Day 149: What is that strange sensation?

So my plastic surgeon is 2 hours away from home.  So I have not been taking the prescription meds prior to or immediately after my appointments, for obvious reasons, being that I am driving myself and all.  In fact, I have learned that when I take a Flexeril and an Oxycodone my vision is blurry for about an hour and a half… if I am awake that long.  Being that I have months of this, and work and all, I really need to figure out how to make this work.

I am finding muscles that I did not know I had… since the expanders are under the pectoral muscles, this means that the pectorals are being stretched outward and they do not like it.  Today driving home I was fighting muscle spasms in my neck.  Crazy muscle spasms.  Unlike anything I have felt before.  The kind of neck muscle spasm that seems to want to lift the entire shoulder to the ear and I can somehow feel it in my jaw.  Ugh.  I think I am going to get a bit of a lesson on muscle attachment points in this process.

We added another 60cc today and I had a friend come along to see the procedure.  She is in the process of deciding for herself which reconstruction process she would like after her unilateral mastectomy.

You know there is too much breast cancer when I am seeing a plastic surgeon who was referred to me by a friend and taking a friend along with me as a referral for her consult.  WOW right?

I have some great photos from today and stuck around for her consult and learned a bit more about the tram-flap reconstruction procedure which is way more complex and has a much longer healing time and much longer hospital stay.  This procedure involves moving one of the abdominal muscles through a surgically created “tunnel” and then forming a surgically removed portion of the abdomen into a breast mound.  After all that, because of the repurposing of the abdominal muscle, there is a mesh inserted to the area the muscle once reinforced.  Lots more potential for complications with this one.

Seems my friend may go the expander route like I did.  Many options and many considerations and not two bodies are alike.  This is such an individual process.

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