A Year Ago Today and Once Again Down the Surgery Road

One year ago today I had a bilateral mastectomy and 11 lymph nodes removed. It was the beginning of a long road of recovery from the surgery and chemo. I've come a long way!

This time the surgery was for a good thing! I decided to go ahead & give breast reconstruction a try. Not so much because I missed my breasts (no bra is very nice!), but more because of difficulty of finding clothes other than tees that fit/looked right, and because I've been using double-stick tape to tape my shirts so you couldn't see my scars when I bent over. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life investing in double-stick tape & worrying about people seeing what 'wasn't' under my shirt.

So on Monday the 14th I had the first surgery to insert expanders. They are like a thick balloon with a port where fluid will be injected every couple of weeks until the skin is stretched enough to accommodate the size implant I want. In a few months (hopefully by the end of the year), I'll have another surgery to have the expanders taken out & permanent implants put in. No more DD - I'm aiming for a C+.

Since I would already be off work a couple of weeks, I decided to have another surgery the following Monday (the 21st), in order to avoid having to be off work again in a few weeks. This was to repair both trigger thumbs which would require being off about a week. So now I'm done with both & will be going back to work on Monday the 28th. The trigger thumbs were a direct result of the Femara I take to keep the breast cancer from returning. Annoying side-effects.

I feel like I've been perforated all over!

Here's to surgeries that make life better!