Down and Up

Photo: Stagg Photo

Well, it’s been an Up and Down time since my last post, that was the day before I went in for the big op, the bilateral M and reconstruction. A down? As I mentioned to the lovely male nurse who escorted me into the OR too bad I got this all set up before I could get Liam Neeson to come and kiss the ‘girls’ goodbye! As I lay on the narrow table being hooked up (and not in the fun way) I peeled back the sheet for a last look a hand came over my head and pulled it up again and the owner must have looked at my manly nurse as he said ‘It wasn’t me!’. I said it was me having a last look and they could bring on all the construction workers I’ve been avoiding for the past 30 odd years!!! Anyway, I wish you could meet the nurses afterwards as I wanted to thank that nurse for digging under that sheet and finding my free hand to hold when I said I was scared. I’ll always remember that soft, comforting hand…..that was definitely an Up!

Another Up…. none of the predicted nausea, even if two of the other women on my ward did their share of throwing up. Also the grapes and tangerines my dear husband brought in when I was installed in one of those fab motorized beds…. boy did I miss that when I got home he next day….had to sit up under my own steam, no mean feat with your chest all chewed up and bandaged to within an inc of it’s life! Down: having more pain from my reaction to the sticky adhesive than from the op!!!

I have to give a big thank you to both Dr Ross Walker my breast surgeon and Dr Kim Meathrel (who has U Cosmetic) my plastic surgeon, for getting together to do this ‘tag team’ procedure and getting me out of two more surgeries if I’d had mastecomy>expanders>implants.

While looking myself over soon after the op, I realized my port was gone (the bump on my chest in the Tit Bit photo) and I wondered why there wasn’t an incision like when it was put in….. then it dawned on me…. the surgeon took it out from the inside!!!! Hmmm.

HUGE Up…. second post op visit to my plastic surgeon had her look up my pathology and announce I had no abnormal cells in the tissue removed!!! Yay!

Up: my sis coming over with a fab pair of pink PJ’s from La Senza, a cake she had decorated in her cake decorating class she goes to with my niece… it was Rainbow night ….and in her PJs ready to watch TV with us and my parents who were there too! She fussed over me all weekend (what a love) and even took me out for a walk in the snow on day three. I still haven’t worn the PJ’s, I have to hab do head code, no 24/7 sports bra, no bed head…..

Though I can’t use my knitting machine for six weeks (no heavy lifting, pulling or pushing) I can hand knit with no problem. I’m knitting another of Canadian knitter Beryl Tsang’s Tit Bits as I gave the first one I made to my plastic surgeon, the nurses had a giggle over it. As my surgeon is about to give birth it’d make a cute soft baby toy for a the baby of a woman who makes her living making boobs. It actually doesn’t use as much yarn as it seems to say in the pattern in the book Knit Knit.

The picture a the top is of my feet in one of my hand knit socks… This pair is years old and I happened to be wearing them the day of my photo shoot with Deb Stagg. I love the way she’s done it in black and white but left my sock coloured.