Oh the past few days have been busy and fun indeed. Honestly, it’s been awesome! Fantastic even. HA!
Let’s jump right in, shall we?
Sunday the 28th was a day to celebrate Kevin! His Birthday was on Monday, the day of my surgery, so we had a small gathering of friends over at my house to celebrate. Pop made his yummy Italian Beef sandwiches, yes the man has a deli slicer in the house, Veal Shishkabobs and Penne a la Vodka. So good! The gathering was great and I was so happy that I finally got to do something for HIM! Kev is always going above and beyond to help me, support me and continues to just be an amazing boyfriend and friend that I really wanted to him to see how loved he is in return.
When the party ended Kev and I spent the rest of the night chatting with a few stragglers, cleaning up and relaxing before having to get up at 5AM the next morning for surgery. Kev and Zanzia passed out on the couches and I sat up all night reading, watching TV and even doing some push-ups. I just couldn’t sleep. I knew the surgery was going to be relatively easy (bilateral nipple/aureola reconstruction) but my nerves were still a bit jumpy so sleep wasn’t in the cards. By 5 AM everyone was up and at 5:30 we were all out the door, and by 7:30 I was sitting in pre-op with my mom and Kevin waiting for my 8:30 start time.
At 8:45, Dr. S rolls in all smiles and hugs! As he was getting ready to mark where my nipples and aureola was going to go he asked, “So, what kind of nipples would you like?”. I kind of stared at him for a minute and then said, “Ummm, you know, the regular kind I guess?”. “Well do you want them big? Do you want them to be really erect and noticable through t-shirts?”. I hadn’t really put a lot of thought into HOW I wanted my nipples to look. I mean I had a slight idea but how to describe it was just beyond me. So he proceeded to mark the areola and asked what I thought. To big? To small? Nope they looked good to me. Ok now for the nipples. Ummm, yeah still don’t know what to say. “Well most women say they want them to be like an eraser at the end of a pencil. They will flatten out over time but that’s usually a pretty good jumping off point Jame.” SOLD! “Ok, sounds good to me, work wonders. I trust you and your judgement.” So he marked me up, gave me a high five and said, “I’ll see you in there kiddo. You are going to be beautiful!”. 2 minutes later my anesthesiologist juices me up with some happy drugs and the last thing I remember is starting to laugh hysterically and the next thing I know I’m waking up after surgery.
Apparently after I got juiced up I decided that I needed to know everyone who was gong to be in MY OR ROOM! I noticed a guy standing by my bed and asked who he was.
“I’m Jamie, who are you?”
“Oh I’m a medical student”
Let’s try this again… “I’m Jamie, WHO are YOU?”
“I’m Matt”
“And what year student are you Matt?”
“Third year. Don’t worry I’m not doing anything I’m just going to be observing.”
“That’s ok, I just want to know who everyone is that’s going to be in there with me.”
Evidently, after surgery I was again very chatty and laughing but I don’t remember any of it of course. I can only imagine the things that were coming out of my mouth. I’m going to have to remember to ask Dr. S just how severely I embarrassed my self and how bad of a pain the ass I was.
After waking up in post-op the nurse had my mom, Kev and my newest visitor, my buddy Goose came in to see me. Wish I could tell you more but again I was really dopey with meds. I think it went something like, choked down some juice got dressed, hopped into a wheelchair, was placed in the car, driven home and was then put to bed. What happened after all that is a fuzz as well. I know my friends Jackie and Karl showed up with flowers and a gag gift of whip cream and baby oil for my new Fembot nipples. (For full understanding please watch the first Austin Powers movie)
I spent the rest of monday slipping in out of my drugged up state but by 8 or so that night I was finally lucid again. Around 9 my mom came in to check on me and see how my bandages looked. On the left side there were 2 spots where there was a bit of drainage and some blood, on the right side there was one spot. Mom proceeded to take measurements and then called the Dr to make sure that this was normal. The on-call PS did confirm that some drainage is normal and not to be alarmed and said to call back if things seemed to get worse. 2o minutes later my mom popped back in the room to see how things looked and this time the gauze on my left side was soaked with blood. Mom called the on-call PS and again he said to change the dressing and to not be alarmed. So, mom changed my dressing and back to sleep I went. An hour later mom came back in check on my dressings and again the dressing on my left side was soaked with blood. Mom changed it again and back to sleep I went, again. This whole cycle continued 3 more times. Finally mom decided that this wasn’t drainage and that we needed to go to the ER. So mom, Kev and I hopped in the car at 12AM and headed back to the hospital. The ER was quiet so I was brough in quickly and soon a very sleepy looking on-call PS was walking into my room.
“Just woke you up, didn’t they?, I asked.
He kinda smiled and then asked what brought me in. After briefing him he proceeded to look at the surgery site on my left side. He removed the bandages and my nipple protector to clean me up and get a good look. Turns out I seemed to have a small bleeder. We don’t know how or why it started or exactly where it was coming from but the Dr cleaned me up, took a good look to make sure things looked ok and then bandaged me back up. I was told to hang out for 2 hours and he would come back in and check on me to make sure I hadn’t blood through my bandages again.
At 5:3o AM the PS came back in to check me out. My bandages on my left stayed clean and I was allowed to go home.
We got home around 6:30AM and the 3 of us proceeded to pass out. When I woke up at 1 Kevin checked my bandages and noticed that the stain on my right side had gotten a bit bigger. (not again!!) So he marked around the stain so we could see if it got bigger. 1 day later and I am happy to report that the bandages on my left are clean the blood that is on my right side hasn’t grown in size. I’m not feeling very sore, just achy and tired. I have a follow-up with my PS on Tuesday and in about 8 weeks the tattooing shall commence and then all my procedures will finally be done!!
I asked my mom if she got a good look at my Dr’s handiwork while the other Dr was changing the dressing in the ER and she said she did. She told me that things looked really good and that Dr. S did a phenomenal job with making everything look really natural and in proportion. This makes me so stink’n happy!! I’m yet another step closer to being done and having some phenomenal looking Tatas!
Today I’m up and moving finally. I would LOVE to take a shower but I’m only allowed waist deep baths. Finding something to wear right now is a total pain because my nipple protectors protrude through just about everything I have. ::sigh:: This is all silly little stuff. Very manageable, I know but I’m so ready to be done. I have lots on my plate of things to do and I would love to be done with all of this.
As soon as I get the all clear from Dr. S I will start my training for Tour de Pink. I still haven’t found out if I will be getting a bike donated from Giant yet. So fingers crossed!
Love, Love, Love!
Jamie's Journey 