Friendly reminder that content is likely NSFW (or kid-friendly if you’re working from home)!
If you follow me on the Instagram, then you already know that Bill and I “snuck” down to NOLA again last month to have what, lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I sincerely hope is my final reconstruction surgery. (Mini-movie from the trip down below). But first, I wanted to address the elephant in the room that we’re all living with right now. (Hopefully not an actual elephant as no one got room in their life for that!)
Hopefully, if you’re reading this in the not too distant future, when you hear Corona, you just think of the tasty beer. (That will happen eventually right?) But if not, I know you’re/we’re all dealing with some unprecedented (at least in most of our lifetimes) shiitake that has officially hit the fan.
The Covid-19 crisis had really begun to rear its ugly head in the states as we were making our way back to Denver and of course, quickly became all encompassing with almost every state and country in the world on lock down just a few days after our return. Now this introvert and homebody had a legit reason to socially distance! I kid, because I need to laugh, because if you can’t laugh, well…let us just say, I really hope you can find a way. I hear there are a few memes going ‘round that address this craziness if you have time on your hands and know how to work the googles.
I feel incredibly lucky for many, many reasons, least of not which I was able to get this surgery done just before hospitals began limiting “elective” surgeries. Especially because what I would think of as being “non-elective” surgeries (ie. not mine) are also getting postponed, oftentimes to the significant detriment of patients who have had the misfortune of having breast cancer diagnosed in the middle of a world wide pandemic.
For a couple of reasons that aren’t pertinent here, time was of the essence and I was able to slide into one of my doctors few openings left in March when I scheduled my Stage Three surgery back in mid-January. Writing about my Second Stage last Fall, I was certainly hoping not to have a third stage necessary (even though I knew with tissue reconstruction that it could take upwards of 4-6 follow-up surgeries to achieve the desired results) alas, my body apparently decided it had other plans so once again we found ourselves in our favorite city, but for my least favorite reason.
As I mentioned in my one week post stage two, I was dealing with, shall we say, my very own personal “deflategate” (thankfully no gross Tom Bradys were involved in this one though), which wasn’t entirely unexpected since transferred fat can very often be reabsorbed. However that usually happens more over time and not as quickly as I saw some size decreasing.
Given that I could likely lose more of the transferred fat as time goes on, too, after the first of the year (about two and a half months after my Stage Two) I followed up with my surgeon at the Center as I was also concerned by a couple of (likely) minor issues. One being a scab that didn’t heal well and thus left about a quarter size scar on my left hip, as well as some weird bulging action going on around my left hip bone, just above my long horizontal abdominal scar, which was to me, annoying at best, troublesome at worst.
Once he reviewed the current photos I sent over, he recommended going forward with a third stage. He said I could expect a roughly three hour surgery, that I would very likely have drains again and to plan on spending a night in the hospital, because it didn’t look like it would be straight fat grafting surgery, which is often the full extent of third stage.
Not great news that it would likely be more involved than we had thought, but I knew I wanted things taken care of sooner rather than later and because time to do so wasn’t on our side for other reasons, we ended up heading down about a week after Mardi Gras festivities had ended, but before JazzFest (was supposed to happen), which meant we could better afford to stay at “our” airbnb for a week.
(Needless to say, we obviously had no idea while we were there that NOLA would quickly become a hotspot on the Covid-19 map, thanks in large part to said Mardi Gras festivities and the packed crowds that come with it and lend themselves to quite the petri dish of possible illness. We consider ourselves extremely lucky and incredibly thankful to have passed our two week quarantine after we returned, safely with no coronavirus symptoms, although we’re still wearing masks when we do leave the house, in case we’re just asymptomatic.)
Once I was able to see my doctor in person at my pre-op appointment the day before surgery, though, he thankfully revised his initial estimate and felt that even with the additional work beyond the fat grafting, that he didn’t think the surgery would be longer than two hours and that I would likely NOT HAVE DRAINS! Sweet, sweet music to our ears.
The surgery went great and the subsequent recovery was a bit easier (a bit, as you can see in the video below) than last time, as well. In part, I believe, because I requested the nerve block be administered that they had given me in the first surgery, but not the second. No morphine drip this time either, but overall I didn’t have much issues w/ nausea except for the first couple of hours after surgery. Headaches on the other hand remained a daily occurrence as long as I was on any pain medication.
It’s crazy to me though, how much of those days remain a blur, even though they didn’t seem like that at the time. Even though I felt very present (in between naps, anyway) I’m really glad to have the photos B captured once again. Thank you for not only taking care of me (again), but documenting it all (again), my love.
Honestly, it took me a while to write this post (especially after losing most of it after writing it the first time – thanks WordPress) because honestly, with everything going on in the world, I really wasn’t thinking about my breast surgery, so why would anyone else? Unfortunately, though breast cancer and other illnesses sadly won’t stop until Covid-19 finally decides to leave town, so the purpose of this blog still exists – to share my (continued) breast surgery story with anyone who may need it.
I’ll likely continue to “worry” about vulnerability hangovers and stress about putting my half b-day suit photos out for the world to see, but what I won’t do is let all that stop me from doing it.