Drain Free...Again!

My drains were removed at my appointment today.  Yay!!!

I told the nurse I really wanted them out and she obviously said something to the surgeon because he came in and said "so I hear there will be a rebellion if we don't take these drain out?"  I said "maybe..." so he said we might compromise and checked things out, and thought it looked good so he gave the ok to the nurse to take them out. 

On the down side (and this must be the compromise he mentioned) I have to wear my tightest breast binder (and make it tighter if possible) for another week.  This is to make sure the breast skin firmly "sticks" to the chest wall which will somehow make things better when we go in to replace the expanders, its also important to not have "pockets" because pockets have greater potential to stow away bacteria, which could hang out there until the expander goes in and then cause another infection!  I will do my best to follow his advise.. I did before too, but I am watching like a hawk!  I pointed out a tiny red spot ony incision I've been watching and he said it was fine it's just a little irritated by the stitch that is there.  He said if I have any fluid build up to call and they'll get me in right away and its really easy to just use a needle and draw it out.  Otherwise, I will see him again Friday.  This is 1 week since my surgery to remove my expanders and 4 weeks tomorrow since my mastectomy, this will be the longest I've gone between appointments.   Having the drains out makes me a little nervous, but I'm on major antibiotics and I don't have any foreign body in me we need to hang on to, but man, I just imagine I will be super nervous when I have expanders again.

Anyway.. I should be drain free for a couple months now.   And I am happy to say that removing them this time was no where near as unpleasant as I anticipated it being.  I hardly felt it.  Unfortunately it didn't improve my arm/underarm discomfort as much as I thought it would, but it did help a little.  I guess these are going to be things that take time to resolve.  Once everything is done I will request a referral for physical therapy if It's not fully back to normal by then.

I took a nap on the couch today and got up without much difficulty.  I think tomorrow I will return to sleeping in bed, probably until the next surgery.

Happy Halloween!

Drains....

So today is 10 days post-op.  I had high hopes for getting my drains out today at my appointment with the plastic surgeon.  On Monday he had said it would be a possibility.  He wanted them filling with 25ccs or less over a 24 hour period.  So yesterday I was pretty sure I wouldn't get them removed today because I had 25 in one and 30 in the other.  I still was hopeful however because on message boards some people talk about getting them out when they're down to 30.  But no such luck.  He told me we'd shoot for next Wednesday.   So that's 5 more days!!!

If you aren't familiar with drains, They are JP Drains. Here is a picture... not mine - don't worry, I'm not posting pictures of my personal boob paraphernalia quite yet.

So the thick white part is "the Drain" and it is inside my body wrapped around the outer edges of my former breast. 

You can actually see it if you look at my chest, the skin is raised up around it, it's kind of creepy.  Then all that tubing hangs out of my body and the fluid build up runs through those tubes into the bulb. 

I have one on each side.  The holes the tubing comes out of are on my sides... if you are a woman and wear a bra it is in line with the back strap of a bra just outside of where an underwire would fall.

At first we had to empty the drains a few times a day, then we shifted to twice a day, and now I'm just doing it once a day.  Fluid and other bodily material sometimes gets backed up in the tubing, so when its time to empty the bulb I must also squeeze out the tubing.  Then we measure and record the fluid and flush it down the toilet!

So the bulbs hang out rather awkwardly around my waist.  They have to be pinned to something (I use a lanyard) to keep the weight of them from pulling at where they're stitched into my body.  I try to keep them concealed by keeping them stuffed under my shirt which makes me look like I have a weird lumpy pregnant belly.  Sometimes if I'm just hanging out at the house, I put a fuzzy sock over the bulbs.  It still looks weird, but I'm trying to protect my family from the grossness of it.  Better to see a weird fuzzy sock hanging out of my shirt than a plastic bulb filled with bodily fluid. 

So as you can imagine, even if I really felt like going somewhere and doing something, I'd kind of prefer to not do so until the drains out.  So far other than going to the plastic surgeon's office, I've only ventured once to grocery store and twice to the pharmacy.

I WANT THEM OUT.

But I am willing to deal with them as long as it takes for my plastic surgeon to think it's ideal to take them out.  I need to look at the big picture.  At this point I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get the best possible outcome.  I'd rather deal with these dumb drains another MONTH if it would mean the best outcome possible.  Luckily I won't have to wait that long for sure!  There comes a point that they become an infection risk, and they'll pull them out no matter what.  So there is an end in sight...

Recovering at Home

I came home from the hospital Thursday afternoon.  My husband set up our comfy recliner with a sheet and my blue fuzzy blanket.  With the addition of two pillows for my arms it is quite comfortable!  Up until today I was taking my pain medication every 2 hours.  Last night I switched to 3 hours (or when I woke up),   It seemed to go okay, so I will continue on this schedule for a day or so, continuing to try to decrease the narcotics.

I was allowed to shower right away, which surprised me because I had read many places about not being allowed to shower until the drains were out.  So when I got home I took a shower, and my husband assisted with washing my hair.  It felt wonderful to be CLEAN.  He also took care of the drains up until Sunday night when I felt I could/should take that over.

I'm really looking forward to getting the drains out.  They're kind of annoying and pretty gross.  They are these tubes that are hooked up to something that wraps around my breast (on the inside) and dangled about a foot or so out of my body on each side to these bulbs where the fluid collects.  Twice a day we have to "strip the drains"  where we lotion our fingers and squeeze all the fluid/clots sitting in the tube into the bulb, then we have to empty the bulb and measure and record the fluid that was inside.  UGH.

At my most recent appointment with the plastic surgeon he thought we could get them out maybe on friday.. My husband interpreted things a little different, as in *maybe* on Friday, but more likely on Monday.  I really hope it's Friday.

He also suggested that I wear a bra, but specifically he wanted me to wear something supportive under my breast but loose around the nipple, so like an old bra should work.  Unfortunately I no longer have any good supportive bras that aren't a miraculous bra, but I found a couple old nursing bras, and they're working for now.

My right nipple is struggling to survive.  It's really scary looking, it's all dark red/purple, kind of  blackish... So I have to clean it twice a day and thickly apply a burn cream to the nipple and surrounding skin.  I think it is starting to look slightly better and the plastic surgeon seemed more optimistic about it when he saw it yesterday.

The expanders are strange, each breast has one of these expanders and they're basically the same circumference of my old breasts, but without the filling.  So they're big around but rather flat.  Apparently they had removed 500 grams of breast tissue from my left breast, and 450 from the right (the left was bigger..) then he filled about 200-250 grams into the expanders at the time of surgery, so right now my breasts are about half the mass that they were prior to surgery. 

They are really strange though.  They're HARD, and they don't move.  So it kind of feels like they're in my armpit when I try to lower my arms.  I'm assuming that is only going to get worse as we start filling them up.

I mentioned my arms and the numbness in the last post.  They've improved quite a bit.  I have almost full use of my fingers and thumbs back, but from the pointer finger to the thumb of each hand still have a tingly pain in them and my left arm still won't full extend.  It seems to get better each day, though the improvement seems to have slowed... But I am sooo happy it didn't stay where it was, that would have been life changing, in a very negative way!

Anyway, now that it doesn't make me dizzy to sit at the computer, I'll try to post more frequently.