11/16/2023
Certainly feeling all the love and support from everyone! Paul Locke has been reading me your return post, I truly feel loved. Thank you! Been a bit Rocky the few days, the surgery took 3-4 hours longer than expected. The plastic surgeon got in to my lower tummy and found a bike accident had caused serious damage to an artery needed to repair/replace my breast. They ended up having to use my lower stomach wall muscles and two arteries from my muscle wall. Then they encountered sever scaring in my left side (which has bothered me for years) they had to scrape and remove a lot of tissue from my pectoral muscle. On top of these two complications they had to remove one of my ribs and drill a channel in a second rib for the two large muscle arteries.
Short of the long story. What could go wrong went wrong. The pain is intense (and that word doesn’t come close).
I am so grateful the surgeon and his team found work arounds to perform the surgery while caring about how my body would look and of course keeping me alive!
The Nurses are the unsung heroes! Three nights in the ICU and another night in the ISC unit. These folks work their asses off! Mind blowing!
Paul has been wonderful and supportive caring. I love him so much and do not deserve him. I am grateful.
Here is a quick read of what surgery should have happened.
In a DIEP flap, fat, skin, and blood vessels are cut from the wall of the lower belly and moved up to your chest to rebuild your breast. Learn more.