life after reconstruction

Well i don't quite know where to start. i came home expecting a long recovery after all i had been cut from hip to hip in my stomach. my right breast was reduced and lifted my left one, the new one, was struggling to stay alive.i had seepage from my new belly button, a little from my big tummy incision, a little from my right breast all of which i had to keep gauze on. then of course there was the dying tissue on the reconstructed breast that had to be covered with 4x4`s all the time. they all had to be changed 2 or 3 times a day. i went back to the doctor in about a week and that is when the fun began so to speak. his nurse that assisted with the surgery spent a lot of time with me cleaning all the different wounds and such and the doctor came in and saw that the dying tissue was getting worse. they told me i had fat necrosis. and as a result it just kept breaking down and it was so Gross. at this point i was a nervous wreck because things weren't going as expected. not even close. well i could not hardly look at it. it grossed me out really made me sick to look at it so when the nurse asked the doctor what do you want to do about this tunneling and he said pack it. well i just started balling again. so i had a hole that went towards my breast bone and it had to have what they called a wet to dry dressing put in it. and it had to be changed 2 times a day. thank god again for Angie. i asked her if she could do it and she said yes. so she had to come morning and night to pull out the old dressing and put in new. i just thank god it didn't hurt. i have been numb on that side ever since my mastectomy. oh sometimes i would feel some sensation there or it might burn a little because we had to use sterile water. but for the most part no pain. well for a few weeks Angie did this. every week we would go back to Morgantown for a recheck . eventually that first tunnel closed itself off or healed. then i got one going straight up towards my neck. it just never seemed to end. so my doctor arranged to have home health come to my home twice a week to teach me how to deal with it and to change the dressing my self. so Angie got a break. and this is where my next new normal comes in. it took a lot of time but eventually i had been doing it my self some times. once i adjusted to it and got used to it. it was my new normal. this went on for 3 months. and it also had bacteria in it. the smell was very bad. it was a lot to deal with believe me. i would beg the doctor to fix it to do something to close it up i was ready to just take the whole thing off. i was done with the whole thing. but he would talk to me and convince me that my life was not in danger and i could do anything i wanted as long as nothing hurt and it didn't hurt even at its worst. home health measured the hole and it was 4 inches deep at its deepest and about 3 inches from the bottom towards my neck. and all the time the thing that i had hoped to call a breast was getting smaller. they called it my flap. but i wanted it to be my breast. so anyway finally in September the doctor said it was time to fix it. and it was a same day surgery he went in and basically closed up the hole and in the process moved around a little fat on the lest side to make it more proportioned. Well wouldn't you know by the time i went back to him for my follow up after that surgery it had started again. fat necrosis all over again. but this time it was 2 small holes one on the bottom and one on the left hand side. and yes i had to pack them both. the bottom one healed up first. in a few weeks it was to small to pack so i just kept gauze on it to catch the drainage till it just healed itself shut. the other hole however got bigger. home health gave me some new packing material called caltostat. it was made from seaweed. and it worked well. it was about a foot long and an inch wide i could get the whole thing in the hole . of course i lift about an inch hang out to pull it out when i changed it. this time the hole was running across the top of my breast towards my breast bone and it went back in a good ways to get all that seaweed in it. so anyway a few more weeks of that and the hole was getting smaller and smaller all the time till it got so small i couldn't get anything in it. so i put gauze on it to catch the drainage. so no i have what looks like about half a tennis ball for a breast on that side. needless to say not what i wanted to end up with. so when i go out i wear a sports bra with a little extra packing in that side to make me look even. and i have come to accept that that is what i am now. i go back to the doctor in February when he says we will talk about how to fix it. but at this point i don't want to have to go through any more major surgeries. so i think this is what i am going to be. i have been through so much and for nothing it seems sometimes. except for the fact that i have a lot of family who loves me and a wonderful husband and daughter. this is my life now and we have all excepted it. disappointing as it may be. there are worse thing in life like
CANCER!!!!!!!!!!! so i consider myself very luck to be alive and well. if any one who reads this would like to post feel free i know there will be some who may be upset understandably. and i didn't do this to scare any one. it is just a large part of how my life has been and it has helped me to write it down . though it has been hard a lot of this i had forgotten about.
cancer is very scary and sometimes has a terrible result. who is to say whether or not i might ever have it again. only god knows. so for now i will go and wish health and love to everyone who reads this. for now..
padiddle