Drain Free and Freshly Showered!!!

Yipee! I'm doing a hurkey jump (trying to imitate the BEST hurkey jumper, my stage husband Greg) to celebrate my drains being removed today at the dr. I can't tell you how freeing this is. AND - that also meant I got to take a real, live with real water shower this evening. I'm starting to feel like a human being again instead of a surgical patient.

OK, so the drains being removed was wicked weird. Get this, my dr grabs hold of it in the place where it is entering my skin, tells me take a big deep breath in on the count of three, which I did, and he pulls out about a foot long of drain. From each side. No kidding. And, when he's pulling it out, I am not watching (on purpose) but feel little needle pricks in a circle motion around my breast area. These apparently circled the area and I'm so thrilled I actually FELT them coming out. I think, although creepy, it's way positive I was able to feel this. On the right side however, since that is where all the nodes were removed, I still have major numbness and a dull lingering pain under the arm. They say they had to sacrifice some nerves and it will all eventually rewire themselves, it will just take time. Very strange feeling though, to not really feel your underarm.

Shower was good. I was really difficult, emotionally, to be in front of a mirror finally completely nude. It's like everything that has physically defined me as female has been fucked with the past six months. My hair, my reproductive organs, my hormones, my breasts. Sometimes that hits me like a load of bricks, tonight was one of those times. I know I spoke of a similar moment my Aunt had when she had her single mastectomy. It seemed to play out in our house this evening. I laid out everything for my shower, and putzed around long enough 'getting ready' I finally had to say out loud to myself 'Just get on with it already dina, jeesh!'. So, off everything came. I just looked in the mirror, my chest looks, well, not cut up - but since they cut around the aureoles, then stitched them up, those obviously are quite shocking to look at. They need to scab then heal. You can see the expander under my skin, it looks like a small deflated kick ball and it looks like it's poking out in spots, my skin is red and irritated a bit in these spots. When you lose your breast tissue, the rest of you looks all out of proportion. So I stood there, looking at my chest, then trying to take it the fact my hair, which is coming in which is good, is still wicked short looking, I have no eyebrows or eyelashes, I could stand to lose about 25 pounds which really shows now with no breasts to hide it, and I just started crying. I felt like I looked like a clown - all this with my painted on eyebrows. PJ stood there next to me, kissed me softly on the cheek and told me how beautiful I was. That I was always beautiful to him, no matter what and nothing was ever going to change that. Amazing. Praise God for blessing me with this man to walk along side me through this.


So I got into the shower, and although long, it felt so great. Who knew how cleansing a shower could be, on so many levels. I have to say though, I'm going to miss PJ washing my hair. He did a much better job than I ever did. ;-)

Much to do tomorrow, and I'm finding I really need my sleep as of late, so off to bed with me. No percocet now, so we'll see how effective Advil is tonight. Thank you to Lisa for bringing us yummy chicken chili for dinner - thank you.

My husband lost a friend of his this past weekend, someone he grew up with since kindergarten. Seems he had a heart attack after performing in a childrens show in Phx. He was 38. For those who pray, I ask for prayer for his family, friends and colleagues. And prayer for my husband, who has worn like, 20 different hats the past six months, all very well I might add. He is an awesome husband and father, and he misses his friend.

God Bless.