I suppose y'all thought I fell into some sort of hole in the earth. Not so. Just was taking a break from it all. I've been working hard on rebuilding my stamina which seems to be the only residual from my surgery. On days when the weather isn't so depressing, I've been walking along the boardwalk. I walk down to the post office everyday to get the mail. And today I got out to do errands. Everyday I get home, I just collapse though. I'm definitely improving, but it's in very small increments. I start back to work on Wednesday, so we'll see how it goes...
I had another follow up appointment with my doctor today. We discussed the next phase of 'rebuilding' me. There are four things he's planning on doing; two of which are "clipping my dog ears and making my cats eyes smaller." And I swear to you that is exactly what he said!! But I'll break it all down in 'human' language.
- As mentioned before, he will re-do my abdominal incision to give it a nice small scar. There were areas that opened up during my infection so now my scar is rather wide in a few places.
- At either end of my abdominal incision (which ends right around the love-handle areas) the skin has formed little triangles. These are what he calls the 'dog ears.' He's going to smooth these out because dog ears coming out of your love-handles is completely unacceptable in most social scenarios.
- Gravity has taken its toll. (He told me this would happen, but he really didn't have to. I'm well aware of this horrifying phenomenon from past experience.) During my surgery, he had to remove a small part of the 4th rib on each side. The breast mounds have settled a bit and now I have what can only be described as an area that is concaved just over each breast. So he needs to insert a little more fat to make it look more natural and less like a breast implant.
- Lastly, he will insert my new nipples and decrease the size of the skin islands, which incidentally are shaped like cats eyes.
The surgery should take around 3 hours or so and I'm scheduled for March 23rd. He said I'll be out of commission for a few days, but I should be back to work by the following Monday or Tuesday.
Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season. Things have been very low key here. Gary had to work Christmas night, so we haven't really participated much in holiday festivities. He made a really scrumptious breakfast on Christmas morning and then we took the dogs on a nice walk. It was actually very nice just to spend time together and not be so caught up in all of the gift insanity or all of the cooking craziness he is usually involved in. Seeing as he is working on New Year's Eve, I plan on doing something completely different to ring in the new year. I'm going to celebrate behind closed eyelids. Usually we are out celebrating, but I figure I'm going to welcome the new year the next morning well rested. Philosophically, I think it's a great start to 2008.
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