I feel a bit bad having the opposite wobble to everyone facing cancelled ops - my heart goes out to you all, it really does. To be honest, I was waiting for exactly the same call, but it seems I was ‘lucky’ and squeezed in just in time. Had my surgery - bilateral mastectomy with immediate implant reconstruction - on Wednesday morning. Freaky how little I remember of the day. Was sent home on Sunday. On my own for the first time since then, and I think it’s all just hitting me in one enormous ‘eeeeep’!
I had a reduction a few months back in prep, and I think I was so terrified of that that the reality was so much better than feared. This time I think I went in a little more blase - what’s one more op?! Last stage, so good to get it all over with! - and not sure I was mentally prepared enough, so it feels so much harder on the other side this time. Maybe it’s just the ‘actually done’ thought, and facing the reality of that?
I’m quite shocked at how ‘lumpy’ the boobs are now, I just sort of assumed that a smooth/round implant would be, well, smoother and rounder. I’m weirded out to heck at the way I can feel/see the implant and the ripples and the liquidness. They did say it was 6 weeks minimum to settle, so logically I’m fine and will give it time, but it doesn’t quite hit the emotional ‘what have I done to myself?’ feel.
It seems odd to say, especially after almost a full year of discussion and debate and decisions, but the thought this morning - ‘I’ve had a mastectomy’ - was like being kicked in the gut.
I do feel like this is the low point, so posting here for some tea and sympathy please, even while I know that that would mean the only way now is up. And I’m sure that a month, two, six down the line I will be extremely grateful (again) that I had the opportunity to go the route I have, even as right now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have just called it quits and gone flat back in April, saved myself two ops and a lot of pain and stress and all that.
It took *such* a lot to accept that such an extreme risk-reducing measure was not absolutely insane to contemplate, just feeling utterly in shock that it’s finally actually, really and truly and rather permanently happened. I was so looking forward to the feeling that ‘it’ was all finally over, it’s an exhausting shock to be feeling like a lot has only just begun.
(and the long, ugly cry that I thought would help (a) hurt as my chest moved, and (b) left me utterly panicked for a moment as I just completely couldn’t breath. Argh!! I’m okay. I’m okay!)