Pain came again, some other day!

It seems every time I speak with my plastic surgeon, my reconstruction timeline changes. When we discussed the timeline he felt we would be able to do both surgeries in 2010. I’d recover for one month from the first surgery, expand for one month and then have the second surgery. So I figured that would be mid-Sept. to mid-Oct. for recovery and mid-Oct. to mid-Nov. for expansion, with the surgery in either late November or early December.

Here is what expansion is… On my right side, I am complete with my implant. It’s actually weird, as since the whole breast is all implant, it feels cooler than the rest of my body as all am I feeling is the fluid. Quite weird, but I digress… sorry. Anyway, on the left side, the doctor could not go straight to the implant. He had to put what is called an expander in. It stretches the skin and new muscle he placed on that side of the chest. It has a small valve in the expander (which is found by a magnet) and the doctor gradually inserts fluid into the expander to stretch you to make room for the implant. It is hard, not soft like the implant is, and uncomfortable.

Well, you would think by now that I would know that I can’t plan a damn thing on this journey. I went in to get expanded on Friday. Knowing that I wanted to have the second surgery ASAP, the doctor got aggressive with the amount of fluid. He put in 100cc’s of fluid and my body did not react well. Unlike my right side that handled the expansion process well, the left side has all this new muscle and lots of internal stitching that was NOT happy to have constant pressure placed on it. I went backwards in my healing and it has been beyond painful.

I can’t sneeze, yawn, cough or take a deep inhale without the stitches below the breast area pinching and causing extreme pain. Thankfully, I have not gotten sick and my allergy medicine is keeping me from sneezing. I’m also still having a hard time sleeping well at night as I’m no longer on narcotics that allow you to sleep anywhere, anytime. It is hard to find a position that is comfortable and once I get in position, I can’t move or it will hurt. It still hurts getting in and out of bed and in and out of seated positions. Everyone told me how painful this surgery would be, but I never dreamed it would be worse than the mastectomy.

So now we have chosen to slow down the expansion process. We will expand every other Friday in November and December, putting in no more than 50cc’s at one time. This way I will have the weekend to recuperate should I feel bad. We will let the skin rest for January and then do the final surgery in February 2011. About three months later, he can do the final procedures (no surgery) to complete the reconstruction process. I can’t believe this whole process will end up taking almost two years of my life away. That’s why I get SOOO frustrated because I just want all of this to be over and to FEEL good again. I’m so incredibly tired of being in pain.

I’m headed back to work on Monday, November 1st, so I pray that I will get a little more relief by then.

Finally, the picture posted is from Thursday (before I got expanded, as you will notice I’m smiling) when I got my hair cut again. It is finally getting to a point where it looks like an actual hairstyle, so that makes me happy.

With love,
Marcy