Well, I don’t know if it was skipping the pain meds for the day on Tuesday (which my surgeon approved me to do) or what, but, I was in so much pain on ‘Tuesday night I thought that I would not make it through it. Thank God for my dear friend who came to the rescue and got me back on my pain meds and kept me on them throughout the night and day (waking me up at 2 am to take a pill etc.)
Once there is that much pain I really can not think straight or take care of myself. I don’t know. I was told that the surgery and recovery from surgery would be so much easier than chemo. But, that has not been my experience. I presume it has something to do with the weakened state you are in post chemo and that having surgry right after chemo makes it a bit slower recovery time. But, all I know is that I thought I would be a lot further along by now. It’s a struggle right now to stay awake to write this post and you can be sure that I will be going rt back to bed as soon as I am done.
I have an appointment with my reconstruction surgeon today (I see her every week right now). She plans on “expanding” me today (please see prior posts for what this is, I am way too tired to explain it right now). Basically she will be adding saline to the expanders that were put in under my pectoral muscles during surgery. After she has expanded me to a size that I like then she will be able to exchange the expanders for silicon implants. It is a process. But, the very exciting part about it is that I will have a chest (even already have one, but just not a whole lot until she does more expansion – the first of which is today). It is so amazing really. There is – so far no detectable scarring the way everything is healing. Unbelievable.
But, all of that stuff above is really kind of not important to me. I mean, sure on some level it is, of course – to be able to come out of this with natural looking and actually beautiful breasts (so my reconstruction surgeon brags to me every time I see her . . . ” You have great skin, I am so excited to be doing your reconstruction”. Yeah, raw, boo . . . it’s all great, but I am just soooo tired and really all I care about is surviving. You know what I would like to have one of my doctors bragging to me about – is how I am going to survive this no problem – – how when all of this surgery crap is over with and treatment, that I am going to be 100% fine. That is what I want an oncologist to brag to me about! I have to say that the pain has definitely affected my overall mood – – the pain has been depressing me quite a bit. So hopefully the pain will get under control pretty soon so I can start getting back into things a bit more.
Well, I am going to take a nap and gear up for my appointment with my surgeon – hopefully she will still think that everything looks good and hopefully the expansion won’t hurt too much.
Oh wait a minute, I left out the most important thing! I have an appointment with Dr. Hurvitz, the breast cancer surgical oncologist specialist up at UCLA on September 11. I am a bit nervous, but I am mostly thrilled to be able to see her as she is so good.
Okay, nap time.
Please continue to keep me in your prayers.
Love,
Lisa
cancerfree2b 
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