Too Freaking Tired

     So surgery turned out to be an adventure. Have you ever known me to do anything by the book?

1.  Open me up to find that there is a huge tumor in the right breast that the MRI didn't show because it was hidden in the nipple. 
2. It was also a different kind of cancer from the cancers in the left breast. 4-hour surgery becomes 5 hours. 
3. Lymph nodes in the right armpit respond to the dye test. They scoop out about 30 nodes and find one contains cancer. We're now at a 7-hour surgery. 
4. I go into post-op and as I begin to some out of anesthesia my blood pressure spikes and blows a clip off an artery. Heigh-ho and it's back into surgery I go. 
5. I wake up at 10 pm -- having gone under at 11 am -- to be told I'm cancer free. 
6. I had four drains, which Jack cleared like a pro. However, one of the drain sites had a back-up inside my body, so that leaked like a French toilet down my back. 
7. I slept on a pee pad because they absorb better and don't stay wet. Nevertheless, between the leaky drains and my inability to use my right arm, we have 3 loads of wash a day, and an occasional mopping of the bathroom or living room floor. 
8. All told, the left has a large anchor where my breast should be. My right also has an anchor that then trails off to the mark of Zorro under my armpit. 
9. I saw both doctors yesterday, and they declared the whole job a great success and the plastic surgeon was VERY please with the way it looked. His assistant even nodded behind his back as if to say, "He's not crazy. This really looks good." 

I just wanted to cry And still do! Beyond the success, there will be 6 more months of treatments    between the expanders being inflated and the Tamoxifen from the oncologist, whom I haven't met yet but hope to in the next week. 

 Jack is a trooper. In the midst of all this, his cousin who is as close as a brother to him finally surrendered to an intervention from his friends and went to the hospital where he learned the cancer we all suspected he had is beyond any aid. Jack is his POA, and so while I sleep, he goes to the hospital to see Doug and check in with doctors and manage Doug's sister (who is a looney-toon) and consult with Doug's friends who have raised thousands for his treatment. 

 AT home, he's been emptying my drains and maintaining records of their output and color; changing my paddings and gauzes, meting out pills at appropriate times -- which meant waking up at 2:30 am, and helping me with getting dressed. I've been able to spare him the disgusting aspects of personal hygiene. 

 I don't know if I mentioned, but we were able to secure a free hospital-style bed. It's huge, so Jack and I get to snuggle at night when I'm too exhausted for anything. It's quite pleasant. 

 So that's where I am so far. 

A long way to go and a lot of sleeping each day, which I hate because I feel I'm wasting time even though I know I'm healing from some pretty major stuff. Oh, one last anecdote: When I came home, I could not keep my CPAP mask on. It fairly blew itself off my face, and I could not make it behave. I called my pulmonologist and explained I'd just had a double mastectomy and perhaps with my drug-altered breathing, he could direct them to lower the PSI force. He said, "That sometimes happens if there's been some serious lung issues or maybe you've had a sudden loss of weight?" I gave him 3 beats before saying, "Well, they did just cut off my tits."