#newboobday

Yesterday I reached a significant milestone in my recovery from my double mastectomy when I got my expanders swapped out for permanent implants. At one point I was really excited about this, but as I described in my last post, my pre-op appointment quickly rained on that parade. Things didn't really get better from there.

I struggled through a couple of weeks of part-time work while getting more and more nervous about my surgery. I managed to slip in a couple sunny outdoor rides on the road, which felt like progress except that I knew I was only days away from regression. I was looking forward to the expanders being gone and hopefully perhaps at least downgrading to a chainmail bralette from the iron bra I usually feel upon waking. I was not looking forward to anything else that a second surgery would entail, and it sort of made it worse that I didn't have a clear idea of how bad it would really be.

With the mastectomy surgery, I was in a state of unequivocal dread regarding what I was facing. I steeled myself for the worst experience of my life, and with the exception of the extra days where I was stuck with the drains, almost everything was less bad than I was expecting. This isn't to say that it wasn't still terrible and not something that I ever want to do again, so the fact that my implant swap surgery has turned into even a miniature version of that is finally breaking me.

I woke up at 3:30 yesterday morning and decided that it was unlikely that I would fall back to sleep in the bed again, so I got up and reassembled my pillow fort since I would have to go back to sleeping on an incline for at least a few days. I spent a couple of hours on the couch watching TV and trying unsuccessfully to doze for short periods. Despite getting up so long before we needed to leave, I put off removing my nail polish until the very last minute. It took longer than I planned, and we ended up leaving a bit later than scheduled.

We still arrived a couple of minutes early, which didn't matter because it turned out to be four hours before they actually took me to the OR. During this time, two different nurses tried unsuccessfully to insert IVs, leaving me bruised and bleeding in the crook of each arm. I broke down in tears when the second one chastised me for not drinking enough water the day before surgery, and it really got to me because I'd had a busy afternoon of meetings at work the day before and probably did drink less than normal. It felt almost like a punishment for trying to reestablish myself in regular life again.

They finally took me upstairs, and the anesthesiologist inserted an IV quickly and easily into the back of my hand. After the sweet respite of anesthesia, the first thing I did when I was awake enough to move my arms was to feel my sides for drains. I wasn't supposed to have any, but not finding any was still a relief.

This was before I talked to the plastic surgeon's office and before I knew I had Trump-neck.

I was awake enough to go back downstairs around 3:00. I was already in a lot more pain than I expected, and it took another hour before I was released. The plastic surgeon and his staff were already gone by the time I woke up and had left a somewhat confusing instruction sheet for me. The pre-op instructions said that I could shower after three days if I didn't have drains, but the new sheet said I had to wait until they removed the white tape at my first follow-up. I quickly checked, and yes, I did have white tape that I didn't have after the first surgery. As soon as we left the hospital, I called the plastic surgeon's office to find out that I was stuck with the white tape and no showers until Wednesday.

So that brings me to today. I'm depressed, in pain, and completely dreading the next few days. The worst part is that I have quite a bit of both class work and work work that I need to keep up, so I can't just shut down and do nothing the whole time. I may have overcommitted myself because I thought I'd feel better at this point than I do, and I'm getting so impatient to be a normal person again.

I also took a peek at my boobs when I got home and was pretty disappointed with what I saw. No one explicitly told me not to look, but I think it's not generally recommended to look that soon. I guess I was hoping they would look good and make me feel better, but that wasn't the case. I mentioned to the doctor on multiple occasions that I was worried about my chest looking too wide, and he said that was just the expanders and that he could choose a shape of implant that would fit my body better. However, when I looked yesterday, they looked very low and very wide. They can fix little things like asymmetry or unevenness with fat injections in a few months, but now I'm worried that he chose a shape of implant that just isn't going to look good on me.

Anyway, despite my smiling pictures on social media lately, I'm having a really tough time right now. I know that it really is almost over and this is just a few more days, but I just didn't think it would be this bad.