Thursday, May 10 – And the Good News is…

For some reason I have been extra tired this past week. After last Thursday and all that frustration I was excited to have my cousin come visit and make a trip down to Escondido to surprise everyone in my Faire family with a surprise visit.

Deda arrived Friday night and we were home by about 9PM. Deda said we had to do show and tell with our boobs. Since she had a reduction many years ago, and has some experience with Plastic Surgery and what can be fixed she wanted to see what I was upset about and to show me what my boobs would look like once they completely healed.

So we did show and tell. I’ve seen her breasts before, and was impressed with her reduction and how the scars faded. Her boobs look like normal, natural boobs. Mine, not so much. She looked at mine, could see how the right one is smaller, sags, and pulls to the right. It folds over and touches my chest wall below my breast. She complained about one of her nipples being more oval rather than round, but I’ve had the same problem with my left nipple/areola as well, and this was before surgery. She also is a little frustrated that her nipples point slightly out rather than forward. That could be normal position as well. These are little things she doesn’t like about her breasts. I told her how I don’t like that mine are square on the bottom, flat. They sit so high up now too, higher than my pre-surgery breasts ever did. Even when they were perky little teenage boobs, they have never been this high on my chest.

And there is the smaller, saggier, pull to the right, right breast with the leaky hole at the bottom where my vertical incision and horizontal incision meet.
Deda agreed this is a bad boob job. It can be fixed, and just as Hubby says, wait until next year before I seek a second opinion to get them fixed. I am still worried that trying to fix them will only make them worse and I’ll go through all this pain again for nothing, to still hate my boobs.

Enough with the boob sharing, we went to bed so we could get up the next morning and go to Faire. We didn’t leave as early as we had originally planned; we lay in bed and talked in the morning for over an hour. We talked about my neuropathy, and I was able to finally put a decent description to how my fingers feel. It feels like have really thick calluses on all my finger tips and they always feel super dry, like they should be cracked and peeling dry. Then when I have used them too much (which doesn’t take a lot), the tingly numbness sets in as well, and they just ache with that tingly numbness in my fingertips and it lasts for hours. This is one reason why I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, the minute my feet hit the floor and I start doing anything, that tingly numb ache sets in and doesn’t go away.

Hubby said last week that once we know for sure if we have to change our primary care physician we will make an appointment to get a referral to a neurologist to get input from an expert on neuropathy and get advice on what exercise is best for me so I can start getting back on track to my weight loss program that I has started last year. We both think this will help me feel better about myself.

Anyway, Deda and I stopped at Starbucks, I got a little caught up with one my other favorite baristas who only works on the weekends, and away we went to faire. We arrived about 10 minutes before gate opening and we were allowed to check in as Gate Listed and hurry back to our encampment to surprise those sitting there (except our guild mistress who knew I was coming as she had to submit the gate list to the producers of the Faire).

We were told which tent we could use to dress and we changed into fair garb. My feet don’t like any kind of pressure on them, so just putting on socks will trigger the “ache”. There are intensities to the ache, so socks is minor, but walking makes it much worse. The thicker the cushion in my shoes, the longer I can walk before the ache starts to really bother me. Deda and I did take a walk through the faire site, and I visited with one of my friends that has the fairy encampment on the other side of the fair. It was nice to see her in her element and listen to the fairy stories told to the kids on the “Queen’s Quest”. Fairies also trade with “dragon tears”, “doubloons, and “trinkets”. It was fun watching the kids making trades with Danu and her fairies.

Several trips were made to the Lemonade vendor for nice cool fresh cups of lemonade. I made it until about 3 PM, by then I was ready to call it a day. I was too tired to interact with people anymore and my feet were starting to get to the point where I didn’t want to have anything on them anymore. I had already removed my faire boots and the thought of putting them back on for any length of time was daunting.

The Darling Daughter helped us carry all our stuff back to the car and we called Hubby to let him know we were on our way home. We all decided since it was the final round of Super Cross we would order pizza and watch the races that night.

Sunday Deda and I went to Starbucks again and headed over to the tea shop in old Torrance to pick up some of their Earl Grey Tea. It was some of the best Earl Grey I’ve had and I’ve wanted to try more since last December when we went there to have a Tea date. It was right after that when my tastebuds all went out and dairy started tasting horrible. Since I like my black tea with cream and sugar, going back to get Tea from the shop was not something on my radar.

We knew The Darling Daughter would not be coming over for dinner so decided since we had to take Deda back to the airport we would take the Middle Son and his girlfriend and go out to dinner. We also planned a movie for Hubby, Deda and I earlier in the day. We went to see the latest Avengers movie at Deda’s now favorite movie theater. They have great reclining pre-assigned seats.

I have been extra tired ever since last weekend. I think I was able to catch up finally. I had a hard time sleeping last night, but I slept in extra long today. Yesterday Dr. Goldberg’s office confirmed that the culture taken from the cavity in my boob came back completely negative. So that is a good thing, I guess. No infection, just my boob stopped healing. Hopefully the cuts Dr. Goldberg made in the tissue will work and the healing process has started again.

I still have not heard back from my PCP’s office about whether all my specialists are in the new “group” my PCP joined. I called there again today and spoke with a different gal who tried once again to tell me that all current appointments will be honored. Well that is not good enough as I still have radiation treatment to go and I like the radiation oncologist and don’t want to change right now. And I still have the hole in my boob, and Dr. Goldberg needs to fix her mess with that before I let her off the hook. She knows I don’t like my right boob, but I don’t think she realizes I don’t like either boob.

So that is my good news, no infection. And I am not imagining that my boobs are ugly, and the plastic surgery was just bad. Now I just have to wait until next year before I decide if I’m going to do anything about it. Deda did ask me if I could do it all over what I would do differently. I’d probably ask for a flap transfer or fat graft to make up for the tissue removed during the lumpectomy rather than have my left breast reduced to match. I think that would be a better choice for me, if I could have done this differently. I forgot that could have been an option, or to even ask if that was an option. Either that, or just live with one breast smaller than the other. I thought that would be difficult to deal with. Having a bad boob job, that’s been worse to deal with.

Life is living with your decisions