As the old saying goes: no news is good news. Unfortunately this post is no different. Recovery has not gone well.

Problems started almost immediately. As this surgery was much deeper than my previous ones it hurt much worse. Sleeping was also intolerable as I must sleep on my side. This meant I either had to lay on the surgery side or the opposite with my arm on top of it. In order to cope, I took an old opioid from a previous surgery at bed time. It was enough to get me at least asleep. Thankfully I’m a hard sleeper and not even pain tends to wake me unless super extreme.

Then there was the bruising. I bruised from my collarbone all the way down to my bottom ribs and wrapping around my side slightly on my left side. It looked horrible and was very sensitive. Thankfully the bruising outside of the immediate surgery site faded fast.

I believe I mentioned the bleeding issue in my last post I made on the subject while high on pain medicine. That was just the very start of a bigger problem though I did not realize it at the time. The pain lasted really badly for about a week and slowly got better. I was happy and relieved. At least I was until I took off the final bandage yesterday. Old clotted black blood poured out and down my side like something out of Venom. My body had created a huge blood pocket and part of the incision remained open from the pressure. The only thing containing it was the bandage.

I will not lie. I got major anxiety from it happening and almost threw up. I have had it happen before with the same area and surgery type. In that case, the surgeon had to open me back up, express the blood out, flush the area, and restitch the incision. That is what I expected and it felt like too much. Just another thing going horribly wrong. A nightmare. One emergency appointment later and I was seen. Thankfully it was deemed a small enough opening that it did not require internal cleaning. Instead it was just expressed, externally cleaned and re bandaged. On the downside, it hurts fairly badly again. I also didn’t enjoy losing about 30 MLs of blood in total. This morning I also woke up to a blood saturated bandage and blood on my clothes and bed. I pray to God that the problem does not happen again.

I know that the pain will not last but, as it stands, I’m miserable. Though I handled the previous surgeries fairly well, I have a new outlook on it all after this. The next breast tumor I get will have to be an incredible source of pain before I do this again. As for right now, you will not find me outside of my house for at least the next few days. Here’s to hoping for no further news.