Yesterday I had my exchange surgery. The plastic surgeon removed my temporary tissue expander implants and put in my permanent implants. I am so glad to have some more of this reconstruction completed at this point. Another milestone in my breast cancer journey has been checked off.
I was unbelievably calm yesterday. I guess when you have gone through so many surgeries and chemo you just get use to it. I just wanted it over with really so I just pushed through. My cousin took me to surgery yesterday so my husband would not have to take another day off work. He has been taking so much time off for job interviews (he's trying to find a new job) that it just didn't make sense for him to miss another day. I am so grateful my cousin went with me. She was so supportive and understanding..oh and made me laugh a bit too.
Surgery went well. My plastic surgeon had to revise both sides a bit to even my breasts out. One was much lower than the other and one was off to the outside so he had to shift it inward. He came in before surgery and marked me up with a marker so he would know what he needed to do. Surgery lasted about 3 hours. I guess that was longer than I thought it would be.
I was rather nauseated when I woke up and they had to give me lots of medicines to help with that. Those drugs made me so tired I could not even wake up or stay awake when I did wake up. I ended up being at the hospital sleeping all day. I finally got home around 7pm. All I wanted to do was sleep. My little boy greeted me at the door with hugs and insisted on walking me up the stairs and helping me get in bed. That made my day :)
I slept on and off all evening and night. I have been taking the vicodine every 4-5 hours to control the pain. I am more sore than I imagined I would be. It was nothing like having the bilateral mastectomy though. I am confident I will feel pretty good in the next few days.
I am glad to have this part over with. I can't really tell what my new breasts look like as they have quite a bit of gauze on them. They are a little bit smaller than my tissue expanders were. Gosh I hope they are big enough! I wanted them to be bigger than my original breasts. Either way, they won't sag at all so I guess that's an improvement. Now I will just wait for my next surgery in three months to graft nipples and areolas on along with fat grafting to fill out the upper breast area. I can't wait to be done with all of this!
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