Blogging about life in Minnesota, raising our six kids with Down syndrome while battling Breast Cancer.

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor in the morning the devil says, "Oh shit! She's up!"

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Here we go again

Tomorrow I get to have have surgery again. Yay me! (said dripping with sarcasm)

Two weeks ago I went in for fills to my tissue expanders. My plastic surgeon noted that my right expander had shifted some and I also had a seroma.  While she was able to add 50cc to the expander, she also drew off almost that much from the seroma.

One week ago today I noticed the incision line on that side, which was well healed, was starting to look different. Several years ago Angela had a series of surgeries and infections, and I recognized that my scar line was doing the same thing. It was getting slightly wider, had changed color just a tiny bit, and I could see very small patches of yellow behind it. Yellow is fluid collecting.

On Weds last week I went in for a fill but knew I wouldn't be getting one. My surgeon took one look at my right side and declared a problem. She tried to pull fluid out of the tissue expander but there was nothing when there should have been about 175 cc. The expander has ruptured. The seroma is also quite large now.

We tried to get surgery scheduled for Friday last week but we just couldn't get it done. Instead I'll be having surgery tomorrow (Monday) morning I'll be having surgery to 1) remove and replace the ruptured expander 2) clean up all the tissues 3) remove some of the scar tissue that is causing me to have very limited range of motion on that side. We discussed also removing my nipples since she'll be there anyway. I had said I wanted to do it, and then I changed my mind about 500 times since then. I will have another surgery sometime in February to exchange my expanders for implants so I might just wait until that time.

I'm very anxious for tomorrow's surgery. The tissue expander is now all the way under my arm with a large collection of fluid. The bulge is about the size of a softball. I've been extremely uncomfortable and unable to sleep. Time to get this fixed! 

4 comments:

Tamara said...

Prayers that it goes well.

TUC said...

I will be thinking of you, and hoping that this is resolved, and that you feel more comfortable soon.

Betsy said...

saying prayers everything is going well with your surgery and you feel better soon!

eliz said...

praying I hope it went well. I'm sorry to hear of the problems. I had a seroma after colon surgery. No fun. ((((HUGS))))