July 14

While I'm sitting here recovering from my morning bike ride, I thought it was time to update the old blog with some meanderings.

Surgery is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. I might be a crazy fool, but I decided to have it done under local anesthesia. I figure that I am actually much more at home being awake in an operating room than I am going to sleep in one. I did have the option for sedation. Sedation is a beautiful thing. I had it for my port insertion and it was quite necessary for that. I was so incredibly anxious. I had more anxiety before that procedure about than anything else I've gone through in the last year plus. Maybe even more anxiety than anything, period. LOL! Anyway, with sedation, you get a wonderfully amnestic drug, so there's no memory of the procedure itself. I can remember them setting up for it and I can remember them taking the drapes off. Nothing in between other than being told he was going to start the medication. :) Love that.

So, then why not have it for the nipple construction? It's as I mentioned, I don't have anxiety about walking into an OR. It feels like home. It's comfortable. I love the idea of knowing what's going on. It fits with my desire for control. So... my non-mastectomized readers are wondering... what about pain?? Isn't there going to be cutting involved? It is surgery afterall. Well, in the Tales from the Cancer Chronicles (the book that exists only in my head and maybe in some blog entries), there's a chapter about silly silicone games. There's one where I close my eyes and try to guess if I'm being touched. And I lose everytime. The nerve regeneration is getting closer. I'm getting itchy in new places... but I get the itch, scratch, and then don't get any satisfaction because I can't feel it!!!! Hard to describe, but that's how it is.

If I were more ambitious, I'd share some layouts. But you can't see them if I don't scan them. :P