One Week Post-Mastectomy

Well, I've been home from the hospital for a week now.  The surgery went well.  Where should I start? What do you want to know?  Honestly, it hasn't been bad!  I am under strict instructions to do nothing with my arms until further notice, so for the past week, I have sat on the reclining love seat doing really nothing as everyone else waits on me.  The person who should be complaining is Trevor.  He's now the Dad, the Mom, and my Home Care Nurse.  It's a big job and he's doing so well.  He spends a lot of the time just keeping the kids away from me, because the slightest touch or bump makes me wail in pain.  And I can't use my arms to push Ellie away if she starts climbing on me, so I yell for Trevor and he come running to grab her before she hurts me.

How does it feel?  Well, if I'm not moving around or being touched, the pain is controlled pretty well with the Vicodin (which I'm slowly trying to wean myself off of).  The sensation that bothers me the most is the numbness in the upper part of my left arm.  When the surgeon removed my lymph nodes, the nerves that go to the back of my arm were in the tissue, and were removed as well.  It's a weird combination of numbness and heightened sensitivity back there.  The slightest touch in one spot bothers me so much, but another spot right next to it is completely numb.  Trevor reminds me that my C-section incision felt the same way as it healed, and now it's just numb there.  So hopefully, the super-sensitivity goes away soon. 

Drains. I'll bet ya didn't know about the drains!  Unless you were one of my friends that came over a couple of nights ago and were subjected to a full show and tell!  But don't worry, I won't post pictures here. ;)  I left the hospital with 2 drains on each side.  2 tubes leading out of my body just under my armpits on each side lead to little bulbs that look like grenades.  Fluid drains from where my breasts were down the tubes and into the bulbs.  I have to wear special camisoles that have little pockets to hold my drains underneath my shirts.  Then twice a day I empty, measure and record the amount and color of fluid that I've lost.  The color was bright red for the first couple days and has gradually changed to yellow.  When the amount of fluid decreases to an amount pleasing to my surgeon, I get the drains removed.

Two days ago, I saw my plastic surgeon, Dr. Scott, for a post surgery check up.  He said everything was healing fine, and the fluid was low enough to get rid of one drain on each side.  He just snipped a stitch and just pulled the things out!  Yes, it pinched a little, and it made me pretty woozy, but it wasn't horrible.  So, now I'm down to 2.  YES!  As you can imagine, it isn't very fun having tubes coming out of your body.  It's really weird, and I can't wait for the last two to go bye bye.

He did expand the expanders a tiny bit at the time of surgery, and he said he'd expand me a bit more next week.  He's going to do that to take up space and eliminate space for fluid to build up inside my chest.  Then he'll leave me alone for a little while as I heal, I think.

OH!  How could I neglect to report that we heard back from pathology?!  Dr. Soriano called Friday evening to tell us that they found the tumor in the breast tissue and it had shrunk to 2cm, and the margins were great.  This was good news because if the tumor had been too close to the chest muscle, I would have had to go back in for another surgery as they removed more of my muscle.  Ugh.  Also, out of the 11 lymph nodes removed, 0 had cancer in them!!  And they found no cancer on the right side (which was only a slight concern in the first place).  Happy day!  Trevor and I are so excited. 

All in all, I'm thrilled with how things are going.  I have said it before and I'll say it again:  I'd rather recover from surgery a million times than go through chemo again once.  I'm so happy right now!  I know it's been extra easy for me because of my wonderful husband and a tremendous amount of support from our family and friends.  Thanks everyone for praying for me and being there to help us out.