After 11 days of snagging the tube on door handles, dog paws and occasionally Montel’s mouth, I am drainless and my drain is in the trash where it belongs. As much as I hated the drains I was dreading the removal. If you remember, I was quite the baby when I had drains pulled last time. My memory is a little foggy but I think I threw a punch at the doctor. This time around it was not so bad. Mounds took a more gentle approach, pulling slowly rather than the yank with all your might technique the doctor used last time.
I also had some of the sutures removed. All in all it was a good morning.
I am still getting used to the idea of looking down and seeing a dent where boobzilla once lived. This is the first time since this whole adventure began that I have not had some sort of expander or implant in there. Now it is just a ditch. Kind of weird.
I still have a couple more surgeries to look forward to. Going to give my body a break for a little while though. I think I start the Tamoxifen again in a week or two.
Now I am just trying very hard to get my mind cleared and my memory back. People warned me about chemo brain. They were right. It is frustrating not remembering simple things that should not even require a second thought. My long term memory is even worse but that is ok. There is a lot of stuff in my past that I would like to forget any way!
I have been using the site luminosity.com. Lots of entertaining brain games.
Have a wonderful day everyone! Big week for me. I turn 50 on Thursday! 50!! Ouch. Maybe that has something to do with the memory issues.

Mounds to the rescue. I had an appointment with Mounds on Tuesday. As expected, he was not pleased with Lefty’s appearance. He hoped that skin grafts would be able to salvage my poor abused boob. He applied a wound dressing to it, started me on antibiotics and set up an appointment for the skin grafts on Thursday.
It felt so good to finally have someone take Boobzilla seriously.
I told Mounds that I was scheduled for a brain MRI the next day. He looked a little confused, asked if it was definitely an MRI not a CT scan. Definitely an MRI. He told me to cancel that since I have a tissue expander in my right breast that has metal in it. That might be a problem with an MRI. Good to know!
After 24 hrs on the antibiotics I already started feeling better. The pressure & chest pain started to subside. After 36 hours I could take a deep breath again. I was no longer clammy all the time. Unbelievable, after weeks of multiple doctor appointments, so many test and procedures, being told that the pain and discomfort I was feeling was due to a blood clot or my cancer spreading, I was improving just by popping a few pills. Thank God for Dr Mounds.
Thursday I went in for my skin grafts. I knew there was a chance that it would turn in to a bigger surgery if the skin & tissue was too damaged and necrotic to salvage with skin grafts. I woke up with a flat chest and drain tubes. Safe to assume that my procedure was not the easy peasy one we were hoping for.
Mounds ended up removing the implant that had been placed in the surgery before radiation started. The tissue was damaged all the way to the implant.
I am feeling so much better now. Some normal discomfort from the post surgery stuff and the pesky drain issues. Other than that, it is so nice to be back on the road to recovery, relatively pain free. Life is good!

Here is the underside of Boobzilla. The discoloration is spreading. The black-yellowish area is now about 6-7 inches. It kind of oozes nastiness. This area was not initially blistered during treatment. It got red, but never got as painful as the other areas that blistered severely. It has been 3 weeks since my last radiation treatment. Why the heck is the burning getting worse? Poor Lefty is so painful, swollen and nasty looking. The doctors are not concerned. I see Dr Mounds again on Tuesday. Hopefully he will have answers.
Yesterday was my PET scan. Preliminary results are good. I will have a brain MRI on Wednesday and then will meet with the doctor to discuss all of the results.
I really think all of the pain is from something running amuck in my frankenboobie. It just does not seem normal to me. What do I know? Hopefully next week will be the week for answers.
Enjoy the weekend! Sorry for the graphic photo.