Break time is over. Or just about...

It's been a week since my last blog and a few things have happened so I've decided to update. A lot of folks ask how I've been doing. It's kind of up and down. On one end of the spectrum you have the physical feelings and on the other you have the emotional. Physically I'm getting better. I can now dress myself and my showers don't take so long! I'm driving but not too much. The seat belt bugs me so I use a tiny pillow but the dull pain is still there. I have to sleep on my back still and it's driving me C R A Z Y. But I take vicoden at night and it eventually knocks me out. The range of motion is really improving in my left arm. The node arm is still at 90 degrees but it's getting stronger. I'm still tender and sore and as my step-dad found out last weekend, if you run up to me to hug me - I'll flinch. Emotionally I'm doing pretty good. I hit a bit of a bad spot last night and started writing this horrific vent email from hell to Lisa. But she'll be glad to know that before I could send it, my internet crashed and it vanished. I felt better having written it though even though it never got sent. And shortly thereafter, the vicoden kicked in and I was able to sleep like a baby.

Here's me in a good mood:



Notice how flat I am. I love it! I love being flat as a pancake. And I'm not even entirely flat. And my belly is HUGE. But I still love it. This is me smiling because my ginormous boobs are gone and I don't have to wear a bra. This was taken about a week ago. The tape over my port is gone now. That's what I've been doing each night. Slooooowly removing all of the surgical tapes. So this is what my bathroom looks like:



I take off about five tapes a night. There's about 20 more to go. My boobs are totally 100% numb but the skin underneath is not. There's also this part of me that is scared to remove too many for fear of the expanders falling out onto the floor. Eww!

Went to see my PS this morning. She took a quick look and was pleased with how the recovery is going so far. She was sad to hear about the need for radiation therapy however, and said we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. She did say that it will be six months to a YEAR AFTER radiation is complete until we can do the implant switch-out. This really bummed me out. I asked her if getting expanders so soon was a bad idea. She said we could always take them out if I wanted, but we may as well leave them in for now and let the skin stretch out. I figure since I've got until January to expand them, that I can take my time and won't be in so much pain. But expanders suck, folks. They're very hard and kind of heavy and make sleeping on my side impossible.

So I got a refill on my vicoden and took off. I have my first "fill" appointment with her on Wednesday, the 19th.

NEXT UP: Onc visit on Monday to find out about chemo. Since I'm still tender, sore, and leaking, I imagine she's going to put chemo off for about another two weeks. But we'll see. I'll let you know what I find out.

Meanwhile I'm going out to see husband's band Saturday night for the first time since surgery. Also I'll be taking a teacher certification test that morning. So cross your fingers for me. Fifth grade math is HARD!