...nothing is on them. Which is a good sign. It means that they don't see anything else. At least at this point in this journey. So, where do I go from here?
I'll be talking to Miss Vickie sometime today to schedule appointments to meet with plastic surgeons. I figured that I would take the road that is more complicated at the beginning, but hopefully means that I won't have to deal with any of this stuff later on. At the beginning of this journey I was presented with the options of a lumpectomy with radiation or the mastectomy.
If I were to do the lumpectomy with radiation, it would mean going in 5 days a week for 6 weeks. Frankly, I don't have the support system here that I can even do this option. With momma not being able to drive, Andy not being able to take that long off, and no second set of hands for momma to deal with the boys, I've chosen to go with the mastectomy, more specifically a double mastectomy.
Now some would probably ask me why I am choosing to undergo such an intensive surgery with hellacious recovery time. As Dr. Jacobs pointed out to me, I have to do what is best for me and what is easiest to do at this point in time. It is true that I don't have a support system with this option either, but it does give me the ability to stay at home and not have to run out every day for radiation. The down side to this is going to be the recovery time. I'm not entirely sure how long that will be since I haven't talked to the plastic surgeons yet, but I know it will be a little while since I am opting to do a DIEP flap. At least that is what I've already settled on unless the plastic surgeon scares me too much.
Pretty much with a DIEP flap, they will go in and remove fat and tissue from my belly to build my new breasts from it. This pretty much means that my breasts will be more like the ones I already have. They'll be more natural as opposed to implants.
I guess I just don't want to be that lady walking around at 70ish years old and having the boobs of a 20 something. The other downside with implants would be that I would have to have them replaced every 10 years. I'm not really into the idea of having to get my chest cut into every 10 years. When I get this done, I want it over and done with.
Now that's not to say that I won't have other surgeries, as I already know ahead of time that I will have to do 2 more. One of them would be to reconstruct the nipple and then the other would be to tattoo on the areola. In talking with my sister Lynda yesterday, she didn't know that they tattooed your boobs to make them more normal. She then made the comment about asking if I could have something pretty tattooed there. I honestly laughed about it. Could you imagine me asking a doctor if I could just have lilies tattooed there? LOL! Right, I know you laughed.
Anyhow, what I understand from what Dr. Jacobs told me, the DIEP flap surgery will be done at the time the mastectomy is done. So the surgery would more or less be about 8-12 hours with a minimum of a 3 day hospital stay. I'm sure that once I talk to the plastic surgeons, there will be more information and better understanding of this. So for now, that is all the information that I know.
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