Prompting this blog is the fact that I am going "under the knife" once again on Thursday, October 2nd. I am nearly starting fresh as far as reconstruction is concerned. No, I won't need to go through the expansion process again, thank goodness. That was quite an experience, having my skin stretched until it was as thin as tissue paper. But, I am having the entire chest area torn down and re-built. There's a good chance I have one or both implants ruptured, which may have been from insertion. Also, my right breast seems to have what's called capsular contracture.
To top things off, I have very swollen, sore lymph nodes under my armpit and near my collarbone. This MAY be caused by the silicone leaking, or an infection of which I was unaware. Either way, I have been experiencing sharp pain in those areas the entire year.
Denial...
I have been operating under the assumption that this pain and swelling is "normal" for someone who has been through the physical trauma of a double mastectomy with reconstruction. That said, once I realized a year had passed from the last surgery, I could no longer deny that SO MUCH wasn't right about the last surgery, as well as the on-going pain.
Surgery nightmares come true...
I was very nervous about having the last surgery done, simply because I liked the way I looked before the surgery. I know that every time you have surgery, you are taking a risk. At the time, my skin had been stretched too thin. If your skin is too thin and stressed, you run the risk of a tear, which puts you in danger of an infection on your chest wall, which can spread to your heart and lungs, and, yes, lymph nodes. An infection of this kind is very dangerous! A good friend of mine suffered a tear in her skin, a gaping hole, which meant a trip to the emergency room in the middle of the night. Another friend of mine developed a burn from the treatments, which resulted in a hole and an infection. Their stories are far more terrifying than any I have to share, but here is my surgery horror story...
I was very ill prepared for this surgery. I really had no idea what was to come in the operating room, during recovery, and during removal of the drains. I'll try to shorten this as best I can at this point, telling only the important details.
During surgery prep, it was flippantly mentioned that the doctor was planning to lyposuction my midsection to harvest fat which he would then inject under my thin breast skin to plump up and contour the appearance of my rippling breasts. Prior to this moment, I had no real idea this was happening. I also had no idea how to care for my lyposuctioned belly, post-op. Stunned, I just sat there like a good little girl listening to his plan for my body.
When I woke up, I was not prepared for the weeks of intense pain in my midsection from the doctor scraping the lining completely bare. It felt just like it sounds, like it had been scraped completely raw, into a bloody pile of flesh. As you may guess, I didn't have much fat to "harvest."
In addition to the fat grafts, which never took and turned into painful lumps all over my rib cage, I had something known as "Alloderm" sewn onto the inside of the skin over my breasts. This was the MOST painful thing I've ever had to endure. I never knew he was going to sew them in with multiple tight sutures. These sutures later caused many, many little scars across my chest, which look like I've been in a knife fight! These scars shocked the next doctor who witnessed them only months ago, after almost a full year of healing! I had Alloderm filled in before, but it was never sewn in that way, and I believe I would have said to forget it! It's really not worth the trouble and scarring.
OOPS!!!
This leads to the final straw, so to speak. When it was finally time to remove my surgical drains, I rejoiced, as those are the worst part of this whole experience in general. The nurse came in very happy and celebratory. I had 4 drains, one of which hung on until the end. As the nurse tried to pull out the drains, we noticed that a couple of drains were particularly hard to remove. In the end, one was so hard to pull out that the nurse finally got the doctor. She was too uncomfortable with the way it was pulling my entire chest with it. She was too uncomfortable?! Wait, what???
At last the doctor came in and pulled on it as hard as he could, VERY SLOWLY... and SNAP! Yes, it broke off and a good 4 inches of it retracted immediately back into my chest. There he was holding the other frayed end of the drain that was now hidden inside my chest. And, yes there was blood and puss oozing out the hole quite a bit. The look on everyone's face was priceless. With no clue what to say, the doctor utters, "Well, that's a first! I've never heard of this happening before."
Long story long, they sent me home saying they'd call me when they figure out what to do. I didn't hear from them as soon as I'd hoped, so by the afternoon, I called. They scheduled me to come in and have it removed. He only gave me local anesthesia, so I watched the whole procedure. At one point the doctor couldn't find the drain and said maybe we should just leave it in - after all the manufacturer says it's safe for long periods of time. Wait, what???! At the last minute, when he was giving up, he found it and removed it. That's when we discovered he had ACCIDENTALLY SEWN IT IN! He snipped the stitch, and out it came.
FEARLESS, I THINK NOT...
So today, over a year later, I have finally found the strength to trust another doctor and let her try to fix this mess of a chest - one ruptured implant, another capsulated, probably all caused during the drain snaffoo. Hopefully, this will go much better, but yes, I am not the happy go lucky surgery patient I was in the past. Inside I am a terrified little girl today! But, the grown up woman in me says, "Perk up!!!" My grandpa is with me today and always. Thank you, grandpa ("Perk" Perkins) for giving me the courage.
