Day 125’ish or 126: I’m awake… I’m awake…

This is apparently how I look on morphine.  Love the fuzzy lens look… very soap opera right?

I have to admit this was a very fuzzy time frame for me.  The pre-surgical cocktail, with anesthesia and the pain pump.  I am not going to lie.  I sat in the quiet for a long time.  Just me, the beeping of machines, the pain pump and the occasional interruption from the nursing staff making sure all is well.  I know I made the hospital sound cold and terrible in my previous post, but I don’t know, I mean, they were efficient and methodical.  Something I appreciate… even if freaked out that I was in the basement… but face it… the meds likely added to all that.

It might sound strange, but the calm and quiet was not just ok, but good.  The meds helped to quiet my mind and I am pretty sure I stared at a TV that was not on the whole time.  It was the most calm I had felt in a long time.  The most at peace.  I was in and out of sleep.  I was reminded to use the pain pump by my nurses – girlfriends who have been through this told me ahead of time to use the darn thing, they were right.

So the doc and I talked prior to surgery.  I love my surgeon.  Some back story: She is a breast cancer survivor who has been through a double mastectomy, reconstruction, chemotherapy, radiation and hormone therapy.  She gets it… really gets it.  It is like having a big sister prepping you for the challenge ahead because she has been there.  She takes pain management seriously, because she lived it.  I found her through a friend who has been through this before me and this was her surgeon as well.  So we talked prior to surgery about how much to expand out the gate.

This is a serious deal.  I know a lot of folks think of this as “augmentation” and it is anything but, this is not like reality TV where in a few days all is well and you have increased your bust size.  We are not stretching skin we are stretching pectoral muscles and fresh surgical incisions that are over top of the mastectomy incision.

Typical me, I told her to max it out, to go with as much saline in the expander as she was comfortable with, because I knew that although this would hurt like hell, I would be massively post-operatively medicated and now is better than later.

So I woke up with lady lumps at 370cc, almost half way to max capacity.  Oh boy… gonna feel that in a few days!  I have no idea what 370cc means in the world of bra sizes, those don’t really apply anymore.  The left is smaller because all the tissue was removed, ALL the tissue, so it was concave.  The right is larger because there is more adipose tissue.  They are also black, blue and purple…