Today I'm blogging about after the Civil War....
Haha - aren't I just cracking myself up? No, I went Wednesday to consult with a Oncology Plastic Surgeon about finally doing reconstruction. When I was diagnosed and treated almost seven years ago, I was told I had to wait at least two years after I finished radiation before I could have reconstruction. Because of the kind of cancer I had - Inflammatory Breast Cancer - they don't want you to do anything that could hide any recurrence, especially in the skin. So that would have been March, 2007 before I could do anything. When the time came, my best friend, who had had breast cancer about the same time I did, had just spent the last 2 years having a NIGHTMARE of a time with her reconstruction. It totally freaked me out and ex and I decided that I didn't need to do it.
He was so supportive, "it doesn't matter to me, I'm just glad you're alive. Whatever you want to do, it is major surgery....blah, blah, lie, lie" So as I've talked about before - he then tells me years later, "um - sorry, it did matter to me." So I had started thinking about doing this even before we decided to divorce. As much as anything, I'm sick of having to buy only certain kinds of tops that I can wear this huge, big strapped bra with that holds my prostheses. I'm tired of being self conscious about it. And now that I'm divorced - I'm SUPER self conscious about it and I know it had a HUGE part in me turning down Convention guy.
So anyway - I am super excited about this. I loved the doctor - he's partners with the guy that did my original surgery and he's the head of plastic surgery at the very prestigious hospital where I went. I'm going to have what is called DIEP flap surgery - which is SOOO much better than what I would have done if I'd had it back when I first could have. So once again - Yeah, God and his timing! Basically, he gives me a tummy tuck (awesome!!!) by taking the fat and blood vessels from my lower belly and using that to make new breasts. It's micro surgery because he will connect the blood vessels from there to the blood vessels in my chest wall. I'll then have 2 more out-patient surgeries - one to "tweak" them and one to make a nipple.
It's an 8 hour surgery - Yikes - and will take 6 to 8 weeks to recuperate from - Double Yikes! so I'm nervous about that. What's funny is this is much more major surgery than my mastectomies were. The good thing is that this does not take muscle like the TRAM flap surgery that is what I would have had before so it's not as bad as that would have been. I can't have simple implants because of having radiation.
But - he wants me to lose another 25 pounds. I'm supposed to go back and see him in August and we'll see where we are from there. He, like everyone else I've talked to, was very surprised about my polyps! He agrees that they need to come out.
So now I'm super motivated to lose weight. On his scaled, I've lost 15 pounds from my doc's scales in January. The pants I wore yesterday, that were part of my "fuck soon-to-be-ex" shopping spree last November were practically falling off of me. So I'm going to start kicking it up at the gym and I'm cutting out all white foods. My gyno and the doc that did the colonoscopy gave me pretty similar diets - although the gyno says double fiber wheat bread is okay and colon doc said no to bread. I think I'm going to go with gyno on this - for one thing, it's so much easier to eat a sandwich at lunch then to figure something out without bread. But also because she has pretty much followed her own diet since last October and lost a ton of weight.
Now, I just need to figure out the timing! I really wanted to go ahead and do this in the fall - but the damn polyps are going to use up my Flexible Spending money and so I'd have to come up with a HUGE co-pay out of pocket. But if I wait until January - I'm afraid I'll be cutting it too close to daughter's wedding to be able to enjoy it!
Oh, well, I'll think about that tomorrow at Tara.
Haha - aren't I just cracking myself up? No, I went Wednesday to consult with a Oncology Plastic Surgeon about finally doing reconstruction. When I was diagnosed and treated almost seven years ago, I was told I had to wait at least two years after I finished radiation before I could have reconstruction. Because of the kind of cancer I had - Inflammatory Breast Cancer - they don't want you to do anything that could hide any recurrence, especially in the skin. So that would have been March, 2007 before I could do anything. When the time came, my best friend, who had had breast cancer about the same time I did, had just spent the last 2 years having a NIGHTMARE of a time with her reconstruction. It totally freaked me out and ex and I decided that I didn't need to do it.
He was so supportive, "it doesn't matter to me, I'm just glad you're alive. Whatever you want to do, it is major surgery....blah, blah, lie, lie" So as I've talked about before - he then tells me years later, "um - sorry, it did matter to me." So I had started thinking about doing this even before we decided to divorce. As much as anything, I'm sick of having to buy only certain kinds of tops that I can wear this huge, big strapped bra with that holds my prostheses. I'm tired of being self conscious about it. And now that I'm divorced - I'm SUPER self conscious about it and I know it had a HUGE part in me turning down Convention guy.
So anyway - I am super excited about this. I loved the doctor - he's partners with the guy that did my original surgery and he's the head of plastic surgery at the very prestigious hospital where I went. I'm going to have what is called DIEP flap surgery - which is SOOO much better than what I would have done if I'd had it back when I first could have. So once again - Yeah, God and his timing! Basically, he gives me a tummy tuck (awesome!!!) by taking the fat and blood vessels from my lower belly and using that to make new breasts. It's micro surgery because he will connect the blood vessels from there to the blood vessels in my chest wall. I'll then have 2 more out-patient surgeries - one to "tweak" them and one to make a nipple.
It's an 8 hour surgery - Yikes - and will take 6 to 8 weeks to recuperate from - Double Yikes! so I'm nervous about that. What's funny is this is much more major surgery than my mastectomies were. The good thing is that this does not take muscle like the TRAM flap surgery that is what I would have had before so it's not as bad as that would have been. I can't have simple implants because of having radiation.
But - he wants me to lose another 25 pounds. I'm supposed to go back and see him in August and we'll see where we are from there. He, like everyone else I've talked to, was very surprised about my polyps! He agrees that they need to come out.
So now I'm super motivated to lose weight. On his scaled, I've lost 15 pounds from my doc's scales in January. The pants I wore yesterday, that were part of my "fuck soon-to-be-ex" shopping spree last November were practically falling off of me. So I'm going to start kicking it up at the gym and I'm cutting out all white foods. My gyno and the doc that did the colonoscopy gave me pretty similar diets - although the gyno says double fiber wheat bread is okay and colon doc said no to bread. I think I'm going to go with gyno on this - for one thing, it's so much easier to eat a sandwich at lunch then to figure something out without bread. But also because she has pretty much followed her own diet since last October and lost a ton of weight.
Now, I just need to figure out the timing! I really wanted to go ahead and do this in the fall - but the damn polyps are going to use up my Flexible Spending money and so I'd have to come up with a HUGE co-pay out of pocket. But if I wait until January - I'm afraid I'll be cutting it too close to daughter's wedding to be able to enjoy it!
Oh, well, I'll think about that tomorrow at Tara.
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