Week 1 & the Unveiling

My loss of memory carried over into my first week home. I stayed in my recliner a lot. Ward took awesome care of me that week, along with the kids. We were blessed to have friends, and even strangers, deliver meals each night so Ward wouldn't have to cook. My dad had stayed for a few days and my mother-in-law came to help us the first weekend home. It was nice to have them there.

On my third day home, it was time to remove the bandages from the hospital and begin applying Bacitracin and dressings 3 to 4 times a day. The first day we did this, I never looked down. Ward told me how great I looked, but I couldn't bring myself to see.

The second day, I looked. What I saw literally took my breath away. It wasn't a bad reaction, but I was unprepared. Since I had a skin-sparing mastectomy, I was unprepared for the folds of skin near my armpits that created nooks, crannies, and caves on my sides. No one ever told me about that. I've since learned that once the expanders start getting filled, they will fill-out into this extra skin that my plastic surgeon saved. My nipples were gone, and I was left with horizontal scars on my chest. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I wasn't totally flat- my surgeon had put about 250cc of saline in each expander during surgery. I think I'm probably a very small A.

I finally cried a little on the third day. After a dressings change, for some reason, I realized that I was going to miss adjusting my breast in a bra. I had a deep sense of sadness come over me and I grieved the loss of my breasts. Ward just let me cry and it didn't last too long.

I had both post-op visits this week. My breast surgeon was first, and he seemed thrilled with the results. He told us the best news we could have ever received-my pathology reports found no cancer. He told me that he would still perform my breast exams, but my heavy testing schedule was officially over. WOO HOO!
Being BRCA1 positive, my risk of breast cancer dropped from over 80% to less than 5% since I elected to do a double mastectomy.

I saw my plastic surgeon this week. He wasn't able to remove my drains yet because they were still draining a lot of fluid from my chest. He looked at both sides, and although the breast surgeon was pleased with the healing, my plastic surgeon wasn't. He was concerned with my right side, which had a lot of bruising and purple areas. It was at that visit I learned of my chance of necrosis, or the skin dying. My PS said that he wanted to keep on track with what we had been doing and we would keep an eye on that right side.

My range of motion on my right side is better, I can lift my arm almost in-line with my shoulder. My left side isn't any better and I'm really not trying to move it a lot. My pain has been manageable with Dilaudid and muscle relaxers.

The picture below is probably around a week post-op. Many women have told me that once they have had a mastectomy, they become desensitized concerning their breasts. This is true for me. I haven't placed any pictures of my real breasts on my blogs-I could never do that. I am, however, posting pictures each week post-surgery because I simply don't view my chest as "breasts" anymore.