Tissue Expander Implants

Today is 2 weeks since my surgery and 2 weeks since the most uncomfortable, annoying, and painful implants were placed in my body. I met with my BFF (Dr. Pahnke) today, as we walked into an exam room his assistant told us today was his 60th birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! When he walked into the exam room he was not his chipper self, he said the lady he just saw gave him a hard time and yelled at him because he did her biopsy and then went away for 4 days. She wanted to know how he could go away without calling her and giving her results, he said her exact words to him were  "you have no idea how emotional having breast cancer is", he looked at me and said "I told her you do NOT have cancer, why don't you go talk to my next patient, 31 with cancer and just had a bilateral mastectomy, about how emotional breast cancer is", feisty. I felt bad for him, how could anyone be upset with him, he is an incredible doctor who is GREAT at what he does, I will forever be indebted to Dr. Pahnke. Anyway, after our convo he walked over to me and grabbed my arms and straightened them out in front of me, OMG the pain. He then said to lay down and he lifted my arms above my head, I thought I would faint from the pain, after my arm was stuck above my head he started to feel the implant. Feeling the implant is a weird experience because on the outside everything is numb, I could not feel his hand on my chest at all however, when he grabbed the implant and moved it, now that I felt. I almost came off the table. After he was done inflicting a lot of pain I sat up and asked how long my armpits would be swollen for. He ever so nicely walked behind me grabbed the "swollen" area and was squeezing with all he had he said "oh, it is not swollen, this is all your fat" oh nice. He told me that as I am inflated it will all stretch out and get smaller, great. I have been in pain and very uncomfortable since my 8:45am appointment.

I hate to complain about things now that I have been through hell and back but I have to complain about this recovery. I was told that while I have these tissue expander implants in I will be uncomfortable. Well, they forget to add frustrated, limited, in pain, not able to breathe or lay flat, and many other things to their little list. These implants are not like normal implants, they are made of a very hard plastic and since they are not at full capacity you can clearly feel the edges of them under your skin. They also do not move with your body when you sit up, stand up, or move your arms or torso you can feel them, lovely. Also when you try and take a deep breath it feels like a rubber band is wrapped around your chest and starts burning. There are times when I can not even talk because the implants are rubbing and it takes my breath away. As if this was not bad enough then add in the fact that I still can not use my arms all the way. That is the most frustrating part, I can't lift my arms very high before the pulling and burning starts, therefore, I am not able to open the cabinets in my kitchen, I can't reach my toothbrush in the medicine cabinet, I am not able to open medicine bottles, I can finally dress myself. It takes me around 10 minutes to get a shirt on, 5 minutes for the pants, and make up, forget it. It took me 46 minutes to get a shower the other day and my showers only consist of bathing, I have no hair to wash (I have a buzz cut look now so no lengthy shampooing is needed), 46 minutes to wash my body. I am starting to run out of patients! I am bored out of my mind, I can't really go anywhere, no driving myself until November, I am sick of looking at the walls in my house and sitting in my recliner. The highlight of my day is having Ryan lift me up into his truck so we can go get Gabby from school. And lastly the hot flashes since surgery, SERIOUSLY!! I was having them before surgery, thanks chemo, but now they are insane. I get pins and needles all over my body and then instantly become soaking wet with sweat. My hope at this point is that as my implants get filled they will loosen up and all this nonsense will start to get better, if not this is going to be a very long 6 months!