Today I got my drain tubes removed.  I have been stressing over this for some time. I talked to many people, read many reports, asked lots of questions.  I was prepared for it.  So they remove the stitches, tell me to take a deep breath and when I breathe out they pull 12 inches of tube out of me. The first side was a bit of a shock and was pretty uncomfortable. Tinge of pain. The other side….they pulled, my blood pressure dropped and I went white. It hurt like a bitch and was the most awful feeling ever.  So out of all the things I’ve been though, drain tubes about take me out. Drain tubes suck ass! May I never have to deal with that again.

Overall the incision is healing nicely.  Everything is very sore, bruised and just awful looking. I have a lot of constriction in my upper arms and not a whole lot of feeling between my shoulders and ribs. I go back next week. If there is no fluid build up then I start physical therapy the following week. I can then start working on my range of motion and getting back to the new normal. I’m hoping I can avoid the drama of lymphedema. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed and not do anything too stupid. I think that’s my next big hurdle. But for the most part I should be on the downslope of the hill.

So for now I”m going to just chill out for another week and heal some more. I’m one more step closer to being done with all this. There are quite a lot of steps!  Next week I also go in to see my medical oncologist and do some blood work and see what the next step is on that end (more anti-hormone therapy and immunotherapy maybe) Also will see when I’ll probably start radiation.  I’ll also see when I get fitted for my prosthesis. That will pretty exciting.