While I was at Breastlink on the 25th, I also met with my plastic surgeon for my pre-op. There wasn't any new news in that department really. He just said that I'll be unable to lift more than 5 lbs for 6 weeks, unable to shower the first few days, and that I'll be in the hospital for about 2 days recovering. He laughed at me when he prescribed me a post-op camisole and I asked what a camisole was. Guess I'm not as girly as I thought! I hear good things about St. Joseph's Hospital so I think I'll be in pretty good hands there.
His nurse came in and took pics of my breasts (for the "before" pics, I'm sure) and then she wrote me a few prescriptions. Emend (to help me not throw up after anesthesia, as I usually do), Duricef (an antibiotic), Percocet (for pain) and Valium (to keep me from screaming I suppose, just kidding. To help my muscles stretch). She said I can't drink or eat anything after midnight on June 2nd. I need to be at Breastlink at 9:30 for Dr. Justin West to do some markings. I need to check in to St. Joseph's for lymphatic mapping/technetium in the Nuclear Medicine Department at 10:30. Mastectomy is scheduled for 2 pm, and reconstruction will be done around 5 pm.
If anybody is interested in the technical terminology, here is what they are calling my scheduled procedure: "Bilateral skin sparing mastectomy with bilateral lymphatic mapping, sentinel node biopsy and possible axillary node dissection to be followed by immediate bilateral breast reconstruction with tissue expanders and alloderm." What a mouth full! The possible axillary node dissection means that they may have to remove nodes if the biopsies test positive for cancer.
They've given me pretty much a book of information about recovery but I wanted to share a part of it that made me laugh: "Relax. Do not engage in any stressful activities. Do not lift your hands over your head. Do not lift anything heavier than a paperback book. Take care of no one, and let others tend to you." I'm pretty sure this will be happening since I'll probably be too heavily medicated to do much anyway!
The only bummer about all of this is Bria's 2nd birthday is on Saturday June 4th, and I'll be spending it in the hospital. So we celebrated her birthday today with family and neighborhood pals, and she had a blast (and was spoiled rotten, of course). The girls will be having a fun weekend at Nana's next weekend while Chris and I are at St. Joseph's. Fingers crossed for nice weather this week so we can get out there and enjoy it!