Sooo Not a Walk in the Park!

Wednesday I went back under the knife to get this beauty of a contraption placed in my chest to administer the chemo into, rather than trying to get a viable vein every time.  It was pretty sad that all the nurses, transport person and anesthesiologist all recognized me as a frequent flyer the past month and a half. During the consultation the surgeon really down played how big of a procedure this was...just a 45 minutes surgery in the out patient section of the hospital, as long as no complications occur you go home in a couple of hours.  I checked in at 8 am and didn't get home until 4 o'clock that evening.

When I was coherent enough to be aware of being in recovery, but not awake enough to talk or open my eyes, the reality of how invasive the procedure was hit me like a semi-truck!  Talk about pain...and boy did they bring on the IV narcotics!  The anesthesiologist said I would have a sore throat because of the tube they would put in before the procedure - a sore throat??  It hurt to swallow or even breath, so they ended up putting me on oxygen for awhile.  That doesn't even begin to measure up to the feeling in my chest and neck though!  The purple portion of the device is just above my right breast, but the wire was inserted through the jugular vein in my neck and goes down to my heart...quite the plumbing that was installed not to mention the tunneling they did to place it.  Needless to say my chest and neck are swollen and bruised a ton and very sore still.  They placed dressings on by battle wounds that couldn't be removed for 48 hours, which meant no showering, so I ended up having to miss the next day of work too...something they could have told me ahead of time to plan on!  Then when I got home and noticed I looked like a freakin' Oompa Loompa I lost it.  I was covered in the orange stuff down to my elbows, up to my chin and down to my incision from the past surgery...no way I was going to work the next day without showering!

Friday I did go back to work, hindsight I probably should've waited another day since I still was really sore and swollen and had little use of my right arm still.  I was ready to crash by lunch time, but made it the whole day...I did crash on the couch as soon as I got home though.  I am really glad I waited another week to have this procedure done, to give me more time to heal from the last surgery, but now I am nervous it is still gonna be sore when they start chemo on Monday...can't win.  I don't know how people get boob jobs, my little 2 inch incision is all I can handle, I can't even imagine!