BMX w/o adult assistance

Hi Sara, thanks for thinking of me. I've been doing okay. The surgery went very well. At the last minute the BS and PS got on the same page to do a nipple sparing, skin sparing BMX, with the tissue expanders on top of the muscle, so my range of motion, pain and recovery should be easier. Honestly, my new breasts didn't look too bad right afterwards.

But I really needed strong pain meds in the hospital and after - like Dilaudid.

I had 2 drains on each side plus vacuum thingies that were bulky and annoying and couldn't get wet. I hope to have the last 2 drains out on Monday and begin discussion of expansion. I can do it at home with these controls that release CO2. All so new to me.

Best part: no cancer. I had had 2 biopsies that showed LCIS and ALH, and an MRI that showed more suspicious stuff in the right- and after mastectomy there was yet another ALH radial scar in the left. So the BMX was the right thing to do. And yet, sometimes I feel like I don't qualify to post on this site because I don't have invasive cancer.

So there's a bunch of weird emotions and it was definitely hard not to have an adult to care for me - the kids were heroes for 3-4 days then returned to being forgetful self-centered teenagers which is normal, I guess. Church and work friends brought food almost every day. And my 84 year old Dad called just about every day, but no family showed up - my brother, his wife and adult son and wife never offered. So, I know I am super lucky and cared for, but I am tired of asking for rides or helpand tired of being tired. I guess that's a long response that I had been putting off. I feel like I have a beautiful wonderful happy story and then a really difficult lonely story. I'm sure the loss of hormones (I stopped taking HRT before surgery and had surgical menopause 10 years ago), the lack of exercise that I'm used to, and maybe just the whole experience is hard. I've had to see my primary doc for pain meds and various issues and her nurse asked a basic check in question as to how I was feeling emotionally. I said I thought I was doing great. I cried a few times like when I had to spend 8 hours restoring the kids health insurance, had to pick up their slack with chores, the teenager was nasty and rude and when the cat bit me - those all seem okay reasons to cry under the circumstances to me. But I'm guessing there's more to this.

Ceci