Morphine and nachos and I can handle anything.

My second surgery, a partial mastectomy, was a little bigger production than my previous lumpectomy. Well actually as far as production goes, it was probably less involved, but the surgery and time in initial recovery lasted quite a bit longer. I did not have to go through the episode in the frozen mammography room with the vice grips and wire insertion and picture taking, thank God. If they'd have tried that with my previous incision and bruising still not completely healed, let me tell you, I'd either have be frozen from the neck down or someone would have gotten killed.

I was scheduled to arrive at Patient Registration at 11:30. I arrived a few minutes early and was being called into the OR before I even got my gown and slippers on.

I was asleep by noon and I was crying when I woke up about 1:10. I don't cry easily and I can only assume it wasn't caused by some tender touching dream I was having, but rather the extreme pain that I felt in what was remaining of my left boob. A nurse arrived right away and started pumping Gravol and morphine into my IV. If I'd had more energy I'da jumped off the bed and kissed her feet.

There was no "wide awake" feeling this time. I went through that "sleep for 15 seconds, wake for 15 seconds" routine that is more my normal way of awakening from anesthetic. I was not nauseous and my throat was hardly irritated at all.

I remained hooked to monitors and my IV, receiving hits of morphine, in the recovery room for 2 hours before they wheeled me to the day surgery room.

I could only see part of the waiting room from where my bed was and I couldn't see Alb.
"Is my husband here?" I asked the nurse.
"Not yet," her reply.

I was a little surprised by this since it had been three and a half hours since he left the hospital.

We repeated the same conversation a few times over the next half hour till finally about 3:40 I asked if anyone had actually called him yet. Of course they hadn't. So they did. And 10 feet away, on the bench in the hallway his phone vibrated. The poor guy had been waiting out there - with Jed- almost the entire time.

It took all the energy I could muster, along with help from Alb, to get dressed. I gladly accepted a wheelchair ride to the truck this time.

While I was exhausted, sadly surgery did nothing to suppress my appetite. I swallowed a couple of T3s and ordered up a plate of nachos from the kitchen. Probably not most people's first choice of meal after not eating for 20 hours and having surgery, but being a nacho-a-holic it's all I could think about.

Unlike the previous surgery, I didn't phone half my family, send out emails and blog immediately upon arriving home. I spent the rest of the day fading in and out of sleep and eating massive amounts of food.

It's hard to tell with all the bandaging (significantly more than last time) but there is a definite noticeable difference in size. The sister on the left, who used to be the dominant one, will spend the rest of her life in the shadow of her now larger sister on the right. Had I not just broadcast this to the entire world, no one besides me probably would have noticed.

Notice the bowl nearby just in case the nachos didn't sit well.
Turns out I didn't need it.