Yippee!

This morning DH and I ventured out to the Ambulatory Surgery Center before the crack of dawn. My surgery was scheduled to take place at 8 a.m., which meant we had to be there by 7 a.m., which meant we had to leave by 6:30 a.m. So we were up by 5:30 a.m., braving the freezing temperatures on a dark winter morning. We got there right on schedule and I was called in after a short wait. 

Unfortunately, I did not get my favorite sleep man as requested. Instead, my anesthesiologist was a short Russian woman, who was very nice. It took her two tries to find a usable vein, but then I could get my "pina colada" so I could sleep through the hour and a half it took my two surgeons to free me of the chemo port, and swap out my tissue expander for the final silicone implant. Yipee, I got an early Christmas present this year!

DH and I left the Ambulatory Surgery Center by 10:30 and were home a little after 11 a.m. Everything went quickly and smoothly, entirely without unpleasant surprises. The anti-nausea drugs did their job so well that I felt good enough to have potato salad for lunch (DH made it with the mayonnaise I made the day before -- not to worry, I used a pasteurized egg in the shell we found in a rural midwestern grocery store during a recent trip). For dinner I had hankerings for Thai food, so DH procured some Tam Ka Gai and a red fisherman's curry. Spicy, but YUM!

The post-surgical pain is also manageable. It's almost 9 p.m. right now, and I've only had two percoset all day. Oddly, though, the side where the butcher removed my chemo port hurts more than the side where my boob man took out the tissue expander and inserted a 450 ml silicone implant! I bet that once again, the boob man's incision is equal in length or shorter than the one the butcher used to insert/remove my chemo port... Well, I suppose the pain difference may stem from more than the incision length, as the mastectomy removed the main nerves in that area. But anyway, implant exchanges like this don't seem to be a big deal. This is encouraging, as implants do not last forever and will need to be replaced in 15 years or so at the latest. 

Thus I am feeling pretty good. I took a nice long nap this afternoon to catch up on the sleep I missed this morning. As you can see above, my appetite is good. I am glad to be rid of the chemo port and to finally have my silicone foob, not the hard "turtleshell" tissue expander.

I haven't seen the results yet, as I am securely locked into one of those awful post-surgical bras, but I gently poked the side of my new silicone foob. I was very happy to find that it feels considerably softer and more natural than the saline-filled tissue expander. Supposedly, since this is a regular round implant, whereas the tissue expander was more anatomically shaped, this implant will also have less upper quadrant fullness. This means it should look more like my natural right, not-so-youthful-any-more boob. Apparently it will take two months or so for the implant to drop down and settle into its final position. As a consequence, it will be at least two to three months before I can contemplate the final step towards reconstruction, i.e. nipple reconstruction and possibly a lift on the right side (with a small implant if needed to achieve symmetry in the upper quadrant). 

But that is all next year. For right now, I'm just glad to have conquered another step on the long road to reconstruction. I won't have to go to work on Monday, so that I can have sufficient time to recuperate from the surgery. Come Tuesday I plan to be back in the fray, though, as the pre-holiday time is always entirely crazy at work. So I'd better get my strength back fast!