Recovery - Day 11

In everything that I read before my surgery, all of the consultations with surgeons and nurses, and all of the input from the women in my support group, I realize now that never truly got a sense of what this would actually feel like, physically. I was warned repeatedly that it would be painful, but I really haven't found the pain to be particluarly bad - in large part I think because I've kept my promise to Seth to "not be a hero". When I've felt the pain start to creep up, I've been quick to take my Dilaudid, Flexeril, and Percocet, very strong and effective drugs. I never got above a 3 on that 1-10 pain scale that the nurses were constantly asking me about in the hospital - I was accused of being too polite, but truthfully, it wasn't stoicism, I just wasn't in a lot of pain. They said I even woke up smiling in post-op.

But still, it has been an intense, surreal physical experience. Through the days of my recovery, I've been trying to hone in on a more nuanced description of what my mastectomy feels like, because we are blessed with poor memories for discomfort and I know that soon I won't be able to remember - but I'd like to be able to tell other women who are preparing for their own surgeries. My breasts have felt very different at different times during my recovery - perhaps changing with the varying amounts and types of medications in my system, or perhaps changing as my body tries to get accustomed to the new state of things. At times, I have felt nothing at all, and I'm not even aware that I had surgery. Most other times, I've been conscious of a sense of constriction, like my chest has been tightly bound; some women call this the Iron Bra. Dr. Trott said that I will have that feeling for a while, until the skin is completely adjusted. Less frequently, it has felt like a pile of rocks on my chest - not so much painful as heavy and awkward - and inanimate, not part of my body. At these times it's been a surprise to look down at my chest and see how small and well-contained my breasts are - they feel so big and unwieldy. I think the closest anyone came to describing that feeling was when Dr. Trott said that they would look like breasts, but they wouldn't actually be breasts - but I couldn't begin to understand what that meant until after the surgery. 

The range of motion in my arms has also been affected - although I haven't been completely unable to stretch or reach (also known as Dinosaur Arms), I'm much more aware of the effort involved in lifting my arms to wash my hair, open a childproof bottle of pills, hold up a blow drier - all the little tasks you don't normally think of as requiring strength until you no longer have that strength at your disposal. The other significant physical effect is the fatigue. When I take them, the pain medications make me drowsy, but there is also a deeper tiredness, which is completely normal - post-operative fatigue is caused by both the anesthesia drugs and by the trauma of the procedure itself, and it can be exacerbated by low caloric intake due to loss of appetite, which I also have had. 

The sheer physicality of fighting cancer is not to be underestimated. Because I was relatively unaffected by my neoadjuvant chemo, this surgery is the first time that I have been so keenly aware of how much bodily strength it takes. It makes me wonder how other patients make it through - patients who, unlike me, are not otherwise healthy, who are not young and energetic, whose reserves have been depleted by prior treatments and surgeries. I suppose that they find the strength to keep fighting because there is no other choice. We all fight because we are born wanting to live, and life only becomes more precious the more it is threatened.