Holy! I seriously can’t believe it has already been 2 weeks
and I am well on my way to being healed. I will try and fill in as many details
I can about surgery (now that I have gone through it) and enlighten you with
details about the reconstruction (pretty cool)!
So surgery day ended up being pretty relaxing in the
morning. I had to be at the hospital for 5:30am with a surgery time of 7:30am. I
was in a very relaxed, peaceful state of mind going into surgery and I think
that really helped me, AJ and Mom feel better. So I hung out in the pre-op area
(at the Mc Caig tower) for about an hour and got changed into some super nice
hospital wear (slippers included), answered some questions about my overall
health and tried to find some humor in the situation. Around 6:45 we walked
over to the Foothills main building to the waiting area for the OR. After some
discussions with my anesthetist, surgeons and nurse I headed in at 7:45am. At the
beginning of all the talks about surgery we were told it would be approx. 4
hours. It ended up being about 5.5 hours under anesthetic and 4.45 hours of
actual surgery time. Some of the following surgery details you may or may not
be interested in so if you generally don’t like too many details now is the
time to skip to the next part.
So they started by having my breast surgeon remove my left
breast. Basically removing a breast means removing everything (nipple, breast
tissue) except the skin. The skin isn’t considered breast tissue because there
is a layer of fat and other tissue that separate the skin from any breast
tissue. After he finished removing my
left side he moved over to begin the right one. While he was doing the right
one my plastic surgeon inserted a tissue expander underneath my leftover skin
and pec muscle on the left side. I have started calling them water balloons
because that’s kind of what they are. Basically they are deflated implants with
a small metal port used for injections. I can’t tell you why is it placed under
the pec muscles but it must have something to do with not enough tissue between
the implant and skin otherwise. Anyways after he removed the right breast they
flipped me over and began to cut out a piece of my latissimus dorsi
muscle/fat/skin. They were doing this to replace some damaged tissue underneath
my armpit and right breast from radiation. Scar tissue from radiation doesn’t stretch
well for implants and can cause some complications so she recommended this as a
best option. I find it fascinating how they do this part of the surgery. They
remove and isolate the tissue from my back but keep the main blood supply under
my armpit connected so it’s never ‘removed’
from my body. Then they make a tunnel underneath my armpit to bring the tissue
forward – this way my body won’t reject it and I won’t have to worry about
dealing with a transplant, like I thought I would. It’s pretty cool to think that the muscle at
the front of my chest is actually from my back (and still attached!) So after
moving that to the front she again added a tissue expander underneath the
muscle and skin and stitched me up. When
I woke up from surgery I was obviously in a lot of pain and couldn’t figure out
why I still had boobs (small yes but I had something there none the less). I
came to find out later at my follow up that they started the stretching process
immediately and added 180ml of saline to my left expander and 120ml to the
right. Because of the extra tissue on my right they didn’t need as much saline
as it doesn’t need to be stretched as much.
Recovery has been going ok. The 24 hours following surgery I
was very nauseous, couldn’t hold anything down and had to contend with a
urinary catheter. But after that was removed and I could start holding food
down again things started getting better. Little by little I made walks around
the unit and started sitting up more. It was tough at first because not only
was I in obvious pain from the surgery I had 3 Jackson Pratt drains to deal
with. For anyone that has never had a drain after surgery – these things are a
pain in the a**. And I had 3. They are long tubes that are inserted through a
small hole below your surgical site(s) that drain into a grenade type of
suction bulb. Every 12 hours or when they are full you have to empty the fluid
and measure it. This decides when they can come out. Generally they need to be
producing below 20ml of fluid over 24 hours before they will remove them. They sometimes cause more discomfort then
anything. Where they go into your body, if move the wrong way or pull on them (they
are held in by a stitch) they burn. It’s a very weird sensation but I think it
would feel like a hot lighter touching your skin. Hurts like hell. If I wanted to leave the house I had to wear
a big sweater and find a way to pin them up so people couldn’t see them. At home
they were pinned to my pants most of the time. When I showered I would wear the
tie from my housecoat around my waist and attach them to it. I couldn’t lift my
arms, couldn’t drive – nothing. It’s very frustrating. But like anything else
you do what you have to do and survive. I started to get a little stir crazy
(although I had lots of visitors) while they were in and did some cleaning
around the house (the surgeons say not to). I felt a bit more human when I was
able to do a bit of work.
So 13 days later on Monday Aug 20 I had my follow up with my
plastic surgeon. I was super nervous. For anyone that remembers last surgery,
the drain (I only had 1) hurt so much when my family doctor tried to take it
out that I ended up at urgent care. I (accidently) kicked my doctor after an
hour of trying and we both kind of gave up.
So needless to say I was pretty anxious and worked up by the time my
surgeon walked in. They all came out without me feeling them at all! Apparently
there are a couple different kinds of drains and she uses the ones that aren’t
flared. Which means my other surgeon probably used drains that were – who would
use drains that are flared!???? I felt so relieved after – it was one of the
worst parts of surgery last time and with 3 this time it could have easily been
a mess. So after they were out she decided that I would be fine to tolerate an
expansion of the tissue expanders. She took a little handheld magnet device
which located the port and left a little mark on the skin as to where the
needle needed to go. She then inserts a very small needle (skin is numb so didn’t
feel it) and injected 60ml into each side. I couldn’t feel it fill but definitely
felt tightness at the end of the injection. Because the expanders are under the
pecs it causes them to stretch which can be uncomfortable but only lasts
overnight.
So now I will be going in weekly to have 100ml injected into
each side every time. This process is a lot quicker then I previously thought
it would be. I’m kind of excited to see the results! I will provide a count of
how much saline has been injected into the expanders. Right now I have 240ml in
the left one and 180ml in the right. I think (and I’m probably wrong) that I will
be around 600 – 700ml of saline before she calls it quits and plans the next
surgery. Maybe I should take bets on the final number? Hmm…
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