Okay. So part three! From before the surgery to almost two weeks after.
So a week before surgery, I get a call from the doctor's office saying insurance hasn't cleared me yet, and asking if I wanted to reschedule the surgery. No. NO. NOPE. I start freaking out, call the insurance company, am on hold and feel really rude because I'm out to lunch with people. They tell me that they don't have a WHOLE bunch of really basic information. Things such as my height and weight and breast size are missing from their records. This doesn't make ANY sense to me, because the doctor's office is super thorough and because I WATCHED THEM write all of that information down when I had my consult. So, I hang up with insurance and call the doctor's office, they get mad at the insurance company, because not only had they given the insurance company all of that information, but they had a case number on it already. Thankfully, I get a call two days later saying that I'm approved. HOORAY! Now is just the waiting.
I went up with Chris and Bailey to visit my parents the weekend before the surgery. My Dad fixed my car, and we all did some local exploring and shopping. My parents live in this beautiful rural area of Connecticut, in a HUGE house in the middle of the woods. I'll have to write a whole entry about it at some point, but it's amazing. We ate some really awesome food and went to some really cute places. Upon leaving my parents', we stopped on the way at my Grandma's nursing home to celebrate her 95th birthday. She's got pretty bad dementia, and just got put on hospice, so the whole event was sort of bittersweet. After just a little bit of prying, we got her to say "I love you," to me, which was wonderful. Chris is such a trooper with things like this too. It's sort of an awkward situation to be in a room with an older person who doesn't have many of their faculties left if you don't have any direct relation to them, but he just comes along and smiles and waves and holds my hand when I need it. It's nice.
So anyway, I get back home and on Monday at 4pm, I'm supposed to go in for my markings. I get there at 3:30, and then the fun part starts. I had heard rumors that you could be sitting in Dr. Letourneau's office for a whole day, but hadn't yet experienced them until then. When I get into the office and sign in, I realize that the mother of someone I went to preschool with is in the waiting room, also waiting to get marked for a breast reduction. We start to catch up, and at around 5, I send Chris off to the grocery store to shop for the week. Turns out, I could have gone with him and still gotten back to the office with time to spare. Now, Dr. Letourneau is widely known to be THE BEST when it comes to plastic surgery, so in the reading the tale of my waiting, please do not think I was at all bothered by this. One day of waiting is worth the results. Turns out, the reason I was waiting so long was that the two front desk people that she had just fired had over booked appointments (she's only in the office two days a week), and hadn't properly entered them into the system. So, I'd been scheduled to see the doctor at 4pm, and didn't end up getting in to see her until about 9:45pm. And even then, the markings took her about 40 minutes to do. Again, ALL WORTH IT. Now the markings are exactly what they sound like. She takes a marker, and draws where the surgical incisions are going to be made. It was actually kind of cool, and I could really see how things were going to work when it came to surgery. So Chris picks me up at 10:30 and we go home. Now for more waiting.
I don't remember what I did Tuesday, so that's obviously not important.
Wednesday, I was scheduled to get to the hospital at 11:00, so I did, but didn't end up going in for surgery until about 3:30. This was the worst part of the waiting. I hadn't been able to eat since midnight the night before, so I was cranky and hungry and in a bad mood. Eventually my parents got there, and then after a few more hours of waiting, I was taken in to surgery.
When I woke up, the first thing I did was ask for pizza. Apparently I shocked the nurses and everyone else with how lucid I was right after surgery. I was in a bit of pain so they gave me dilaudid and transferred me to my room. The ride in the elevator was the only time I was nauseous, and once I got to my room they gave me zofran to help with that and a shot of morphine in the butt. I was out of it, but didn't really sleep that night because the combination of the pain killers made me so itchy. But I got through the night and got discharged at about 4pm the next day.
The next few days weren't as bad as I expected. I was sore, but not in too much actual pain, and I didn't need the pain killers nearly as much as I thought I would. The worst part of Thursday through Sunday was that I was wrapped really tightly in gauze. It made it difficult to take in a full breath, and it was hard to feel good about it because I couldn't see any of the results. But then, Monday came! Caitlin had the pleasure of driving me to the doctor's office, and apparently also had the pleasure of watching the entire waiting room hear me yell (from my examination room), "Oh my God, I LOVE THEM!" AND I DO! Despite being a bit Frankenstein-y, the shape and size of my breasts is amazing.
Since then, I've gotten the stitches taken out, and aside from a bit of soreness and stiffness, I was doing generally okay. That is until I started breaking out into hives and learned that I am allergic to the anti-biotic that I was taking. So now, I'm on steroids and have the ghosts of a whole ton of red rashy spots. They're fading quickly though.
So yeah, I think that's all that's interesting. I love that I did this, and can't wait to go get new bras and clothes in two weeks when I'm able to return to total normalcy!
My next post will not be about my boobs, so look out for either a book review, a post about Bailey, or maybe some thoughts on the musical I'm writing.
<3B
