Surgery, recovery, surgery

I realized I never posted about how the actual surgery went besides being declared cancer free! So I'll post about that and how recovery is going now.

My actual surgery was great. I had the dream team of my breast surgeon, plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist (who's a great friend of the family), and nurses. One of my nurses was actually a good friend of mine's mom! They all did a phenomenal job. They told my family that my surgery was routine and textbook. 

Then I recovered in Scripps hospital for 2 nights. The nurses there were super sweet and took great care of me. Since then I've been recovering at home and my parents house near mine. It's hard because my arms are super immobile and I just feel uncomfortable a lot. I can't do anything for Elise since I'm not allowed to lift anything over 10 lbs for 4 weeks. So Jon and my parents have been doing a great job keeping her happy and healthy. 

All was going pretty well until this Wednesday when I had a hematoma (broken blood vessel) pop up out of nowhere on my upper left chest. I went straight to my plastic surgeon's office and he decided it needed surgery. So later that day I was back in the OR under anesthesia (our awesome anesthesiologist friend did it again). After 30 mins they found the bleeder, fixed it, and I was back in recovery. Now I'm feeling ok minus a lot of soreness on my left side and the stupid surgical drain that I have on that side still (my right drain is out!). 

And since everyone asks me about reconstruction, so here is the deal... When you have a mastectomy you have zero breast tissue left, so they can't just put an implant on your chest like a boob job since there is nothing to hold it. So during my mastectomy the plastic surgeon put expanders behind my chest muscles. Now over several weeks he will slowly fill those expanders until I start radiation. Then several months after radiation he will replace the expanders with silicon in another surgery. So it's a long process.