What The Heck Happened: My Mastectomy Story
It’s been six weeks since my last blog post and six weeks and a few days since my prophylactic mastectomy and wow do I have a lot to catch you up on. Let me start by saying, I am thankful for this procedure. It was an absolute blessing to be able to remove the fear of being diagnosed with BC and I will never take that for granted. .
Surgery began at 7:30 AM on February 8th. My husband and bestie were at the hospital with me at 5:30 AM keeping me busy with laughs and good energy. The second they would stop talking, I would start crying. Though I was confident with my decision to do this, the magnitude of what was actually happening to my body, both good and bad would hit me so I was thankful to have good company!
My surgery went fantastic! I had great blood flow and I was able to go direct to implant rather than having expanders placed which was something I wouldn’t know until I woke up from the surgery. Aside from waiting for pathology, that “gamble” was the next most scary thing about this. After an almost six hour surgery, and two hours in recovery, I went home and even shared an instagram story! I was feeling good and confident that given all the good news I would heal well.
Two days later, I ended up in the ER around 11 PM for a drain that was kinked. The pain was worse than labor but subsided as soon as the drain was removed. While there, the resident told me she thought my skin was struggling (ummm what?!) and I was prescribed nitro paste which is known for helping so many patients in my exact position. Two days later, things went from bad to worse and I needed to mentally prepare for an explant and removal of skin. I was crushed. There wasn’t going to be healing in just a couple of weeks as I had expected. It was going to be months in expanders before another surgery and new and larger scars than had I elected to have my skin removed prior to my direct to implant procedure. I’m going to keep this part short because I haven’t quit figured out how I want to share this but basically we (my family) decided we couldn’t give up hope. My mom learned about an off the shelf cream which can be purchased at the Tractor Supply store which has been recommended by some plastics and wound care practices for increasing blood supply. ****DISCLAIMER: TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR FIRST**** She came to my house with it and said, “I don’t even know how to tell you this but if you want to try something else I brought over horse cream!” I knew staying on my existing path was going to lead to surgery so I had nothing to lose by switching. Thank the Lord, the “farm cream” worked! Aside from calling it farm cream because it came from tractor supply, it is the most awful smelling cream and I literally could not have left the house if I wanted to! I changed my dressings with utter cream (lol!) hourly and within a few days my skin, though it looked awful, started to improve. A wise physician told me, he believed I would heal and that I needed to focus on three things. Patience, Persistence and Prayer and those three P’s stuck with me. For two more weeks I changed these dressings every hour on the hour and then for three more weeks, I changed them every 3-4 hours. Because I was seeing progress, my surgery was cancelled to see if a wound care specialist could help expedite healing. The solution was hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatments which have been incredible! I sit in the chamber with 100% oxygen for two hours every day and every day I noticed progress! It’s insane to me that some hospitals don’t even offer this treatment. But then another upset…insurance declined my treatment because it had been nearly 3 weeks post surgery which is considered late but God worked his magic and when my wound doctor called for his scheduled peer to peer appeal, the insurance company missed the call and didn’t call back! The decision needed to be made within 24 hours and because they missed the deadline, the treatments were approved!
I never imagined I would face the complications that I did or that I would have had nearly 40 appointments in 6 weeks time, but I’m thankful to be healing without additional surgeries. I am also thankful for the entire community of people that reached out to me, prayed for me, brought my family food, cleaned my house, helped with my kiddos, filled my room with flowers and the sweetest notes, and let me cry to them. Truly, my family and friends took care of us <3
Though none of this went the way I had imagined, I am healing and my cosmetic results now that my skin is happier are beautiful. Regardless of how the cookie crumbled, reducing my risk by 95% will always be worth the trouble I encountered.
