Just a little off the top please

Waking up was hard. Literally.... it took me over an hour to come out of the anesthetic. Apparently my fan club was getting restless.......... Oh yes! I had a Fan Club..... Had i known I really had a fan club Id have started to charge admission............. What is the going rate for letting people wait for you in the hospital and to try and peek a glimps of the new flat chested you? . Hindsight.......LOL

I had a waiting room full of people waiting for me. Manny of course and FRIENDS!! All of whom cared about me at that moment., My friend Lori was there My friends from Saskatchewan were there, made the trip to be there with me............. All I remember when i came too was that the nurse told me that I had quite the fan club waiting for me............. i really felt loved at that moment

Obviously the firs thing you think of when coming out of surgery was " did they actually DO anything?"
Honestly, It felt like i was out for 5 minutes. I was scared that they found out it was nothing and I went through the anguish of the previous week for naught........ or worse........ it was worse than expected and they sewed me back up........

3 seconds later my thoughts were answered. a blast of pain to the whole chest area. YUP! I was flat
bandaged all around my chest, the tape was pulling  a bit........ It was done........ no looking back now

As i was wheeled up to my room, I was not expecting what happened next. There were 10 people WAITING to see me..... it was amazing. They had to take turns coming to see me, I was allowed 2 at a time and the first person I wanted was Manny. I did not want him to leave. I had a revolving door of people to see me all night. It was comforting to know that i was loved ( or that they were just morbidly curious.LOL Could I blame them?)

It was a HUGE adjustment for me to be "topless"I didnt really care as much s I thought while I was in teh hospital because i was in pain... I just needed the meds to get through the day .

One thing I hate about hospitals is having to share a room. |I really wanted to have a room to myself but there were no privates left in the hospital for me to have, so I had to share. GREAT....... Last time i got admitted overnight for a minor surgery the lady had a heart attack in the bed bveside me at 3:30 AM.. How inconsiderate..........

Well it was even worse........ I had a wonderful Native lady beside me.. she was sweet, and scared to be getting a mastectomy too, only she was getting just one removed, we chatted a bit that night in between her millions of visitors.. this is one reason why i love the native culture so much they truly believe in FAMILY....... and well ............ this lady must have been grandmother to the whole tribe. She had a revolving door of guests too........... that lasted MUCH MUCH later than when Manny was finally kicked out at 10:30 pm. Se we were quiet..... real quiet, Listening to my ipod together, each having one headphone........... yeah.. not much sleep there.......just when the kicked one round of guests out.. another round would show up 30 minutes later. Im wondering if they had a schedule set up around the clock or something...... SHEESH.

I ended up staying 2 nights in the hospital, and ended up experiencing something totally interesting DRAINS! yes yes, the wonderful world of drains. Anyone who has NOT had a drain in their body for any length of time consider yourself lucky. See they did not tell me about these drains that would be in my body.. so not only was i scarred from armpit to armpit but i had long tubes hanging out of me that was collecting some sort of funky fluid that was coming from god knows where. It totally grossed me out. and these drains were not easy to hide.. I swear they were the size of a small dessert plate on the bottom, attached by the tube.... HMMM come to think of it, i should have pined them to my chest and called them my new boobs.... oh yes that hindsight............

It wasn't until I had to get dressed to go home that i finally realized what had happened. I remember crying in the bathroom getting dressed, i was hideous........... who would want to be my friend let alone be married to me anymore.

My body image from then on changed. It wasn't untiI had my reconstruction in September of 2010 that i realize how much that in between me, that boobless, topless me really made me feel.
I did not feel whole
Oh yes I had everyone telling me that i was the same girl, that i was perfectly woman still, cliche after cliche after cliche................ all coming from people who had not been there done that........ I had. I joined that sick club and bought the Tshirt.

Doesn't matter what people say to you at this point.  I was not whole and I was sure I would never be again.... The worst part for me was having showers, its the one time in the day you have to be totally naked with a giant mirror on the wall when you get out. I hated being naked. I am sure it was at least a full year until I cold really look at myself in the mirror. really look at me and be somewhat comfortable looking back at myself.

and sex........... yeah sex...... that was something that did not happen much at all after that...... I just remember looking into the mirror one time we were having sex and that was it, I was done, all I saw was this boobless, hairless THING. i felt sooooo unattractive.

I finally came into my own about the whole no breast thing, but really it wasn't until I had my reconstruction that i realized how much my life was different with out breasts. I was not as ok as I thought i worked myself into between my Mastectomy and Reconstruction.
I guess that means that we do come to a place of normalcy about what you go through, but until you get that reconstruction you really never are the same, Not to say Im the same now cause I am most certainly am not the same person I was before surgery. There is no way you can go through this and stay the same,
There is something that gets at the core of you that changes everything in your life when you have to go through that Cancer Diagnosis.  Small things become very important. I celebrate more

I celebrate everything I can now. things like my anniversary date if my mastectomy, my anniversary date of being done treatment, and I am sure I will celebrate the "Birthday" of the "Twins" as well.

Once we start to celebrate the wonderful things in life, we can truly start to enjoy it.

I really encourage everyone to post on here one thing you will celebrate this week. I want you all to remember those among us who are dealing with a Cancer diagnosis over the holiday season and how much they must have celebrated being alive............ I celebrate being alive EVERYDAY

This week I will celebrate 20 years since Manny and I started dating!

"for a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin=real life. but there was always some obstacle in the way and at last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."
Fr. Alfred D'Souza