Refreshed....Just a Little

Since this is November, the month of thankfulness, I want to start this blog out with the thing I am thankful for today.

I am thankful for Miss Vickie, Dr. Jacobs, Renee, and Dr. Mess.  All of these wonderful ladies have been my cancer care team.  I'm not sure where I would be without them, but I know that I am a healthier and better person because of them.

Now on to the original sentiments of today's blog.

So for the first time in I'm not sure how long, I spent part of the day pampering myself.  I honestly started to forget what it felt like to have me time and to feel pretty again.  Of course the pretty started before I even went to the salon.

I actually put on one of my bras today.  You know, my collection of beautiful Victoria's Secrets bras.  I'm pretty sure that I'll need to go up a bit, but I'm okay with it.  Honestly, looking at how it looked on me, I cried.  I cried like a baby.  For the first time in a long time, I cried tears of joy.

Standing there looking in the mirror at my rebuilt boobs in one of my favorite bras was priceless.  There was no way to really describe all of the emotions and how I truly felt in those moments.  I finally looked at myself through the tears and saw my chest like I used to see it.

While these boobs are implants, they look as much like my own, with the exception of the nipples, which I am not having reconstructed.  I knew this process was going to be hard.  I knew I was going to have to change.  I knew that it wasn't going to be easy all of the time, but I pushed through it because I had to.  What is my reward?  Looking and feeling like a woman again in my own skin.  That is a priceless feeling.

So, what did I do at the salon?  I cut quite a bit off of my hair.  While it may look the same to some, it's not, and I sure can tell the difference.  I absolutely love it.  I also darkened it up a lot with a deep red and added some subtle lighter red highlights.  I tried to keep as much of the length as possible, but did have to part ways with some of it as it was in such bad shape.  Not completely because of not taking care of it, but the anesthesia does some pretty bad things to your hair.

I used to tell my customers that when I was in the hair industry, I just never was sure why since it was just something that I had learned.  Now I know first hand.  As much as I wanted to have the long, long sleek hair, my body wasn't going to allow me to, and I am okay with that.  At this point, anything that makes me feel better is a good thing.  So, with that said, I will leave you with 2 pictures.  1 is my new look and the other is in the pics section since it is the boobs.

I wish you all a beautiful and blessed night.

4 Days Post Op

*So I am 4 days post op.  Friday I went in at 10:00.  Surgery was supposed to start at 11:30 but was delayed because Dr. Mess' first case was delayed.  No problem though.  Not like I was going anywhere without having my surgery done.

As always we started out with the same routine of if I ate or drank.  Was my insurance the same?  Had I been feeling well?  You know...all the random stuff they ask you before they drug you up and start cutting you open.  I was doing great for the most part with managing stress and anxiety.  That was until it really hit me that this was going to be almost the very end of this journey.  The anxiety did pick up a little bit, but I was okay once I was headed in.

Aunt Sandy came out here to take me to my surgery and help me out for a few days.  Andy had an assessment for work that couldn't be rescheduled on Friday, so I didn't expect him to be at the hospital when I woke up, but he was.  So of course that made me overly emotional seeing that my husband made it there to be with me.  Then of course thinking about Mike being stressed out thinking I was going to be a mess like I was after the mastectomy and then Landen being at home so sick.  Everything just made me want to cry.

Surgery took a little more than 3 hours.  I came out of it feeling pretty good other than the nausea.  I honestly think that the oxygen is what makes me nauseous.  It seems like any time they have had the oxygen on me, I just feel so sick.  I'm not totally sure why since oxygen is good for you.

As for the pain, it seemed to be at a minimum....at least until I stood up.  I felt like I was being tore in 2 by my top and my bottom.  That came from having fat grafting done.  So with my new boobs, I was able to get some of my fat gone.  Right now you can't tell from the amount of bruising and swelling, but I'm pretty sure enough was taken to drop me 2 pants sizes.  Can't beat getting a bit of lipo so that my implants will look more natural.

The last couple of days I've been doing fairly well, as long as I don't have to bend over.  I of course am not allowed to be lifting anything, not that I would want to.  It sucks because I want to be able to hold and hug the kids and dogs, but am afraid of them hitting me the wrong way and me being in pain all over again.

So today I went in for my post op appointment.  Dr. Mess said that everything looked good.  She slathered me up with Neosporin and put gauze back on me.  I have to go back next Monday to make sure that all is healing well still.  Even with the scarring, I am very impressed with the shape and feel of the implants.  Eventually they will be more and more squishy and the cleavage will be back to normal, or as normal as possible with implants.

For now that is all that I have for you.  For those of you who are interested, the pics from Friday are with the photos section.  I hope that all of you have a beautiful and blessed day.

Picking Back Up

I know I've been pretty quiet.  I've used this blog just for my journey, so with there having been nothing going on, I sort of let it go.  I did think about posting a few times, but most of the things I would talk about wouldn't even relate to my journey.  With that said, there is an update.

I went and had my pre-op appointment with Dr. Mess today.  They took another picture so that there is a baseline as to where she needs to put my implants and all that good stuff.  Besides talking about my numerous questions, we discussed how I am feeling about this whole thing.

To be honest, I am really looking forward to this surgery.  I'm not afraid anymore.  Sure I don't like the idea of being cut open again, but I also don't like laying on these rocks.  That's the best way that I can describe how these tissue expanders feel.  I am a belly sleeper, and I haven't been able to comfortably sleep the way that I want just because of how hard these are.  I just want to have squishy boobs again.

We talked about going back in through the scars that are already there, that way I don't have 2 sets of scars. Sounds good to me.  If they fade out as well as these ones have, then I don't think that it will be too hard for me to get past the look of them.  I'll have to post a picture of how they look before I go in for my surgery that way ya'll can see how good the scarring actually looks.

Since implants really don't look real, I also get to have some fat grafting done.  This will be where Dr. Mess will make an incision near my belly button and suck fat out.  The fat will then be transplanted to my chest to fill in the dents between my collarbone and the implants.  It's not something that can be seen in a picture, but in person you can actually see where I am concave.  So essentially, I get to lose a bit of fat too.  Can't really beat that, and I sure won't complain.  That's for sure.

I'm Getting There.....Slowly

Last Wednesday I went in for my injections.  Turns out that they were my final injections.  I am finally at the size that I should be for the switch out at the end of October.  

I had the full 120cc put into the right side as always.  It looks fantastic.  I'm very pleased with the results and know that once the implant is in, it will look so much better.  On the left she only put in 60cc.  With the way that the muscle turned and the expander turned, I was stretching the wrong way.  So to avoid having to do more repair than necessary, I took less.  Essentially what is going to happen is the left side is going to have a bit of a bigger implant. 

The implant has to be bigger because of the need to manipulate the muscle back to the way that it is supposed to be.  I'll end up having 2 scars on the left breast instead of 1 like on the right.  At this point it doesn't really matter about the scarring as I am sure that Dr. Mess will do a fantastic job to make them look perfect.

While that is still awhile off, I still am dealing with the muscle spasms.  From the day of the injections until Monday morning, I have had horrid spasms.  Wednesday, the pain hit about 10 minutes after I left Dr. Mess' office.  I ended up taking all the meds I could in the 24 hour time period and still got no relief or quality sleep.  

The night before the injections, I had someone very important to me break my heart.  I had been running on 2 hours of sleep and then I went in for injections.  That was not a smart move.  Then you add the pain of the spasms and still not being able to sleep on top of it, I ended up sleeping for maybe 4-5 hours over a 48 hour period.  Each morning I was waking up unable to pull myself out of bed and having to depend on Andy to lift me up so I could just get out of the bed.  

The last couple of days haven't been so bad, but physically I think I have broken down as much as I can.  While the pain is easing up, I still find some tasks difficult to do.  To me that is frustrating.  Typing on the computer for too long causes pain to shoot up and down my right arm.  Remember, that is the side that the nodes were removed from.  I continue to do stretches on it and anything else that I need to for it to try and feel better.  

I'm trying not to Google too much to try and get answers.  Afterall, not every case is the same and not every person is the same.  I just hope that I don't have to deal with muscle spasms when the implants are put in.  I'm not sure how much more of those I would be able to deal with.  While it is true that I am a strong person, there is a breaking point as well.

That is all that I have for this morning.  Please excuse if it sounds like ramblings as I am still tired but wanted to get the thoughts out and the blog updated.  I hope all of you have a blessed day and thank you for continuing to love me through it.

Plastic Surgeon Visit #2

So I met with Dr. Mess today.  She is the plastic surgeon who would do implants if I so chose that path.  She was absolutely wonderful and answered all the questions I had about implants and even answered new questions I had about the DIEP flap.

I asked her if I had enough fat in the momma pouch to give me the same size of breasts I already had.  Her answer was no.  So that leads to the decision that I made today.  I will be going with Dr. Mess to do my surgery and I will have implants put in.

She asked about what size I currently am, and I gave her the measurements that Victoria's Secrets gave me, which is a 36 D.  So after taking some pictures and measuring me, she came up with me being just shy of a D.  So I told her that I would like to be a full D when we are done.  She said that it was no big deal and a D is absolutely possible and would look very good.  That made me happy, as I refused to be anything less than what I currently am.  So I guess all of you would like to know when the surgery is to be done.

I have scheduled the surgery to be done on July 26th.  That will give me enough time to gather up caretakers so that I can be taken care of during my downtime.  I know I already have my mother in law and a couple of other people offer up their time, which is making this a little bit easier.

Essentially what they are going to do is do the double mastectomy and then put expanders in.  I'll have to go in and have them filled up so that the skin stretches out to the size that I want to be.  After that, I'll go back in and be opened up to put my real implants in.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to have the nipple reconstruction done or not.  I know that they will only be able to preserve the left nipple since that breast has not been messed with.  The right can't be saved.  I won't have any feeling in the remaining nipple and if a reconstruction was done on the right, there would be no feeling in that.  I also don't plan on having any more children that I would have to breast feed.  So really, what is the point in even having the nipples reconstructed?

I can have tattoos put where the nipples are to be and they would be 3D and would look like there were nipples there.  I could also do some other sort of tattoo there in place of the nipples.  Maybe I'll put some pretty pink daisies there.  Hell, who knows.  LOL!  Either way, that's the only other decision it seems that I need to make.

After sitting and talking to Dr. Mess and then talking to Andy about my decision, I can say that I am happy with it.  I'm sure that it'll be trying on me at times, especially when I am dealing with having the expanders in.
Overall though, I think I'm ready for this.