Only 12 more days until reconstruction surgery. I'm losing weight and my therapist thinks it might be as a result of the adrenaline surging through my body. The closer I get, the more anxious I become.
I don't have any fear that the surgery won't go well. I chose M.D. Anderson because they 're experts at breast cancer and my plastic surgeon has performed this operation hundreds of times. I'm anxious because I don't wish to be hurt anymore. I'm tired of constantly being hurt in one way or another for the past year.
I start to think of it--the drains, the alcohol swabs, the pain--and it makes me terrified. I can't stand the smell of rubbing alcohol from my previous two surgeries (the surgical biopsy and mastectomy). They will make me eat chicken broth, which is another thing I hate from my last hospital stay.
The bed I was in the last time I was there was designed to prevent bed sores, I think. It periodially inflated itself in some places, especially if I changed position. The mattress would compensate by poofing up in some other area. It made a mechanical noise every time it moved and it used to wake me up every time.
I was sick for a couple of days after my mastectomy. Nurses would come in and tell me to drink water. Whenever I drank water and immediately threw up.
I try to console myself with the thought that I will have a new breast when it's all over. Pain trumps the thought of looking normal again. I don't want to do this, but I'm going to have to do it.
