All went well yesterday morning and we were out of the hospital by noon! Quick stop to drop off prescriptions and made it home sweet home!
I’ve been hanging out on the couch/recliner and have been resting pretty well. I had heard from more than one person that post op days 2 and 3 are the most painful and there’s some definite validity to that, along with the ongoing “elephant sitting on your chest” and “expanders are rocks” analogies. The swelling and pulling pressure is pretty intense at times, and the spasming is a really unfortunate feeling – Flexeril makes it tolerable, but it’s still such a bizarre sensation. My range of motion is getting better every day – I was even able to shower with minimal help today, which felt great. Thankfully the drains aren’t bothering me at all (knock on wood!) and they’ve slowed down quite a bit except just one… Just such a strange feeling to strip your own JPs!
My plastic surgeon is so amazing he is always just a text away and requests updates and pictures, and with all the swelling on my right side it helped to have his reassurance this morning that everything looks good – the mastectomy bra was really cutting into my skin so he took that off yesterday. It’s the side that has the dressing for the clinical trial on, so it’s covered except for once a day when we change the dressing. The girls look pretty rough still, but once the bruising goes away and the “tattoos” come off the results are going to be incredible. Definitely a work of art!
And saving the best for last, the most awesome news of today was my breast surgeon calling (yes, himself – have I mentioned how amazing he is?) with the pathology report – they removed 560 grams of tissue from the right side and 470 from the left side (and grams and cc’s are equivalent so with 500 cc’s filled in each expander, size wise I woke up not much different than where we started with which is incredible). There was dense tissue (as expected) but all tissue and sentinel lymph nodes were benign with no signs of malignancy!! Such a great thing to hear I can’t even put it into words!!! That phone call makes all of this worth it!! Such a relief to be on the other side of all of this. He was surprised I answered my phone myself so I take that as a good sign I’m recovering well, all things considered!
Everyone keeps asking if I’m up to visitors, and the answer is a definite yes! I’m a little groggy from the meds, but really not too out of it. The distraction is much appreciated, so come on over!
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Thanks again for all the good thoughts and wishes – I can definitely feel the love!!