Pain Killer

Moving into our new house early January 2006 probably helped my recovery time. I never lifted anything extremely heavy but my doctor encouraged me to stretch my right arm as much as possible. Moving light things and putting things away kept me moving and using my arm. Surprisingly the first two weeks after surgery wasn't too bad. I never even filled up my Vicoden prescription. I won't lie though, the process wasn't a piece of cake. I couldn't lift either arms above my head to get dressed and undress. Buttoned or zippered tops were my choice of tops for many weeks following my surgery. My drains were gross and I had to be very careful not to pull on it. Luckily, it was removed just a few days after.

The port for my expander and my port for my infusion gave me the most pain at that time. I went back to work about ten days post mastectomy. My chest was still very tender and the last thing I wanted to do was to have a student bump into me.

My first filling of saline for my reconstructed breast was extremely uncomfortable. My chest felt tight and it was difficult to breathe. I felt like I was going to burst and it made my chest hurt.

From that point on I started having horrible pain in my breast. It seemed as if the continued filling of saline biweekly did not help my pain. It was becoming difficult to drive my stick shift car. It hurt getting in and out of bed.

I started seeing my plastic surgeon about the pain but he told me that it was my cut nerves from the mastectomy and sent me away. I was having a miserable time at work and at home. I started taking OTC pain meds.

My mom flew in for my start of chemo. I remember the horrible pain in my chest that weekend she arrived. It got so bad that I tried to get an appointment over the weekend with my plastic surgeon but he was in Mexico. Luckily there was an on call surgeon there. I immediately liked him much more than my original one. He assured me that it was not an infection and asked me if I was taking my prescribed pain meds from my surgery. I explained to him that I never got them filled and I think that shocked him. He rewrote me a prescription for Vicoden and sent me home.

I believe I have a pretty high tolerance for pain and even more so after all this. I just recall how miserable I was from the end of January 2006 to my tragic removal of my reconstructed breast in mid March of 2006. How did my quick recovery turn out so horrible? There were nights that I got home from teaching and I was in tears because of the pain. I had to start driving RJ's automatic car because shifting in my car would bring tears to my eyes. My plastic surgeon continued to fill my reconstructed breast with saline. It got to a point where I had to ask him to not put so much in. I should have went with my gut feeling on him. There wasn't enough pain killer available to erase all the emotional hurt I experienced throughout the process of getting my reconstructed breast and losing it.