Books Recommended for me

I was browsing kindle on my iPhone, looking at the books that Amazon is recommending for me:





I hope Number 10 isn't an omen.

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Square One

Maybe it was lifting the gallon jug of milk that I poured on my cereal.  Maybe it was lifting the hind end of my poor old dog up.  He can't stand without help anymore.   Maybe it was the casserole dish I took out of the oven last night.

Maybe it was just because.

But, I'm back to square one in my pain control.  I can barely move today.  I feel almost as bad as when I got home from the hospital. 

Maybe a horse kicked me in the chest?  Could that have happened without my noticing?

I learned my lesson.  When they say don't lift anything heavier than a pound, they aren't kidding. 

I'm back to being debilitated.  My dog is back to being the same place all day.  No more cereal and my husband can get the casseroles out.   I'm not testing any limits from now on - it's way too painful.

There is good news.  I saw my plastic surgeon today and the seroma is gone.  I can take my bandages off, finally.  I will get my first "fill" (when he injects the tissue expander with saline) tentatively November 19th.  Then I'll have a budding breast again.

I hear that's uncomfortable too but I'll think about that later.  I need to get through tonight.

Losing weight

Come on.  You know you've always wondered.

I have.

How much does each individual body part weigh?  Let's say you have your leg amputated in a horrible car accident.    Your poor leg, lying somewhere else without you - what's your first thought?  How much it weighs, right?

I can't be the only one.

So, you can imagine how eager I was to get my surgical pathology report.  Not to find out my cancer stage.  Hell, I'm not worried about that.  I want to know what my boob weighed.

A little morbid?  Maybe, but I know I'm not the only one.

Well, am I disappointed!  My path report came back, and my right breast was 386 grams.  Or, roughly, 13 ounces.

I was a C cup, people!  A full C!  Are you kidding me?

Not even a pound.  Huh.

Let this be a lesson to you - mastectomy is not an effective weight loss method.





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When life laughs.

I never liked going to the doctor.  It takes too much time out from my day.   Sitting in waiting rooms, thumbing through old magazines - boring.  I don't like dudes in white coats listening to my heart, I don't like them asking me personal questions, and I don't like peeing in a cup.   I see my GP yearly because I have intractable migraines and if I don't, I don't get my necessary medication.

Yes, I have to be blackmailed to to go the doctor.

The rest of my medical care, as you know by now, I neglected.  If it didn't hurt, I didn't care.

Here is my upcoming schedule:

Thursday, November 5th.  Doctor's appointment
Monday, November 9th.  Doctor's appointment
Tuesday, November 10th.  Doctor's appointment.
Wednesday, November 11th.  Dentist appointment.
Wednesday, November 11th.  Doctor's appointment

That may not even be all - depends on how my seroma does, and when they want to put the port in

Can you hear the universe laughing?

Compression wraps

I got up in the middle of the night last night, because the tight bandages were causing a back ache and I couldn't sleep.  I figured I'd take a photo to show y'all what it's like to have a boa constrictor wrapped around your chest.



Disappointingly, it doesn't look anywhere near as uncomfortable as it feels.

I figured I'd at least turn the photo to black and white to show my angst.

Recovery @ home

I arrived home with a built-in Halloween costume.  I was wrapped with bandages around my chest, from pits to waist, gauze peeking through above and below, a few blood drops scattered about,  the right side of my chest slightly sunken in.  (Only slightly because the left side was squished too.)   Most horrifyingly, I had aquarium airline tubing coming straight out of the middle of my armpit, with a plastic bulb attached at the end to collect bloody lymphatic drainage.  The bulb was hanging to my knees so it swayed back and forth with each lurching, painful step I took. My hair, which I had carefully washed just days ago, was thickened and electrified.

Honestly, I've never felt so fashionable or in tune with the times, what with the popularity of vampire books and supernatural TV shows and all.  I feel like the star of Pride, Prejudice and Zombies.

Guess which one I am?

I'm not going to lie, the first few days were rough.  There was no position that gave me comfort.  My pillows were necessary - I had big ones layered to lean against, smaller ones to fill in the spaces in my lower back and neck, medium-sized ones to rest my arm on.  I was pretty immobilized and every movement was uncomfortable, but I could sometimes find a few minutes relief with pain meds and the right position on the pillows. 

If you have ever had an elephant step on the right side of your chest, crushing it, you know exactly how I felt.  Even though no elephant has yet to step on me, I am positive that's what this surgery feels like.

The worst was (and sadly still is) sleeping. 

I'm a stomach sleeper.  I get into bed, get on my tummy, pull blankets up to my neck and huddle in for the night; my cat warming my lower back.   All that has changed.  I now sleep, propped on pillows, sitting up, confused cat meowing in frustration.

With the bandages and the sitting position, when reaching for pain meds,  I imagine I look just like that zombie, right before it gets out of its coffin. All I need is dangling gauze on my arms, and I'm there.

The first night was the worst as I didn't have enough pillow/head support, but was not able to move at all.  My husband sweetly snored next to me as I felt trapped but unwilling to disturb him - sharp pains in my chest with each movement and breath, making it impossible to change positions.  Fortunately, he woke up at one point, (thank goodness for men and their need for a middle of the night pee) and I was able to ask him to help me move (and give me another pain pill.)

The next night, I did better.  We made adjustments.  I moved my bedside table to a place where I could reach everything.  I had water, pain pills, my iPhone and kindle within reach of my left hand.  I had a better pillow configuration to start, and I remembered that I had one of those travel donut pillows - you know, the kind that go around your neck?  We (meaning my husband) found it, and it was so helpful as I could sleep sitting up but still get neck and head support.

(If you are going to have this surgery or have a loved one who will have it - go get one of those neck pillows.  I'm nine days out of surgery and it's still necessary.)

The cat is getting used to sleeping on my legs.  The cat doesn't whine, I still do.  A cat adjusts better than me. Meow.

As the days have gone by, I've gotten incrementally better.  From not being able to pull myself up at all, to being able to put my knee up and grab onto that with my left hand to help pull myself up, to being able to use my left arm to push myself up - I've gained more movement, muscle control, and freedom.  As they say on airplanes, "you may now move freely about the cabin" and I'm there.... but unfortunately I'm still trapped in that cabin.


I was lucky enough to have my drain pulled a week after the operation.  (Depressingly,  it was removed before Halloween, so there went the best part of my Mastectomy Girl costume.)  As it turns out,  my blood is as thick as my head - it had clogged the drain, so that's why it had to be pulled so quickly. (Pulled is a literal description, by the way.)  Because of the clogging, I developed a very mild seroma in the mastectomy area.  So, now, I have a large ABD pad, a gauze pad, a half inch thick piece of foam core and an elastic bandage under the compression bandages - all pressing on my mastectomy incision and expander wound in the hopes of preventing the seroma from worsening. 

Talking about dressing in layers. 

(If you know what a blister is, you know what a seroma is.   When a space in the body get emptied due to damage, it often fills with lymphatic fluid. It is a not-uncommon problem in mastectomies when lymph nodes have been removed, and the drains are to help prevent it.   Nature abhors a vacuum.)

Let's just say having tight compression bandages with thick foam core pressing on not only a fresh incision, but the balloon expander underneath - for ten days - is really (fucking) uncomfortable. But, the doctor would have to drain the seroma with a needle otherwise, risking infection, and he doesn't want to take a chance with the expander underneath. 

So I'm still rocking the zombie look.

And, dammit, still rocking the pain pills.

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The Hospitalization - Visitors

Having a mastectomy is not like giving birth, where everybody wants to drop by, give you flowers and coo over your new baby.

It's hard to coo over the loss of a breast.

I knew I'd be in the hospital at the most two days, so I'd made sure in advance to let people know I didn't want visitors. 

But that doesn't mean nobody dropped by.  A whole cadre of concerned people stopped in to see how I was doing, including the breast navigation people, a social worker and a chaplain, all to help me deal with my loss.

Last time I was hospitalized I had my appendix out.  Nobody arrived to help me deal with that loss, which is a serious oversight if you ask me.  I liked my appendix.  As a kid,  I'd been told if I ate sunflower seed shells they'd get stuck in my appendix.  It didn't stop me from crunching the shells,  and I loved imagining that poor little organ looking like a porcupine with all those shells jabbed into it. I'd also been told if you swallowed gum it would get in your appendix and stay in your body the rest of your life.  Naturally, I swallowed all my favorite pieces of gum.  So, having an appendectomy was quite a loss, knowing I was losing that juicy fruit I'd enjoyed back in 1964.  But,  where was the chaplain then?  No wonder I'm an athiest.

Anyway, my first visitor was the breast navigation people, who carried two bags of goodies, along  with profuse apologies for standing me up at my pre-mastectomy appointment.  I got a card with an apology, a plant, and not one, but two mastectomy camisoles, so all is forgiven.  They also give you some very helpful things to have in the hospital and recovery - a water bottle, lifesavers, chapstick, men's wifebeaters (so you can pin your drains to them and not worry about ruining your clothes) and many other helpful items.  Aside from my bumpy start with them, they do try to help women and the items were useful.

Next came a social worker, who asked me if my husband was going to beat me when I got home (nurses asked that too), whether I had a history of depression (I have a history of optimism) and how I felt about losing my breast.  (Um, fine?)  I actually told her that I'm the kind of person who accepts what is and I'm not one for looking back and I'll move on just fine.

Which is true. 

She gave me a bunch of pamphlets about mastectomy after-care and exercises to regain movement, some information on where to get wigs, a large pamphlet on chemotherapy side-effects,  and some support group information.  I'm not exactly the support group kind but I thanked her for all the information, and she was on her way.

Next, came the chaplain.  In your pre-op paperwork they ask you your religion and whether you want chaplaincy care (or whatever it's called). Naturally, I said it was unnecessary, so I was a little surprised to see her walk in.  She asked me if I was in need of her kind of support, and I said no, I was fine, thank you.  She was very pleasant and said she was just checking in, not selling, which made me laugh/ouch!  She wished me luck and went on her way.

But, my very favorite visitor was surgeon Rockstar Raja, because he is the guy who is going to send me home.  I confess to lying a bit about how I felt. I was ready to get out of there so I told him my pain control was about a 5.  (Never got that low).  I didn't think my insurance was going to pay for an extra day anyway, since I had no signs of infection or other complications, but I wasn't going to take a chance that pain counted towards keeping you in.  No matter how bad I felt, it would be better to feel bad at home where somebody can hand me water (and imitrex)  if I needed it.

So, I said I was ready, I was fine, and he signed the orders.

I'm going home.

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