62. nearing 7 months post-op and 1.5 months since last fill

hey everyone. did you have a good hallowe'en? i did nothing for hallowe'en other than make that gorey picture in my last blog post. it was fun and creeped a lot of people out on my facebook:)

it is almost 7 months since my mastectomy. reconstruction is done and i am eagerly checking my mailbox every day for that letter that tells me my pre-op and exchange surgery is schedule. i really hope it is before christmas. that would be the best christmas present ever!

i took a looooong time to start feeling ok after my last and final fill this past sept. 29th. it was a real struggle and i thought the pain was never going to let up. but it has. i still notice tightness through out the day and a mild twinge of pain all the time but it is hundreds of times better than about 3 weeks ago.

the most pain is at night when i am trying to sleep. it feels like i have a ton of bricks on my chest when i lie on my back. switching from side to side is agonizing and i make many grunts, groans, yelps, cries of pain in the middle of the night as i switch positions. when i roll over to a different position, i cup my foobs with each hand as it eases the pain ever so slightly. i can't explain why this is so painful other than maybe it is the saline in the expanders shifting causing the shape to change which affects the muscles and all the nerve endings.

lets talk about dead skin. noooooo...not necrotic skin, but the body's natural way of sloughing off dead skin. it seems that my foobs have an excess of dead skin and because of this, my foobs and chest area are breaking out! yuck! it's not too pretty to say the least.

i try to keep up with exfoliating and moisturizing but it seems to be getting the better of me. i wonder if this is because the skin is being stretched and growing additional epithelial cells (skin cells) to keep up. lol. look at me. putting my biology vocabulary to work!

i so can't wait till exchange. did i mention that. i am looking forward to the day when i can re-build my strength back up. and my fitness level too. i have been mostly sedentary for the past 7 months and it is really getting to me. there is no sense building my muscles up right now when i still have these rock hard boulders in my chest and a second surgery would undo all of it anyways. also, i think i am still restricted from doing those types of activities.

i guess that is all for now. this doesn't seem like my average blog post, but rather a rambling, but hopefully you found some of it useful.

:)