Drains

OK. So plain and simple, the drains are the worst part of the whole experience.  First of all, they are gross.  They start off looking like there is just fruit punch in there, but they get nastier.  They have to be cleaned out at least twice a day, depending on how much you are draining.  

So they are plastic tubes coming out of your body.  I had one on each side.  Each tube feeds into a plastic bulb.  The bulbs are what needs to be emptied out.  If you don't empty them it will leak all over you.  But because there is body fluid coming out, you have to make sure nothing gets clogged in the tubes.  The nurses taught me how to "milk" the drains.  It was hard at first, when I couldn't move too well, but after a couple of days, it was pretty easy.  They also had my log the amount of fluid each time I emptied them so that we would know when we could take the drains out.  That was frustrating for me because they told me that I could have them removed when the amount was under 20 in each side over a 24 hour period of time.  Well, it seemed like that would never happen.  It was very depressing to go in to empty them and see the bulb very filled.  It did decrease every day, but not as quickly as I would have hoped.

And I looked online for other people's stories with the drains.  Not the best idea.  There are posts from people who had the drains in for months.  The problem with the drains is that on top of the fact that I had no breasts except nasty looking scars, I had these 2 big bulbs to deal with.  I didn't want to go anywhere because I didn't know how to hide it all.  I was very self conscious.  

Looking back now I realize that I only had to deal with the drains for about 10 days.  The first few days I was not interested in leaving the house anyway.  So it was a week of torture.  Honestly, that's not so bad.

Home from the hospital

Well, it was great to get home.  I was sore and tired and it was hard to get comfortable. I had no problem just laying around the whole day.  Sleep was something I wasn't looking forward to because I couldn't imagine how I would get comfortable.  My husband is the best and he slept downstairs so I could just use all the pillows to pretty much sit up and sleep. He brought up the zero gravity chair from the outside deck and put soft blankets and pillows on it.  We set up a snack table and I was all set.  It's definitely something I didn't plan to deal with, so I would recommend looking into comfortable ways to sleep if you have a mastectomy.  I learned after the fact that they sell sleeping pillows and things, which I would have bought if I had known.  

They sent me home with a lot of pain meds, but I found I didn't really need them after the first couple of days.  I just took ibuprofen when I went to bed for a while. 

It actually wasn't really so bad as long as I rested.  That's hard for me.  But it was also hard to just get up and move too much, so I watched a lot of Netflix and played online alot.  I would suggest making sure you have things to do.  If you like to read, make sure you have a lot of books.  If you like to watch TV and movies, have everything handy.

Days when I tried to do too much definitely made me tired and the next day I couldn't do a whole lot at all.  So, my suggestion is to rest rest rest.