Cody Updates by Mom

Hello!  Surgery today went well.  It was an early morning as we had to be at the surgery center at 6AM.  That meant that I was the first surgery of the day which is always good.  The waking up at 4:30am to do my pre-surgery shower wasn’t much fun though.  The surgery was about 2 hours long and a good couple hours of recovery.  Overall, according to Dr. Mann, everything went as planned.  We got home around noon and Jim made me lunch before I went through a few work emails and then took a nap.  They had given me pain meds at the surgery center so I was good on pain meds until around 4:00.  The nap wasn’t a deep sleep but more of an in-and-out of consciousness for a few hours.  So happy to have my bed that can adjust so I can easily sleep on my back.

I have been up now for a few hours and feeling okay.  With the pain meds I have a level of pain that is what I would describe as a dull roar.  It is there but not debilitating.  I really just need it to take the edge off of the pain and I can function.  My plan is to work from home tomorrow and potentially go back to work on Friday.  I am on strict lifting / pulling / pushing restrictions for three weeks and no lifting my arms above my head.  I am using ice packs but seems odd since there is so much dressing on the area that I cannot really feel it.

For those of you that would like to know the process of the surgery you can read on.  This is your graphic content warning for the remainder of this post.

The reconstruction of the nipple is made from the skin that is already part of the body.  I have included a drawn picture that I found below of the cut that is done and how they create it from the skin that is there.  To be able to finish the process they need to take a circle of skin from another part of the body to cover where they removed the skin.   This will then create the look of the areola.  They took a fairly long, wide strip of skin from my abdomen and cut the circles out of that piece of skin.  Kind of like taking a piece of paper out of a notebook and then cutting shapes out of it.  After they remove the strip they do a basic tummy-tuck to put me back together.  I will have a fairly large scar going across my abdomen from this part of the surgery.  They then graft the circles to go around the spot where they cut to fill in the skin that they cut and pulled out for the nipple.  In a nutshell, it was arts and crafts day on Mel.

They put a very large pad on each side and they have sewn that into my skin so there is no chance of it moving around.  I will have these removed by Dr. Mann on Monday.  I cannot take a full shower until after they have removed these.  Sadness.  I am wrapped up pretty good and this outer dressing can be removed on Friday.  I have tape on my abdomen that Dr. Mann will remove at a later date.  Good news is that is water proof so can shower with it on.

That’s the process.  It was not anything that I expected or thought when I got into all of this.  I guess I really do not know what I expected but the reality is something that I hadn’t even considered.

It has been a long road from my first surgery on 4/3/14 but I am very happy to be at the end of this road.  I am very ready to give this body a rest from random games of Operation.

Thank you to everyone for the prayers and well wishes.  It is so very helpful during this process and I greatly appreciate it all!

Caring Bridge Comments

Joan Axdal, Prayer Chain, All Saints Lutheran Church, Cottage Grove|Dec 5, 2015 9:46am
Blessings on your healing process. So glad you are at this stage.