You are allowed to shower the day after the surgery. The main restriction post surgery is that you cannot lift more than 10 lbs (about the weight of a gallon of milk) for about two weeks following. They also want you to wear a snug bra 24/7 for a while to hold everything in place.
After a few days they encourage you to start walking daily. I had a membership at the Norfolk Botanical Garden so that became my favorite place to walk. As someone who hates the heat though, walking outdoors in Virginia summer wasn't always a pleasant experience. In addition to the garden, there was a nearby park with shaded trails so I walked there quite a bit also. I walked about 3 miles almost daily. I also had a membership at the Virginia Beach recreation center. After about a week or so, I spent about 30 minutes on the stationary bike periodically on days when it rained or was too hot to walk outside. I don't think I was supposed to just yet though.
All of the walking had me feeling better, and I noticed I don't stress eat sweets when I am not working. I noticed I was starting to lose a little weight like I wanted. Overall I felt ok, but I wasn't healing as well as I thought I would.
I had a lot of complications from my surgery. I had three incisions sites for removal of multiple tissue samples. Outer left breast, under the right nipple, and outer right breast. About a week after, I noticed hardness around the two outer incision sites. I either had seromas or fat necrosis. The surgeon thinks it's the latter. Both of these can take months to heal. Mine are pretty sore, and laying on the sides was not possible. I fortunately had an adjustable bed base that let me incline the head of the bed up some. That helped me sleep on my back. It also helped that I had a soft bed. In addition to the fat necrosis, the incision site around the nipple wasn't healing well. It would seep blood from one edge so I had to put a small piece of non-adhesive pad on it to keep my bra from staining. Something they used during surgery irritated my nipple also and it turned parts of it black. I was worried my nipple was necrotizing and at one point told a friend I thought my nipple was going to fall off. It didn't.
Pain for the most part was tolerable. They give you some reusable ice packs which I used quite a bit the first week. I only took few of the oxycontin pills they gave me. It was mostly at night to help me sleep. The pills make you drowsy and you can't drive while on them so I avoided taking them during the day.
The first follow-up after surgery is usually about a week. For a lumpectomy, the average time a woman takes off is two weeks. Some women go back sooner, others later. In my case, it was a bit more complicated than the typical lumpectomy due to multiple incision sites, locations of the lumps, and the amount of tissue taken. I wasn't ready to go back to work after two weeks so I extended my total time off to 4 weeks. During that time I had two more follow-ups due to my nipple continuing to bleed into the third week. The doctor then told me to put antibiotic ointment on it and that seemed to help the wound heal faster.
No comments:
Post a Comment