10.29.23

I’m officially out of the hospital!! I actually got discharged yesterday and had every intent of doing an updated post but you would not believe how drained a person would feel after surgery. It’s crazy! I literally do nothing all day and can’t manage to keep my eyes open. 🤪🤣🙂 Energy wise I’m doing much better today though! Each day I can tell that my endurance is getting better and my pain is going down. So keep them prayers coming. I’m hoping for a comfortable flight home! 😉🙂 I’m more of a glass half full type person. That’s probably boded well for me this whole journey. 😉 Because I totally underestimated the pain I would be in after surgery. It hurt to breath. And they want you taking deep breaths to open your lungs. You try taking a deep breath with a surgical bra and abdominal binder on. It’s hard! And if that’s not bad enough, when you take those deep breaths in and slowly let them out- it loosens the gunk in your lungs from the anesthesia and makes you want to cough. All I can say is OUCH! I did everything in my power to not cough. Lots of softly trying to clear my throat.. 😬 I say all that with tongue in cheek because while it was more painful than I expected it wasn’t so painful that I needed the extra pain meds. I didn’t like how when I took the oxy during my mastectomy that it knocked me out. I literally took the med and I think 5 minutes later my eyelids were so heavy I handed my computer to Aaron and fell asleep. I only took that once and then said nope not again. Since the pain was tolerable I just did my maintenance pain drugs (Tylenol, Gabapentin, and Celebrex) The one night nurse I had the 2nd night said I was the first DIEP patient she had that didn’t take the extra pain meds… So I asked how many patients she had had? While she was counting them in her head I said: One? 🤣 Joke was on me though because it hurt to laugh! 😬 She laughed and said like 10ish but she had only been at that hospital since Aug. 🙂 I told her it was my Norwegian blood. 🤣🇳🇴 I should have told her that it was an answer to prayers. ❤️

Because I had to go back for a second surgery and then be put on heparin (a blood thinner) they wanted to keep me for one more night to monitor my flaps as I came off the heparin. Thankfully everything went well after that second surgery and every time they went to listen to the doppler they found a pulse. I had to wait until discharge day to take my shower. I think that’s the same no matter how long you stay. Mainly because they have these monitors taped to my flaps that they called “T-stats”, I’m pretty sure those couldn’t get wet. That’s what monitored the oxygen levels in the newly transferred tissue. Needless to say my first shower post surgery felt amazing! We had a 20 minute drive to the house we’re staying at for the next week of recovery. This place is such a blessing! They have two lift chairs, one in the living room and one in the master bedroom. There’s a shower chair in the master bath, which is a walk in shower. They have extra mastectomy pillows, robes, and drain holders for me to use. The owners live right next door and are willing to be as involved/uninvolved as we want. They even brought me flowers after we got settled in! ❤️

Our first night here went really well. I think we both slept pretty good given the circumstances. They want me taking a shower every day and to keep my incisions clean and dry. Todays shower was a little action packed. It’s not completely surprising. I’m not sure how many are aware of this, I don’t think I shared it when it happened… but my first shower at home after my mastectomy led to me passing out. I had just gotten out of the shower and we were checking the incisions and making sure everything looked ok. I think Aaron was getting ready to strip my drain.. I just remember getting tunnel vision, feeling clammy, having the echoey hearing and telling Aaron “I’m gonna go.” I’m gonna go!” He wrapped his arms around me and I passed out. Thankfully he was right there. I was out for a couple seconds, came back to and then everything was fine. Definitely scared me and I didn’t try taking a shower by myself for awhile just incase it happened again. Thankfully it didn’t. Until this morning. And I didn’t actually pass out but I think I was seconds away from it. I felt myself going again. I got super dizzy, my whole body got hot and my face was all sweaty. Thankfully I was already sitting in the shower chair so I just rested my head against Aaron, closed my eyes, and took slow deep breaths until I felt better. It happened twice fairly close together and then I was good to go. Hopefully that is the extent of my drama and there will be no more passing out/almost passing out. After I finished my shower it was time for our church service. We actually watched two this morning. Not because we’re so religious but because our kids were part of a youth lead service at the church we go to Wednesday nights. So we wanted to watch them. And then there’s something about being part of the church body and while we couldn’t be there in person we still wanted to be connected. So we watched our home church service as well. ❤️

I’m taking some short walks outside. I don’t go too far but it’s nice to get in the fresh air. It’s hot here though! Almost uncomfortably when we went for our walk earlier this afternoon. The temp is supposed to drop significantly though. Like into the 40s by Monday. It’s funny because the nurses were saying that the schools were reminding parents to bring winter jackets (for 40 degree weather mind you) and that if it got that cold they wouldn’t be going outside. I just “laughed” and told her the kids go outside by us until the wind chill is like 0 or -10 I could remember what the cut off temp was since we homeschool but it’s definitely colder than 40 degrees. 😂 There were fireworks Friday night. My nurse moved my bed to the middle of the room so I could watch them! 💗

Channeling my inner Emersyn 😆😀 She likes wearing knee high socks and shorts. Good thing no one know me here 😂 Maybe I’ll start a new trend… Compression socks, with a drain holder and shorts. 🤔