Frankenstein

A week and a half ago I headed to Spokane to say tata to the tata’s.  This was the big show, the big event we have all been waiting for, right? I was nervous, nervous they would find cancer in the unaffected breast (they were sending all tissue removed from me to the lab), nervous of the extent of the pain, nervous of how it would all unfold.

Well it was surgery, and pretty major surgery at that – so it wasn’t a picnic.  Except the actual surgery part was just a nice sleep. 10 hours of nice sleep, but a nice sleep. I had to check-in at 530AM and my plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist, oncology surgeon, assistant to the anesthesiologist, support surgeon to the plastic, and nurses all paraded through my pre-op room starting around 630AM.  I was made to pee to check to make sure I wasn’t pregnant (bwahaha, that’s hilarious – spoiler alert, I wasn’t), checked my temperature, breathing, heart rate, lung sounds, oxygen levels, teeth, quizzed by the anesthesiologist to see how I reacted last time and was finally whisked off to surgery.  I got to surgery around 730AM and went to sleep.  I woke up in recovery and it sounded like there had to be 10 people in there with me, I think there were only 4, but one kept moaning really loud (I checked, it wasn’t me).  I begged for ice chips and kept getting them, a lot of them.  They told me that my throat would hurt from the breathing tube they put in, and they were right.  But other than that I was blissfully out of pain at that time.  After about an hour (I couldn’t see a clock although they had given me my glasses back so I could see more than fuzzy blobs) they wheeled me up to my room.  My brother and hubby came in to see me and we had some good laughs and discussions for about an hour, and they headed out to return to the airbnb we had rented. And then the pain kicked in.  They stripped my drains and found that I was bleeding from one of my lower abdomen ones so needed to change the dressing – that in and of itself seems innocuous enough but it wasn’t.  I was cringing in pain, being told to breathe through it – wondering, where the hell was my morphine drip.  Thing is, I never got one. What the hell, this was the one thing I was looking forward to about being in the hospital – it sure the hell wasn’t the food I was dreaming about. No, they gave me something else that finally kicked in so I could “sleep”.  I put that in quotes as I never slept more than an hour, but then again, I was never awake more than an hour either.  First night I was wide awake at 4AM and attempted to watch TV.  I’ll let you know that the only thing on at 4AM is American Ninja Warrior – surprisingly it held my attention for about an hour and then I just shut the TV off.  Brent was bringing by my phone and tablet later that day but for now I just stared out the window and, surprise, surprise, slept.  I was in a room by myself which was nice, and the nurses were okay, not as good as I thought and they all seemed to contradict each other.  One nurse told me I wasn’t drinking enough (oh ya, I had the joy of a catheter, but fortunately that was put in while I was out) but then a later nurse yelled at me (yelled might be an exaggeration) for guzzling too much water (was that even possible?). Each had their own way of stripping drains and applying gauze, we finally just went with the one that worked for us.  But after 4 days in the hospital I was quite comfortable, they gave me pain meds frequent enough that I was comfortable, they followed me to the bathroom to make sure I didn’t fall, my meals got delivered to me (they weren’t nothing special, the highlight was a delicious little cupcake I kept ordering at every meal cuz it was yummy!), and someone would get me ice chips and water at the press of a button. But speaking of buttons, funny story, so the TV remote and nurse call is all on the same remote.  I was trying TV for the second time and was cruising through channels when I dropped the remote (coordination being a bit of a problem on all the drugs) and the TV stopped on RuPaul’s drag show and I could reach the remote, which meant I couldn’t call a nurse nor change the channel.  Fortunately they were checking on me every hour and it was towards the end of that hour, but even 15 minutes was really too much time to be left stuck watching RuPaul. I opted out of TV the rest of the time I was there (15 minutes of RuPaul will do that to a person).

After 4 days the doctor sent me home, I actually wanted to stay one more day but being the arrogant little pri…. okay, he had a point, I was there because it was comfortable- but there was no reason to stay.  So after Brent purchased $100 in medicine and supplies away we went and headed home.  The next 5 days was just a blur of sleeping, having Brent strip drains, getting up (with help) to go to the bathroom, and back to the chair.  I tried sleeping in bed one night but I woke up more sore so decided to stay with the recliner for a couple more nights.  Brent is an amazing caregiver (and he will be the first one to tell you that), and brought me meals, water, pain meds, helped me shower, and as mentioned, stripped 8 drains twice a day.

I am now a week and a half out from the surgery and a week out from returning home.  We had an appointment in Spokane on Wednesday for a follow-up with the plastic surgeon (the main surgeon for this procedure), and he and his nurse were thrilled with how well I was healing (Brent takes all the credit, it is after all due to his amazing caregiving skills) and blissfully removed 3 of the 8 drains and taught Brent how to remove more at home (as of this writing we will be removing 2 more tonight and another 2 on Monday!).

So how does everything look I’m sure you are wondering.  Well I look a little Frankenstieny. I have tubes coming out of me, a scar from hip to hip, scars under each breast, no nipples, and my body is numb where the new girls are. They will reconstruct nipples at a later surgery as well as shape the breasts to look less square and more natural.  But for now I just recover.  Every day I can tell is better, but I still have the old lady shuffle, showering exhausts and pains me, I don’t get out of my robe (probably because I can’t really wear pants yet with all the drains), and I sleep more than I’m awake.  But my appetite has returned (unfortunately since I don’t move at all during the day), I’m weaning myself off of the pain meds, and I’m moving more than I was. In another week I will be drain free (woo hoo), and hoping to wear clothes on a daily basis.  Here’s to healing up! The next surgery is a couple months away, but I can’t imagine it being any worse.