All pumped up!

Well, ok -- I'm exaggerating a bit... But today was my first appointment to have my inflat-a-boob, well, inflated. During my mastectomy, my boob man Dr. K placed a thing called a tissue expander into a pocket in my pectoral muscles. This expander is essentially like a breast implant, except it has a port so it can be filled with saline from the outside. This is done so that the muscle and overlying skin can stretch gently over time to accommodate an implant that approximates the size of my remaining boob. After I explained this to my friend no-l, she aptly likened the process to "yoga from the inside." And that's essentially what it is: gentle stretching over time to achieve new heights. 

So today I gained a bit of weight again, as Dr. K pumped me up with 100 ml of saline. And lo and behold, this tissue expander thingie (which Dr. K couldn't fill at all during surgery as my muscles wouldn't stretch sufficiently) is finally starting to look like a boob -- I'm sorry, I guess technically it looks like a foob (that is a fake boob).  But hey, if it had looked like this right away, I would not have been as upset after my surgery as I was. It even feels more balanced, too, which really amazed me since we're not exactly talking tons of weight here. 

In any case, one little pinprick and some saline later I feel lightyears closer to an acceptable reconstruction. And in two weeks, I get another 100 ml boost to my foob. 

By then I will hopefully have finished the IVF cycle successfully (it takes about two weeks from cycle start until the egg retrieval surgery) and should be waiting to hear how many little pre-embryos we managed to get that fertilized and are dividing properly. And a few days later, we'll hopefully be able to put all those little frosties on ice until my docs clear me to thaw them out and use them three disease-free years down the road. Can't wait to get there!!!!!!