As I have mentioned, tissue expanders are terrible. I could not wait until I could get them out and get implants. However, since I was pregnant, it was questionable as to whether I could do the swap while pregnant or if I was going to have to wait until after the pregnancy. I was really hoping that my doctors would allow me to do the swap but I also did not want to risk the pregnancy and harm the baby.
The swap would entail an out patient surgery but would require full anesthesia. My plastic surgeon said that he was comfortable with doing the swap during the second trimester as long as my OB agreed to it. I spoke to my OB and he was fine with it but wanted me to wait until later in my second trimester. SO wait I did.
My surgery was scheduled for December 30, 2013. I naively thought it was going to be a piece of cake surgery; so much so that I told Kevin that I thought I would be up for a New Year's Eve party. I was WRONG.
The day of surgery
I could not eat anything after midnight the night before the surgery, this is a hard thing to do for a pregnant person! By the time we got to the hospital at 6:00 am, I was starving and morning sickness was showing its ugly side. I kept throwing up but there was nothing I could do, I had to tough it out. I could not be in the regular surgery wing, I had to be in the maternity wing for the surgery so that the baby could be monitored before, during and after. The nurses looked so confused. They were used to seeing C-sections, pregnancy related surgeries, etc - not swap surgeries. I really threw them for a loop.
The plastic surgeon came in to mark me up before surgery. The plan was to cut along the same incision lines as the mastectomy, take out the expanders and put in the implants. While I was under, he was also going to work on smoothing out all of the uneven parts left from the mastectomy. While he was marking me up, I reminded him that my goal was to be my original size (D-cup) but perky. I kept stressing perky - I wanted them to look like they did before I had Gabrielle. He said that he would do what he could but the perkier he tried to make them, the more pain I would be in post surgery due to all the internal stitching that would be needed. Again, I wasn't worried about this surgery, I figured if I had lived through the mastectomy, this would be a walk in the park. I told him to do what he needed to do to make them perky - I would live to regret that statement.
The plan was to use 600 cc implants, which in a regular augmentation would be a D cup. The plastic surgeon said that he would try different implants on me while I was under to figure out the best shape, curvature, etc.
Right as they were about to insert the IV into my left arm, Kevin started screaming and said "you cant do that, that is the side where they did the sentinel node biopsy." It had not crossed my mind. I was thankful Kevin was on his toes. This really got the nurse into a tizzy and she called for back up and second opinions from the surgeons. It was obvious, she was not familiar with this kind of surgery, or a pregnant person having a "cancer surgery." This was foreign to her and to the others that came in the room.
The IV finally went in the right arm, unfortunately this was the same arm that they had to monitor my blood pressure from, so every time the band would squeeze my arm to take my pressure, the blood would reverse flow into the IV. It was bad. It was painful. I was ready for the good drugs so that I could just be knocked out and not know what was going on. I finally got those once I was in the surgery room and on the table.
I was really hopeful going into surgery that I would come out looking "normal." That my breasts were going to finally look like my pre-surgery breasts. I was too hopeful. I was too optimistic.
When I woke up from surgery, I felt groggy and sore. But this was nothing to the pain that would hit me later. I can honestly say that the pain I felt the days following the swap was worse than the pain following the mastectomy. To this day I am not sure exactly why it turned out that way -maybe because I could not take as strong of medicine due to the pregnancy, maybe due to the amount of internal sutures that were done to try to get me "perky", or maybe because I was just not mentally prepared for the pain that would come with this surgery. Nevertheless, I was in pain for days. I cried for days. I kept ice packs on my for days. There was no relief.
To add insult to injury (no pun intended), when I took the bandages off 48 hours later, I was so disappointed. These did not look like real breasts, or good fake breasts. I cried even more. I longed for normalcy. I just wanted my old 29 year old, cancer free, breasts back. Yes they might not have been as perky since I breastfed Gabrielle, but at that moment, I would have done anything to have them back. I would have never complained about them again. I would have never daydreamed about getting a boob job again. But this couldn't happen. I was stuck with these reconstructed breasts that were way less than satisfactory to me.
When I went for follow up the next week with the plastic surgeon, I cried. He explained to me again that I could not expect them to look like regular augmented breasts. He reminded me that with reconstruction, there was nothing there to start with - it was starting from scratch. With a regular boob job, you have breast tissue to start with. I cried more. I still have days when I look into the mirror and cry. I have to remind myself that however bad they may look to me - they are cancer free. My breasts are no longer killing me. But to tell you that its easy to look in the mirror, would be a lie. To tell you that I am not dreading going to the pool and beach this summer, would be a lie. To tell you that when Kevin sees me without a shirt on that I don't want to breakdown and cry, would be a lie.
Cancer stole my breasts from me along with a lot of my self esteem. It won that battle. I plan on winning the war though.
No comments:
Post a Comment