I’m coming up to 3 weeks since having my breasts removed. Since I left the hospital I have subconsciously been measuring my progress by the amount of gluey bits that I’ve been able to remove from my body. I know this because now that it’s almost all gone, I’m still not healed. And I’m appalled. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

I came home a few hours after surgery. I was hopped up on oxycodon and therefore didn’t care that the tape attaching the bandages to my body came high up my chest, straight around under my armpits and across my back. The next day, when I realized that the tape was preventing me from moving freely, I pulled back a few centimetres along the perimeter and tucked it in on itself, like a rebel. Thus began my journey into tape removal, and in my mind, recovery. 

I guess that my tape removal = healing theory came from the premise that this healing thing was going to continue on a predictable trajectory. Tubes out, big pad of bandages off, staples out, smaller bandages off, steri-strips on, steri-strips falling off, … no tape. Done! HA! How easy was that?? 

Now, as I have gone off all drugs except for the odd extra strength ibuprophen, I’m ALMOST glue free, and yet … what’s that I hear? Oh. It’s nerve endings yelling at me! Wearing a shirt hurts. Wearing anything hurts. That is, unless it’s really tight. I feel like a deep pressure junkie. I stand around pressing my hands flat against my chest to make the sensation go away. It’s not quite pain, it’s more like a humming, or the feeling when you’ve had frostbite and then you come into the heat. Burning. Pins and needles. It’s very distracting. Driving with an ice pack under the seat belt is distracting (but feels so great!). 

It’s actually fascinating to probe around the scar tissue and feel the edema in some areas (soft and pillowy) and scar tissue (?) in others (hard and unrelenting). I don’t know exactly where the surgeon dug and scraped to get at the sentinel lymph node, but I can guess. 

So ya, I’m almost 3 weeks from surgery and still unable to do basic stuff without wincing, such as:

• wipe the table
• pull open the cutlery drawer 
• drive standard 
• braid my hair
• take off a shirt (how come it’s easy to put it on?? makes no sense)
• sleep on my side 
• push myself up from a seated position

At my last appointment my surgeon drew me a diagram to explain it. There are nerves that run up through the breast tissue from the chest wall to the skin on top of the breast. He’s cut all of that tissue out, and in the process cut the nerves. So now I like to think that they are talking to each other. “Hey!! Where are you??” Not sure how long it takes for the nerve endings to chill out and the swelling to subside so that the skin can meld with the chest. 

In the meantime, tomorrow I will work on removing the last few bits of glue.