Surgery done....home to heal

I’m home with my fancy pink bra with special drain loops and a Jackson-Pratt drain. Just one drain this time-which is nice, though I was hoping for none.
The tumor had shrunk quite a bit from the chemo, which is good, but just meant what was left had to be carefully resected from my minor pectoral muscle. That was the easy part! The part of the tumor that had overlapped my axillary vein was the tricky part. Dr Wagner had to debulk a lot of scar tissue, take some more lymph nodes that were too close to the tumor and try not to damage any nerves along the way. All this tedious work done in a very small area left those tissues and my arm highly irritated post-op.
In the recovery room my pain was so bad my blood pressure was 160’s/100. And 25mcgs of Fentanyl with IV Tylenol wasn’t even close to cutting it. I can’t even begin to describe how bad it hurt. Considering I had a bilateral mastectomy 7 years ago and spent 4 days post-op with just Tylenol for pain relief because that’s when we found out I was allergic to codeine, and this pain was worse than that....yes-it hurt and I was a wreck. The pain was a cross between numbness and tingling from my armpit to my fingers and a stabbing pain in my scapula all the while feeling like my entire shoulder area was in a vice grip. Oh, and the burning under my arm felt like a hot poker. Good news though-with all that craziness going on, I barely notice how uncomfortable the drain is!
It took lots of experimenting with pain medicines to figure out the perfect combo of Tramadol and Tylenol, Valium every 6 hours for the muscle spasms and MS Contin every 12 hours to get my blood pressure down and the pain under control enough to go home.

I have to say I have been extremely impressed with KU through all of this. The education I’ve received about every aspect of this journey from surgery to post-op care, exercises and drain care, and potential lymphedema has been amazing. My surgeon and all the staff were awesome. My first surgery 7 years ago I left the hospital with little info about restrictions and drain care, a surgeon who left town and his partner who saw me on discharge day who was less than helpful, so the fancy books I get from KU are a nice and welcome change from that previous experience.
My friend, neighbor and co-worker Sara started a Meal Train for us-let me know if you want the link. I can’t raise my right arm any higher than shoulder level and no lifting heavier than 5lbs right now so me in the kitchen, attempting to cook is definitely a no-go for a while. Thanks to my Momma and sisters for joining us yesterday and for my Rose who almost got kicked out of the Recovery Room for coming to check on me! I was coming out of my anesthesia high and writhing in pain and heard someone call me an asshole and though I couldn’t see her very clearly, I knew the voice of my favorite smart-ass former co-worker! Thanks for stopping by this morning -I was definitely in less pain!
Got a couple days of resting to look forward to, so throw me your Netflix/Hulu/Prime faves I can binge. I’ll just be waiting on pathology hopefully showing all clear margins! Thank you all for the good thoughts and prayers!
Will update later this week!
Gotta go show Brian how to strip and dump my drain!

-K