Chapter 18: Love Sack

The drive home after surgery turns into the Tour de Toilet. We stop at nearly every convenience store between Rochester and Red Wing in order for me to pee. This I attribute to the saline IV they gave me. I was flushing out excess fluid. I check my surgical drain at every stop, and it’s filling fast with a bloody soup from my surgical site. It’s a weird little device, this surgical drain. It’s a transparent soft plastic reservoir, the size of a tennis ball, connected to a long plastic tube exiting from my rib cage. The way the drain ball rests in my lap, my deviant mind can’t help but compare its resemblance to a scrotum. I take the drain ball in my hand and say to Brian: “Hey Baby, wanna touch my sack?” And with that, we conjure up scrotum jokes the rest of the drive home. The Karlstad’s keep it classy!
Once we arrive home, Brian drains my sack, and helps me get ready for bed. I’m instructed to sleep on my back in an upright position. A reclining chair (think Lazy Boy) is the gold standard sleeping configuration during mastectomy recovery. But, we do not own a recliner, nor do we have the space to keep one. Small house problems. We instead purchased a set of “bed wedges” to prop me into the ideal sleeping position. I prefer the bed wedges, because they are portable. I can use them on the couch, I can use them on the bed, I can travel with them. I can easily store them away when not in use. And, they are a fraction of the cost of a new recliner.
I nestle onto my bed wedges, put on my sleep mask, and try to drift off. I watch the minutes tick by under my eyelids. Sleep is eluding me. The longer I lay here, the more uncomfortable I get. I climb out of bed several times to reconfigure my bed wedges, trying to find a more comfortable position. I try to do this as stealthily as possible, as not to wake Brian. Nothing is working. My back hurts and my breathing is labored. I feel like there is a python constricting my chest, preparing me for its next meal. At about 2am, I finally give up and go downstairs. I lay upright on the couch, still no luck. I get up, grab my iPad and go out to the kitchen to do some writing. Brian eventually comes downstairs looking for me. He finds me standing at the kitchen counter, typing away in the dark…my face illuminated by my iPad screen. “Babe, what are you doing? Why aren’t you in bed?” I respond: “I can’t fall asleep. There’s no point in fighting it. I might as well do something somewhat productive. Don’t worry, Babe. I will sleep once my body allows it.” With that, Brian goes back to bed, and I continue on with my all-night rager. I never did fall asleep…not a single wink.
I am a waste of space the next day. My brain is fried from the missed sleep session. My back pain went away, but my chest is still feeling constricted. They put a compression bra on me after surgery, which explains the tightness around my chest…but this seems like too much. It shouldn’t be hard to take in air. I have a hunch that this bra might be too small for me. I remember that they send us home with a secondary compression bra, so I check the packaging for size. The bra they put me in has a band size of 30”. I wear a 36”. No fucking wonder I feel suffocated, this bra is 6” too small for my rib cage! I send Brian to Walmart to pick up a pack of properly fitting sports bras, which made a world of difference!
The surgical assistant calls to check on me. I tell her about my sleepless night and the python around my chest. She apologizes for the ill fitted bra, saying: “You are a small person, so we just assumed our smallest bra would work best for you. We should have asked in advance.” She also expresses her concern for my sleepless night: “Did you take one of the Oxycodone tablets we sent you home with? This is what they are for. Don’t be afraid to use them.” No, I did not take an Oxycodone. Truth be told, I’d rather avoid them all together. I am aware of the addictive nature of narcotics, and being the offspring of parents who struggled with addiction, don’t want to trigger the gene. I like to think I have a high tolerance for pain. I can tough it out.
Night 2 comes around: I’m lucky to get 1 hour of sleep.
Night 3 comes around: : I’m lucky to get 2 hours.
Night 4: I think long and hard and decide it’s worth the risk of taking an Oxycodone tablet before bed, just to see if it will help me sleep. 3 sleepless nights in a row is enough. I need to break this spell. I tell Brian my Oxycodone sleep plan, so he can keep tabs on me. I take the tablet and eventually drift into sleep…and I sleep for a full 6 hours! Holy shit, this drug actually works! So, a nightly Oxy becomes part of my sleep routine for the next 5 nights. I quit taking them once they lost their effectiveness. I switched to Tylenol PM on night 6, which does the trick just as well.
The surgical staff has me on a pain management program. Every 3 hours I rotate between acetaminophen and ibuprofen. I’m eating up so much of that shit, I’m imagining my liver and kidneys shriveling up like prunes. I take myself off of the pain management regimen after a few days. My pain is manageable without the aid of pain relievers. I have a theory about pain: pain is the bodies way of communicating to the brain that something is broken, the signal to take it easy. If you are injured, but feel no pain, you can hurt yourself even further because your brain is not receptive to your injury. You cannot heal if you cannot feel. I prefer to face my pain head-on, so I can fix the issue rather than just mask it.
My first week post-op pretty much consists of me adjusting to uselessness. My physical restrictions are hard-core. No lifting/pulling/pushing anything over 10 pounds. No lifting or repetitive motions of my right arm. No exercise, no excessive walking…I’m not even allowed to do housework! No driving, no riding motorcycles. They insist that I take 6 weeks medical leave from work, which I think is ridiculous considering I’m a Desk Jockey. I soon come to understand why the 6 week recovery is standard. One reason is the high volume of follow-up appointments with multiple departments. It would be nearly impossible to juggle shift work with the volume of doctor’s appointments on my schedule. This is more than just a cut-n-done surgery. This is cancer. I still have hurdles to jump and potential subsequent treatments to contend with. I still have a reconstructive surgery on the horizon. Yes, my mastectomy is complete, but my journey is far from over.