18 days post-op

right side is looking some new kind of normal. still can see the fluid in my armpit area but i can't believe how good my nopple is looking. i don't even have the stitches out yet. BIG improvement with ALB! discoloration has gone waaay down. pinkish new skin where. i assume my areola color will come back? *shrug*  underboob area seems to be healing nicely, the glue is keeping the purple pen color in i think. hurry up, ALB. side view. really looking to be approximately the same size as before. not that all of you saw me topless before. also, drain exits looking good.

bring on the pain

this sounds strange but i wish this hurt more, physically. my emotions aren't matching up with how my body feels. and my emotions are all about the wrong things. i would rather be mourning the loss of my nipples or my natural breasts. i would rather say i'm looking down shamefully at these scars that will always be here or that i feel like less of a woman. i would rather that i have no sensation in my skin. but like i said before, this wasn't an erogenous zone due to radiation anyway and i don't care. truthfully, i look down in awe at these amazing transformations - day by day - and feel proud and empowered. (this feels like a pregnancy, the nesting, the watching things grow. this doesn't feel like dying.) but i'm crying all the time. i know depression; it's not this. it feels hormonal but how can it be? stop telling me i'm sad about my boobs. just punch me in the stitches and make me hurt on the outside so this makes sense to me.

expansion 1: wherein i officially outgrow all my old bras

holler! i've outgrown my 34B bras today after my very first expansion. i now have 100 cc's (that only 6.7 tablespoons) of saline in each side. most of the bulk you can see in me now is the expander itself. read here about expander to implant reconstruction; don't think i've been over that yet, have i? the short version is that after dr. runi removed all of my breast tissue, dr. bates cut my nipples off and put two tough plastic bags under my pec muscles. he then filled them with 50 cc's of saline. had i not had radiation 14 years ago i might have been able to have implants placed directly. my chest muscles are in apparently in great shape, but my skin (as we've learned below) is well, thin and crappy. to ensure that my blood vessels are able to keep my skin alive dr. bates is expanding me slowly, 50 cc's once a week until i'm as big as i want to be. then they'll be over-filled by 30-50 cc's and left to "mellow" for 3-4 months when i'll have my expanders taken out and my silicone implants are put in.  

the expansion process today was completely painless. i still have zero, and i mean NO sensation in my skin. after locating the ports in my expanders using magnets (ha!) he jabbed that big needle in and i felt nothing. laying on my back i could see my chest rising a little at a time as he pushed down the plunger of saline. how cool. the whole thing, both sides, took less than ten minutes. you can see from the picture that the expanders are wide and wonky. you can't see that they're rock hard and impossible to smoosh into cleavage. i'm guessing i'm about a B cup right now but thanks to gravity, they're wide and being filled from the bottom to the top. the crazy awesome thing for me is that for the first time in many many moons they're up at a normal height and roughly the same size - once the ALB drains the excess fluid they should be almost identical. looking down on them i feel cosmetically improved oddly enough. they have some volume up top and don't seem to be making a run for my belly button. needless to say i cannot wait for next week when they're even rounder. this is SO my silver lining. and danny's too if he knows what's good for him. i think he can live with the 'great nippleless wonder' if he gets to help pick the size, shape and feel of the foobs.

2 weeks post-op pics & fun with magnets

angry left boob is looking less angry eh? righty is looking pretty okay? seriously, you can barely see the 6" scar underneath. they did a beautiful job. bodies are (mostly) amazing. this is where my drain came out of just a couple days ago. they are less amazing at getting rid of fluid however. all that lumpiness near my armpit and below is fluid buildup. i'm a B cup again because there is so much in there and ALB is worse. know these magnets? they're cool. especially when you can stick them to the magnets in your expanders. kids find it hilarious. good bar trick too?

did they also play whack-a-mole with my ovaries or something?

i just found myself crying during both sister wives (omg, they're making it work) and saturday night live (kristin wiig, et al stop crying, i'm bawling my eyes out). like really crying. wtf hormones? and no, it isn't pms; but it feels a tiny bit like that.

quick, act natural or the one where i tell you that nipples are just hype

yesterday, the kids came back from their dad's to resume our usual schedule (with us all the time, ha). i was missing them like crazy and though they're wearing me out, i'm so so glad they're home. rory is still being flexible and generally helpful, doing things like picking up from school since i still can't drive or ride a bike or walk far enough to get anywhere relevant. lorenzo is pretty distraught over the whole thing. he started crying last night when i was tucking him into bed because he was 'just so sad that your body hurts and that you have to do things that i can't do like cook me dinner. i don't want you to have to take care of us but i want to be with you and snuggle and not leave you again. i just love you so much mama and i'm sorry.' how in the hell did i get such an incredibly empathetic 5 year old? i reminded him that i did it for him and his sister so that one day we'll all be famous because they'll have the oldest mama in the whole damn world. in her classic fashion, parker rolled her eyes at 'renzo and me and our carrying on. 'i can't concentrate on my book mom.' what can i say? i find her detatchment endearing. probably because she reminds me of myself at her age: worry on the inside but show weakness under NO circumstance...

i saw dr. bates again today. (thankfully brett called and woke me up at 12:30 or i might have slept right through my appointment). my plan was to drive myself (i'm off narcotics except for a percocet and a valium at night to speed up healing) but i woke up with so much fluid buildup that my whole left side was sore. it's seriously affecting my mobility. the right side is still 'draining' too but apparently to a lesser degree. with no where for the fluid to go now that the drains are out, my body just has to absorb it; apparently that takes time. dr. bates said things are looking good but confirmed what he said on saturday that ALB was indeed mildly infected above my areola - the change of antibiotics was warranted. that said, i should be good to go for my first expansion on wednesday. i imagine it won't be much (cc wise) since he's worried about the integrity of my skin but hey, this is the beginning of the silver lining part right? yes,  there will be photos, actually i'm thinking video depending on who takes me to my appt.

i also saw dr. runi today. passed her in the hall and she asked if she could join me in my appt with bates. seriously, this is the most considerate and amazing health care i have ever received. PAMF doctors have the best bedside manners i've encountered in the past 15 years. they let me ramble on about the joys of what feels to me just like chemo brain (from the anesthesia as it turns out, can take weeks to dissipate). i even got to show off my talent of losing words by not being able to remember the word tinfoil. 'you know, that stuff that covers food that isn't saran wrap. it catches on fire in the microwave. see this is why my kids think i'm hilarious and awesome. i also can't stop saying yes to them. hey, is it cool if i hug you both right now?' oh for crap's sake, shoot me.

tomorrow i have my first day of physical therapy and i'm hopeful that the pt will be able to give me some exercises to do to alleviate the drainage pain. i'm regaining a teeny bit of sensation under the skin, a feeling of ants crawling around in there. having what feels like sharp rib pain on the left side (go figure) under my armpit when i breathe deeply; i'm assuming it's being referred from somewhere in my breasts. 

all my days

made a call to dr. bates last night around 7 (angry left boob, does it need it's own acronym by now?) incredibly, though he was not the on call doctor, he talked to me on the phone for about 10 minutes and made an appointment to meet me on a mother-effing saturday. that's right. he came in on his day off to look at ALB. he came to the clinic at 9am in jeans, a baseball cap and checkered vans. *drool* he rocks. ALB was terrifically bruised from the inside, skin was more damaged from radiation or nursing or some random shit. won't be losing more skin it looks like. seems the low grade fever was very early internal infection in a spot that one wouldn't notice without being a surgeon with practiced hands. in any case i was put on a new antibiotic to fight the bitch back. awesome.

the good(ish) news is that these bitches came out. danny and i were expecting a skinny little tube like what hung out but no it was that wide white part that was on the inside. half inch wide bendy ruler thing coming out a tiny little hole. yowza, that stings. it was quick though and i came home and took a mother fucking shower. it was so amazing. side wounds will be healed up by morning; no stitches, no tape necessary.

for i look around me

and my eyes confound me

and it's just too bright

as the days keep turning into night

-alexi murdoch