A new shade of ugly

Nothing entertaining to say, just a quick update, and I need to limit my typing because of my fingernails. They are separating from the nail bed even more. Typing feels terrible.

 

I’m home from the hospital and the recent surgery seems to have been a success.
Dr. Lai opened me up through the same incision, cleaned out the infected breast, and put in a new tissue expander.  I am no longer red and swollen like a tomato. We don’t know why the last one was such a problem but he said these things can happen. It does puzzle him though. He can’t figure out why I had a problem with just one and not both, and why I didn’t have a fever, and why he didn’t see a bunch of infection in there when he opened me up. Now granted, I had been on very strong antibiotics for several days beforehand, so maybe it would’ve been way worse otherwise.

At least I know I’m on the right path to healing now. This gives me a fresh start. However, after having this second surgery a mere 6 days after the first mastectomy, my body feels like it has been through a brutal war. And after this one, the level of pain totally caught me off guard. I anticipated it to be easier. Nope. It has been a new shade of ugly. Like way more painful than the mastectomy. My body did not approve of having to do this drill again. I’ve been told that it’s harder for your  body to handle anesthesia multiple times so close together. Anesthesia can cause nausea and the shakes. I’ve been struggling with both.  I’ve had 2 rough nights so far (where it’s scary to say, but oxycodone and valium helped, but didn’t touch the pain.) The tight stabbing pain in my chest can be compared to the feeling of varicose veins bulging, plus a set of encyclopedias stacked on my lungs. I am having trouble standing up straight and not hunching over in pain.

Then, all of a sudden this evening I spiked a 101.8 degree fever and felt absolutely miserable. I paged my doctor. He’s amazing and patiently talked me through all my symptoms even though it was after hours and on a holiday weekend. We decided to wait and see if the tylenol brought my fever down and it eventually did. My fever is gone now. But he was willing to let me page him again if it didn’t, and he’s going to call and check on me in the morning despite it being a holiday. I’m in good hands with him.

I was starting to get really worried that I was going down hill, fast. But I’ve definitely turned a corner even over the last few hours. This is the first time I’ve felt well enough to write on this blog. Hopefully I continue to have a good night tonight. I really do feel much improved now. So I won’t have to spend thanksgiving in the hospital! This brings me a deeper sense of gratitude and genuine thankfulness.

Here’s my sweetie and me right before surgery. I’ve got my superwoman socks on 🙂

And this is Rob. He made me laugh the entire way down to surgery. There are people who just do their job and then there are people who go the extra mile and have fun with their job. All day long he wheels people to surgery, some days walking an accumulation of 8-15 miles. He was hilarious, and it made a huge difference in my world at that moment.