This post will bring us up to current from arriving home from surgery (last Friday, 6/15) to today – with another long recounting of medical details.  Then, I hope to feel freer to tackle any of the other subjects that are waiting – more of the emotional impact, some history and lots of looking forward!

As we go along – I’m very happy to engage in conversation through this blog – answering comments or questions and expanding on topics or parlaying them to not just my life.  I don’t know if the comment structure through WordPress is the best, but if there is trouble with it – let me know!

There are two parts to a medical update – what I feel like and more describing of what my new body looks like.  Let’s do the new body first!

So…here I am at my post-surgery best!  We’ve been joking that it’s almost reminiscent of a quaint 1920s swimsuit.  Let me give you the tour:

First – my  6 little friends – the drains.  They look like clear rubber grenades attached to tubes which are attached to, well…me.  Two of them go into my breasts, two into my front abdominal area and two into my back.  The tubes are long enough that we can pin them all in front.  We keep them in this middle position that we’ve found – away from the sides so that I can try to sit/sleep on one side or another and not directly in front so that I can have my computer on my lap.  We empty and record the volume of them 2-3 times each day, which is really nothing more than tedious.  Yes, the concept of what’s going into them and where that is coming from is not very pleasant, but it’s relatively easy to ignore.  So – the big news!!!! – at my first post-op appointment this past Thursday (one week and one day out from surgery) – they were able to remove 4 of the 6 drains!!!  That’s more than we dared hope!  And the final two hopefully will come out next week.  you’ll hear more about the difference that this makes!

The tank top goes over the surgical bra (which is a velcro opening in the front) which goes over a layer of thick padding that protects my new boobs.  My new boobs (which I will not be displaying pictures of other than clothed!!) have an incision around the nipple area, vertically down the center bottom and then across the bottoms all the way over to the sides of my body.  I have NO IDEA what size they are – but not more than c-cup now and that’s a big difference.  We’ll talk more about that later!

The tank mostly serves to keep the abdominal binder (the white bottom piece) from riding up and creating an uncomfortable relationship between bra and binder.  This is especially important in the front center of my body – where I have my own version of the Mixing Bowl (if you are familiar with Washington DC traffic) – it’s where all kinds of roads meet up – mainly the incisions across the bottom of the breasts and the top of the long center vertical incision.  There is a small area – about 1″ x 2″ where it’s just a hot mess.  The skin is all bunched and stitches going everywhere.  Some of this will calm down as the swelling decreases and the incisions heal and then I guess we’ll see how it ends up and they may need to tweak it a bit.  More about that later too – I was not prepared to talk about tweaking!!!

So, yes, there is a long vertical incision down the front of my body where they both pulled and tightened all the skin, but also went deeper to tighten up the front abdominal muscles.  This part could easily have been the hardest to recover from – I might have felt so tight in that area that I wouldn’t want to stand straight and would have to retrain myself to do that.  Luckily, that’s been a fairly minor problem.  I have to work to straighten only a little bit.  The other fun thing about this incision is that it is pretty crooked!  And – I’m not exactly sure what the long-term fate of my navel will be.  There is a small area with more stitching around it that is supposedly where they saved the navel (and it’s connection down into my body?) and pasted it back on.  I, however, can’t yet see through the stitching to determine if there’s really much there.  Good thing I’ve never considered myself much of a navel-gazer!!  HAR!  Alright, whatever, back to the straight up reporting…yes, the incision is quite crooked.  At this week’s appointment, the surgeon said that they talked a lot about that in the operating room.  It came down to either being able to get a better “landscape” – meaning more excess skin removed and a leaner contour – or having a perfectly straight incision.  She’s a perfectionist and I think she regretted not being able to have both, but they went with the better landscape.  I’m fine with that – wasn’t planning on becoming a bikini girl.

Okay – and down to the bottom.  The incision goes 360 around my body.  Very low (at the junction of torso and hips) in front and then a little higher around my low back.  It’s just a single line all the way around, but from there, they were able to remove and shape my body pretty much everywhere.  My butt is WAY flatter/tighter and the fronts of my thighs.  Of course the huge pouch of skin is gone – both the primary one and the smaller one above that.  In the pre-surgery appointments, she noted that the secondary roll presented one of the biggest challenges.  It’s just hard to get all of that surface smoothed down.  They did a great job – that’s very apparent.  And…there are places that aren’t exactly ideal.  Again – we’ll talk later about tweaking.  Apparently, they expect for there to be a tweaking process (!!!!!)

Right now I have padding over all that incision and then secured by both the tank top and the binder.  Soon, I think, I could just wear comfortable underwear and that will be the case then for six weeks.  Binder and surgical bra for SIX WEEKS – I think that will be half security blanket and half chomping at the bit to be done with them.

To end the body tour – of course the extremities beyond the torso are unchanged.  The extra volume on the thighs, the flaps under the arms.  I think we’ll just have to see how that all plays out.  I have had no intentions of being a surgery addict.  I don’t want the physical experience and I don’t want the emotional need either.  But it is a reality that my body will have different issues and different proportions than it would normally and I’m sure that I will have a host of reactions to that.  I’m a conductor and I don’t want to worry about how my arms look if I wear something sleeveless.  Right now, I don’t really worry, but I also have to tell myself not to worry.

Okay – to finish the update – just a bit about the physical experience and challenges in the first week after the surgery.  For the most part, it’s just about negotiating movement and energy.  Everything feels fragile at first – will I feel pulling on the stitches?  How can I pull or push myself in and out of chairs and such (and accept any help offered!) without something pinging. Can I move around – particularly up or down stairs or at any length and not feel dizzy.  Well, this all changes and improves every day.  I’ll give you a couple bookend examples:

Day One at Home – in the afternoon we decide to do the first changing of the dressings – maybe a modified shower – and let me see my body in the mirror for the first time.  And we decide that the place to do this is upstairs in the bathroom – so first time up the stairs too.  BUT…surely we will take this all very slowly and Mom and Nelson will do most of the work around me.  So it will be okay, right?!  Not so much.

I take a couple percocet and head upstairs (not thinking to take time to let the percocet have it’s impact – both for pain lessening and the dizziness that we weren’t really realizing could accompany it).  Mom is imploring me to stop after every few stairs, but it feels fine and I just keep going slowly and steadily.  My legs are very strong (thanks to all the climbing and such pre-surgery!) and the stairs are all about the legs.  W e get into the bathroom and start gingerly pealing the layers back.  The bra and binder, the pads, the drains – which have to be constantly paid attention too – Good GOD don’t drop them!!  So, we’re basically there with me in the nude, someone holding a collection of 3 drains on each side and we’re about to start figuring out how to proceed.  I can see everything for the first time – all the angry incisions – the immense bruising – dark brown along the whole underside of my breasts – the hot mess referenced above – tightness – boobs I don’t recognize.  Mom and Nelson have seen this a couple times and they are beyond the harder impact of these things.  They see the huge change in shape and are excited for me to see that and they see improvements in the incisions and bruising from what they saw in the hospital.  They ask me what I think.

I’m not exactly sure of the sequence of events after that.  I did realize that I wasn’t responding and I did realize that the room wasn’t quite clear. I heard Mom say, “Oh my God” and I felt a little stumbly.  Apparently I went completely white and somehow my husband dimension-blinked into the next room and got a chair under me as I started to go down.  I know he moves fast – but I had no idea!  But it’s a very good thing – because there is NO good place to hold onto me if I go down.  That’s a sure call to 911.  So – the next 45 minutes were simply spent putting everything back together and getting in my face and telling me I was okay.  We decided that a shower would wait for at least a couple days!

Today (Day 8 at Home) – Mom and I walked around the block for the first time – slow, but pretty steady!  Then, on a bit of a lark – we got me ensconced in Nelson’s

convertible – with pillows around every side of me and went out to the bank, the Farmer’s market and Starbucks.  I got in and out of the car 3-4 times on my own, walked around the market and in and out of Starbucks.  I was definitely tired and my body was pinging all over the place, but no pain and energy level was still pretty good.

As for the in-between, well, there’s a lot of course.  The worst is at night when I end up feeling like a stuffed burrito – all stiff and round and immobile.  I spent the first few nights downstairs – switching between the couch, the recliner and the big chair – surrounded by pillows of all sorts and getting assistance for any major move.  Now, I’m sleeping in the bed and gingerly switching my own position every couple hours.

The only other thing to talk about, most unfortunately, is the other scary set of moments at home.  I think I really must choose to generalize this for you – I just can’t go into details.  But for 18 hours I experienced the most painful and scariest physical period of my life thanks to a single, ugly word – constipation.  We knew what it was, we knew it was a possibility and we had taken some proactive measures (Colace) but had we known what would happen – we would have taken far more proactive measures.  Probably too many and I would have been miserable in another way, but I just can’t see how it could have been worse.  All I can say is – you can know what’s going on, be reassured that you’re doing the right thing and that everything will be okay – and still be completely convinced that a horrible, embarrassing, disaster is in your future and your body is, in fact, going to rip apart.  And you say “for better or for worse” to your husband and that your mother has been through it all with you, but still have to work really hard not to die of embarrassment before the aforementioned ripping apart takes place.  If you are going to go through this surgery – please, PLEASE consider your proactive measures seriously!

Okay.  That’s done.  I knew I had to include it, but I was dreading it!  Maybe I’ll ask you not to bring this one up in polite conversation.  If you must ask questions – I’ll entertain those individually!!  And – after just sleeping and existing for a day after all that resolved – we’re back to steady improvement – including convertibles and farmer’s markets!

And…we’re caught up!  Finally!!  Did I mention that you should expect details?  Read of your own volition.  All 487+ of you…which jumped from 8 followers just a couple days ago…which is freaking me out…but I’m determined to write this blog the way I want to!  I’m sure I’ll blog about that later.