What Some of You Want to Know (But No One Wants to Ask)

Ok, my queasy friends, this is one for you to skip!

The term "surgery" seems very descriptive for me, but I recognize that a lot of you are curious as to exactly what happened two and a half weeks ago and the aftermath....

I had what is called a litisimus flap procedure as part of a left chest wall resection.

In real people terms, here's what happened: my oncology surgeon cut out a large area of my left "breast" (since it's been all fake for nearly two years anyway). The implant, chest muscle, and all of the skin in that area were removed. Then my plastic surgeon came in and removed one of the small muscles from the left side of my back (and yes, they had to turn me over mid-surgery). That muscle was basically grafted into my chest (flipped BACK over at that point). Because the "defect" (the surgeons' words, not mine) was rather large, she then stretched some of the skin on the left side of my abdomen upwards, making a smaller hole to fill in the skin. Made my tummy feel a little numb on the left side for a few days, but that's subsiding. The remaining "hole" (my word!) was filled in with a skin transplant from my back. I'm not sure where exactly it came from, but it does have a freckle on it! Ha!

The aftermath: I have a diagonal scar on my back running from my spine along the rib line to the side of my abdomen -- it's about 11 inches long and will be visible at the top if I wear anything even remotely low cut in the back. Ditto the front -- on the left I have a scar that currently reminds me of a knot hole in a table. It's about 5 inches long and 2 or 3 inches wide. The upper corner of that will be visible if I put on a tank top or low v-neck shirt, and when the scar fades a bit, I'm sure I'll go back to my normal wardrobe. Currently I'm totally lopsided, of course, since the implant was removed, but I was fitted for a prosthetic yesterday that will just tuck in my bra -- and seriously, they sell mastectomy bras in leopard prints now, so other than the scar peeking out of the top, you'd never know! To move the muscle from back to front, I also have a scar under my left arm, and that one is the biggest issue right now. It's still a little bruised, still sore, and it prevents me from raising my arm more than halfway (which means I totally can't shave -- gross!). That's going to be slow coming back, but both of my plastic surgeons assure me it will happen. They're also very sure that I won't miss the muscle in my back, and the one in my chest is already "working" without pain. Just don't ask me to do a push up for a while...

So there you go! All the gory details!

I'm pretty much off of the narcotics now -- started regular sized doses of ibuprofen yesterday, and I'm two hours past my dose time today with no ill effects, so I'm taking that as a good sign. My Mayo appointment went well -- everything is healing fine, and another drain was removed. I'll likely have my last drain pulled on Monday (we hoped for Friday, but I think it's just going to be too soon), and then I head back up to Mayo for a follow up with my plastic surgeon in 6 weeks.

And hopefully sometime I'll get back to work! But for today, I Netflixed some movies, and that red couch is just calling my name!

Carpe diem -- Trela