Saturday....

Saturday was a pretty big day for me. Not only was it my five year wedding anniversary, it also marked one full year since I shaved my head for the first time.

I love having enough hair to not have to wear a cover up! And I really think my hair cut is pretty flattering. My husband simply cannot wait until I have long hair again. I prefer to enjoy the stages.

I finally got my drains removed on Wednesday. I was scared to death of course but I could not wait to get them out no matter how much it hurt. Thankfully, and surprisingly it was not bad. When I had my mastectomys I went home with two drains on each side, and getting them removed made me almost jumping off the table from the pain. This time it was just a little clip of the stitch, followed by feeling the tube popping right out. I was literally shaking from fear before it happened, and laughing at myself afterwards. I felt so much better walking out of there with nothing attached to me! I was still, and am still super sore though. My mother in law went home and I am going to be in a bad way tomorrow just from holding my fat face little baby. Oh my goodness it hurts. Just breathing feels like I'm being stabbed in the chest still. It's like I can sharp edges of the expanders pushing against my chest. Maybe I'm just a huge whiner. I am also having quite a bit of back pain. It's probably from being so stiff all the time and trying not to move my upper body so much, but it sucks. I have appointments set up for the next six weeks to go in and start getting the expanders filled up! I'm so excited, but so nervous about that. Just thinking about a needle coming anywhere near where I hurt so badly makes me feel nauseaous. But I'm sure it wont be that bad. I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure. That is my mantra.

I am already liking the way things are looking. I can see where my boobs are going to be and it looks so much better than the sunken skin from my before picture. This is probably the last uncovered picture I will take of myself. Here it is....

Here are some sexy pictures to help your imagination along

I am 5 days out from my expander placement surgery and pretty much all I can say it....ouch!

The morning of surgery I got up at 5:30am, got my bag and kissed all the sleeping people in my house, than went out to the road to wait for my ride. My dear friend, who is also my pastors wife picked me up and took me to the hospital since the H was unable to get out of some work obligations. We got there around 6:00am and checked in, than went upstairs and they had me change into the awesome little surgical outfit consisting of a gown, some thigh high panty hose things and of course the super cute gray hospital socks. I was given a bed and the 50 questions, before getting the IV. I always dread the IV before surgery cause the needle is so huge, and my veins are so small! But this time they actually gave me a little shot of numbing agent, which was awesome since they ALWAYS have to poke me at least twice. I wish every other nurse had been nice enough to do that. It made the entire process so much better. I told them Vicodin made me sick so if there was anything other than that I would greatly prefer it. Dr. H came in to do the little drawing on my chest that Plastic Surgeons do and said we would begin shortly. I don't even remember being wheeled into the operating room, which is so weird since I remember it so clearly before my last surgery. The next thing I knew I was waking up in extreme pain, and I remember thinking maybe I wasn't supposed to be awake yet, and trying to fall back to sleep. But I did wake up and they gave me a little button to push which gave me pain medication. It was at least two hours before I felt any sense of pain relief. I had some weird effect from the anesthesia which made me extremely itchy, and since it hurt to move anything that just made it worse! I was extremely nauseous and when they wheeled me to my own room I really thought I was going to lose it. Once I got into a bed I tried hard to get more comfortable. I have great friends who stayed with me during my two days, which was so comforting even in my misery. I ended up getting sick several times and came down with an awful headache. I couldn't eat or drink anything without vomiting and even opening my eyes made the room spin. I laid there and was spoon fed ice until I would finally fall asleep. Finally one of the nurses said something about the pain meds I was on being an extremely powerful form of Vicodin. So that explains why I was so sick the entire time. She said that because I didn't put it down as an allergy they thought they could still give it to me safely. So lesson learned, from now it I am allergic to Vicodin. I was released on Wednesday and got home at around 5:30pm to a house full of excited babies and one happy husband. It's amazing how much those faces make me feel better. I slept pretty terribly the first night but was still so happy to be home it didn't matter. Until I tried to get out of bed, and couldn't. I ended up having to have a friend from church drive over and help me get up. Not at all humiliating. The next night I slept sitting up :) We had helpers from church at our house from 7:00am until noon, than new helpers from noon to 5:00pm. The kids had a blast and will probably be disappointed when we don't have to have people over all the time anymore. I had made meals ahead of time so we didn't need to have those brought to us. Not that we don't LOVE the cooks from our church family! But it made me feel good to have things planned a little bit.
I took my first real bath this morning and it made me feel SO good! I kept saying how I was taken by surprise the amount of pain I was still in. Don't get me wrong, I knew it would hurt, I knew I would have the draining tubes, and be sore for weeks, but I felt like I couldn't even breath sometimes, than I took the surgical bra off to bathe and realized it was WAY to small. I had places on my back where I was bleeding from the bra being so tight. Thankfully I had the one from my last surgery which was larger and it has made a world of difference in the last few hours. I see Dr. H on Monday and while I am hoping to get the tubes out I don't really think it will happen since I am still emptying quite a lot of fluid, but I will hope and pray. My mother in law gets here tomorrow so everyone is excited for that. All I have to do now is go in and get slowly filled up until the Dr thinks I'm ready for the implant swap. It will take around 4 months and each time you do get pretty sore from the stretching, so I guess Kara will either be an early walker, or Amelia will get really strong from carrying her around :-D I don't have to see my oncologist until after my reconstruction is done but he did say that pretty shortly after it's complete he wants to get rid of my ovaries. Another journey, thank God they're coming one at a time. Once I get the tubes out I will take a picture of my budding chest.

But for now, here are some fun ones. First, here's me before surgery.

Here is one of the tubes that is currently stitched into my body.

And here is the delicious fluid that is squeezed out of the bulb at the end of the tubes, once every morning and again in the evening.

You're welcome.

"Feel your boobs" month.

I can't wait until I can feel some boobs. I am having a hard time thinking of these new boobs I am going to be getting as "mine"
I really feel like mine are gone forever, and Dr H. is making me a really amazing prostetic or something. I still do self exams in the area where my boobs should be, and every little bump and lump sends me into a panic, until I figure out it's just a rib, or scar tissue. The thought of recurrence absolutely terrifies me. That has to be the most devistating thing ever.

So just to update from my last post, I think I have things taken care of as far as having help with the kids. It's going to be rough, but they will be taken care of. Women from church are going to arrive at 7:00am and stay until about 9:00am, and then be replaced by another set of women who will stay until 5pm when the hubs gets home from work. It'll only be for four days but It's going to feel like longer I'm sure. I feel so awful just sitting around while other people take over my duties of caring for my children and cleaning my home. I do feel happy that I have meals prepared and frozen though. Doesn't make me appear quite so helpless :) I have a few more I want to get done just to be ahead of the game. I'm hoping to make a miraculously quick recovery and be able to do things semi normally after just a couple weeks, but I'm not holding my breath. First of all I have never been very good at holding my breath, and secondly because I'm having those awful drainage tubes again I'm pretty sure I'll be too terrified of moving or lifting anything even if they told me to.

I have a lot of anxiety, not so much fear as my last surgery, but I still feel super horrible about leaving the kids for a two whole days and a night. They're just so little :( I just keep thinking of how many steps I have taken, and that soon this will all just be a trail of footprints behind me. So again, don't forget to feel your boobs, even if your a guy. It happens to the best of us, and the worst of us, and all those in between aren't safe either.