short and sweet but at least an update...

OK, so havent posted in a while.... So made it through surgery, was in for 2 nights, did ok. They Hysterectomy part was cake! No issues, no real, pain, etc. The mastectomy part went well. The expanders..... um not so fun. Lots of muscle spasms especially since I am pretty tiny, was pretty flat, and the expanders are under my not so strechy muscle. It was hard for them to get the expanders in but in they are.

If you remember, I chose to do nipple sparing basically just so plastics had extra skin to work with with the intent that I would most likely remove them with the surgery later when they did the tissue expander/implant exchange a while down the line. The day of dismissial one nipple was darker... not good, means the skin from my radiation is not getting enough blood flow thus causing some necrosis. They dismissed me with an appointment after the weekend to see plastics again.

At the appointment they removed 50 more cc's (which by the way was much more painful than I anticipated!) out of the implant (they only had been able to put 75 in to begin with because of my radiation)... so down to 25 cc's basically nothing but the expander takes up quite a bit of space. We decided to do hyperbaric for 10 days to see if we could improve blood flow. So I was readmitted for 4 days, did 2 treatments a day for the first 3 days then went home Thursday eve after hyperbaric number 5. I did treatment number 9 today and tomorrow was slotted to be my last one. Well after talking with the hyperbaric doc, he's thinking since eventually I'll need a second surgery and they want my skin to be as healthy and plyable as possible that ten more treatments (so a total of 20) would be recommended. Then when I had my second surgery, they would do a couple treatments right after surgery as well.

The dark necrotic area is smaller and the surrounding skin looks much better. Most likely the necrotic skin will just slough off.

So a little unsure of what the future plan will be. I see plastics and the breast surgeon on Wednesday so hopefully a bit more of a solid plan. At this point I'm feeling a bit better, pain is better under control, still have the stupid drains in so hoping that plastics will let me get them out soon! They aren't putting out much but he wanted to keep them in for hyperbaric so hoping he'll take them out on wednesday and let me do the rest with out them!

Otherwise we are doing ok, a little rough at home with the two little ones and not being able to snuggle, hold them, and play pretty much sucks. Hyperbaric is wearing on me. I bounce back really well from surgery and wasn't planning on having issues. But with the set backs and coming back in every day for hyper baric (minus weekends/holidays) it makes me frusterated and has brought back all of the emotions of being a cancer patient again. I was sick 16ish years ago and now it feels just like yesterday, going through the motions, living according to doctors appointments and treatments, and missing out on life. So what was an elective (sort of) procedure, the emotional aspects of complications are wearing on me. Not being able to do everything with the kids is the hardest, especially knowing that recovery will now be longer than my initial 6 week plan.

I'll be talking to plastics about shortening the long term plan of expanding to a full B and see what other options there are and if being smaller would be a shorter process or not. I'm guessing most will related to how the rest of the hyperbaric goes.

I still am very glad that I have done this just haveing a more emotional journey than I expected!

I'll post more after the appointments on Wed! Say prayers for a good visit!