MissPiggySue
Emeritus SSBBW
I am so grateful for all your prayers, healing agnostic thoughts, karmic vibes, and atheistic "good lucks". 
They all came in very handy these last few weeks.
As many of you know, the cancer I fought in 2002 and 2003 returned this summer, and I had a double masectomy on July 12. It has been a difficult healing. Within a week of surgery, I had a raging staph infection which was very serious. I finally managed to fight it off after about 5 weeks, with the help of some super duper antibiotic cocktails, which left me feeling wrung out to dry. I was also left with a hole the size of a fist in my chest, which home health nurses come every day to clean and pack. Now I've developed another infection, but it is not life-threatening, just annoying, and it keeps the wound from healing well.
I tried to go back to work this past week, but it was very difficult. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. The surgeon keeps telling me that I need to rest to heal, but I also know that I was off work for six weeks and I need to make money to keep home and hearth together and, anyway, I like what I do. The doctors and nurses keep talking to me about disability, but every ssbbw I know who has taken disability got worse, not better, after going on disability.
If I do it, it will be so I can have time to take care of myself, do my physical therapy, go deep-water running and water-walking... that sort of thing. But I fear I would end up watching Dr. Phil and Oprah or something grim like that. I've always held down two or three jobs at a time plus a couple of avocations and volunteer gigs. I know I sound driven... I'm really not... I just get bored easily. Anyway, I suspect I will keep trying to work until I just cannot.
It was interesting how they did the surgery, should anyone be interested. I saw a plastic surgeon about possible breast reconstruction later on, and she recommended to the surgeon that she leave as much skin as possible. She said that my skin was already stretched to the limit, and it would likely not be able to be stretched much more with implants. So my surgeon left all the skin as well as the fat tissue in order for it to not look quite so "saggy". I had lots of fat tissue, it seems, and one of the breasts would almost look normal if it had a nipple on it. The other one had been the victim of radiation, a partial masectomy, and a bunch of other tortuous ordeals, so it was pretty much a mass of scar tissue inside. It's the one that had so much trouble with the infections. So it is much smaller with much less fat tissue. I call the fat one my "breastette" and the small one my "booblet". Don't ask why. I don't know.
When I first saw myself in the mirror, I cried because it looked like I'd been hacked by a machete. But as it healed, I realized what the surgeon was trying to do, and now I can appreciate it. I don't know if I will be able to have the reconstruction after I finish with chemotherapy, but if not, we can just leave them like this, and I can stuff socks into the smaller side, like we used to do in junior high. Or the surgeon can take all the tissue off, and I can wear those masectomy bras and prostheses. I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer the socks, though.... I could just relive my youth.
So, the girls are gone, and I've been so sick I'm not sure I've grieved them. On the other hand, I'm glad to get the cancer out... it was a Grade 3, which is a bad kind... very aggressive and invasive. The good news is that it had not yet spread to my lymph nodes, and with chemotherapy, we should be able to stop the spread through the blood stream to other organs. I won't start chemotherapy until the wound left from the staph infection is fully healed... about a month more, they say.
So there's my update. Again, thanks for your emails of encouragement and your well-wishes. It meant a lot to me.
Here's an attempt at getting closure... :bow:
In memoriam:
View attachment secretsmile.jpg
They all came in very handy these last few weeks. As many of you know, the cancer I fought in 2002 and 2003 returned this summer, and I had a double masectomy on July 12. It has been a difficult healing. Within a week of surgery, I had a raging staph infection which was very serious. I finally managed to fight it off after about 5 weeks, with the help of some super duper antibiotic cocktails, which left me feeling wrung out to dry. I was also left with a hole the size of a fist in my chest, which home health nurses come every day to clean and pack. Now I've developed another infection, but it is not life-threatening, just annoying, and it keeps the wound from healing well.
I tried to go back to work this past week, but it was very difficult. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. The surgeon keeps telling me that I need to rest to heal, but I also know that I was off work for six weeks and I need to make money to keep home and hearth together and, anyway, I like what I do. The doctors and nurses keep talking to me about disability, but every ssbbw I know who has taken disability got worse, not better, after going on disability.
If I do it, it will be so I can have time to take care of myself, do my physical therapy, go deep-water running and water-walking... that sort of thing. But I fear I would end up watching Dr. Phil and Oprah or something grim like that. I've always held down two or three jobs at a time plus a couple of avocations and volunteer gigs. I know I sound driven... I'm really not... I just get bored easily.
Anyway, I suspect I will keep trying to work until I just cannot. It was interesting how they did the surgery, should anyone be interested. I saw a plastic surgeon about possible breast reconstruction later on, and she recommended to the surgeon that she leave as much skin as possible. She said that my skin was already stretched to the limit, and it would likely not be able to be stretched much more with implants. So my surgeon left all the skin as well as the fat tissue in order for it to not look quite so "saggy". I had lots of fat tissue, it seems, and one of the breasts would almost look normal if it had a nipple on it. The other one had been the victim of radiation, a partial masectomy, and a bunch of other tortuous ordeals, so it was pretty much a mass of scar tissue inside. It's the one that had so much trouble with the infections. So it is much smaller with much less fat tissue. I call the fat one my "breastette" and the small one my "booblet". Don't ask why. I don't know.
When I first saw myself in the mirror, I cried because it looked like I'd been hacked by a machete.
But as it healed, I realized what the surgeon was trying to do, and now I can appreciate it. I don't know if I will be able to have the reconstruction after I finish with chemotherapy, but if not, we can just leave them like this, and I can stuff socks into the smaller side, like we used to do in junior high. Or the surgeon can take all the tissue off, and I can wear those masectomy bras and prostheses. I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer the socks, though.... I could just relive my youth. So, the girls are gone, and I've been so sick I'm not sure I've grieved them. On the other hand, I'm glad to get the cancer out... it was a Grade 3, which is a bad kind... very aggressive and invasive. The good news is that it had not yet spread to my lymph nodes, and with chemotherapy, we should be able to stop the spread through the blood stream to other organs. I won't start chemotherapy until the wound left from the staph infection is fully healed... about a month more, they say.
So there's my update. Again, thanks for your emails of encouragement and your well-wishes. It meant a lot to me.
Here's an attempt at getting closure... :bow:
In memoriam:
View attachment secretsmile.jpg
