirm same. Fingers crossed I get my results tomorrow!

Everything from here on out is prophylactic and/or cosmetic. Day by day it will get easier.

I am going to try to respond to all of your emails today…suffice it to say when I can’t remember conversations I’ve had, I didn’t think it was the best idea for me to be responding to emails (lol) but I feel more coherent today. :-)