The first four inflations of my tissue expanders were a breeze. I thought the rest of this process would be a walk in the park. Then the fifth, sixth, and now seventh inflations have come and gone. Well, gone isn't entirely accurate. The fifth created intense pain for three days and was similar to the initial pain of my surgery. The sixth caused that same level of pain that lasted for four days. As of yesterday, my seventh came and is still lingering. I expect it to last at least four days. I may have two whole relatively pain-free days before my next inflation since they are once a week. Thank God for my son or I would be in a much larger heap of pain.
Waking up is the worst part. As with anyone who suffers aches and pains, they are normally more manifest upon lifting yourself out of bed during the first moments of your day. Mine is no different. I find myself holding onto my left "boob" like it's in danger of falling off. I clinch my left arm across my chest under the breast mound and hold tight to the right side of my sleep shirt. Meanwhile my right hand finds it's way as far down the edge of our pillow top mattress as possible. As I tug with my right hand to pull myself up, I hold my breath to stifle any attempt my brain might make at registering the pain as a gasp, thereby waking my husband or a sleeping baby. This is how I wake up most mornings since June 17, 2010, and how I will function for the foreseeable future.
Making my way to the bathroom, still holding my left breast mound in place, I locate my dose of morning pills that includes a Valium (for the instant muscles spasms) and ibuprofen I hope will kick in before I'm called on to lift a 25 pound baby from a crib. It's funny how I used to resent having to take my daily Synthroid (I have hypothyroidism) because I've never been a pill taker. Yet here I am now with my little S-M-T-W-T-F-S container to keep them all straight. I look forward to conveniently "losing" that pill container in the not distant future!
My breast mounds, because I can't really begin to think of them as boobs to be honest, are beginning to take a shape I can recognize. Who would've thought this would be fraught with dangers? I've grown so accustomed to not having any boobs that I have begun to move differently through the house. I found myself cutting corners more sharply, or only opening one side of the pantry door because let's face it, my boobs weren't calling for me to open the other side to accommodate a wider load. Well, all of that is a thing of the past. In the last 48 hours my boobs have run into doors, walls, and the refrigerator door. Come on, really! I don't recall this being an issue before. The really funny thing is that I mostly can't feel it except that in that instant my forward progress is thrown off as I'm launched into an unintended rotation, thereby hitting my other boob on the pantry's door frame. It's just too odd not to tell.
See, someday I'll have all this over and done with and these memories will begin to fade. For now at least I can recount them and use the humor to help me over the hump that is this reconstruction process. Or would it be more accurate to say humps?
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