1 Week Later

The past week has been hard—nothing more than what I expected but still hard. Getting implants is a lot like being engorged only you can’t get relief through a breast pump. I went from feeling like I had heavy objects on my chest to odd aches and pains on the sides of my breasts to now under my armpits. And then my stitches are a little sore. Yesterday Brian went to work and Jack went to school and I thought I could handle Ty all day by myself. I was lifting him a lot and got very sore by the end of the day. I think this set me back a few days. Fortunately we have the nanny today who can do all the lifting with Ty and I can take the pain meds. I took Ty to the after-Christmas sales at the mall for about an hour—I always try to buy those stupid round candles at Pottery Barn for the reindeer candle. 12 candles are normally $20. How ridiculous is that? I stopped at Victoria’s Secret and the girl measured me at a 36 C. I was happy with the “C” reading although I think that is also a 34D. Hmmm… it’s still early.

On Christmas Eve I ventured out of the house for the first time to attend Jill’s open house. This was 6 days after my surgery. I thought I looked really big in a couple tops but then decided I should wear a top that I always wore with my silicone inserts (chicken cutlets) and that looked good. They were still quite a bit swollen though. It was good to do some socializing because recuperation is a bit isolating, even though I did enjoy getting a lot of rest in the beginning. Christmas was just the four of us which I didn’t mind at all. We did a leisurely Christmas morning and I wanted to take our time opening the presents. I hate doing a frenzy of opening presents and it’s over in 10 minutes. The boys loved all their presents. Brian got me a gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret since I will need all new bras. Overall it was a good Christmas but I look forward to next year when I am not recuperating from surgery!

Post Op

Monday was the big day of my surgery. I couldn’t eat 8 hours beforehand so I made sure to get up at 6 AM to drink coffee and eat some eggs. I really wasn’t too nervous all morning and I made sure to do a lot of wrestling, hugging and playing with Jack and Ty, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to for a while. Around noon Brian and I left for Paradise Valley, the Mecca of plastic surgery in the area. We had to arrive 1 ½ hours beforehand. First I had to fill out paperwork. Then I had to take a pregnancy test. Given that I hadn’t had any water since 6 AM, I was able to squeeze out three drops but apparently that was sufficient to confirm that I was not with child. I explained to the pre-op nurse that I needed all the help I could get to avoid a pukefest after coming out the general anesthesia. I threw up for 48 hour straight after getting my wisdom teeth removed and ended up laying on the floor of the restroom of an urgent care for several hours until they gave me a shot of Tigin and Demerol. Plus I was sick like that through my pregnancies. So they agreed to pull out all the stops to try to avoid me getting that sick. I also asked if they could do the IV in the private room with Brian there because I’m a big wimp about that too. The nurse said most likely not but I would need to talk to the anesthesiologist. We waited a while longer in the room and I heard the doctor in the hallway on the phone. When he came in I asked him if he was lifting weights. He said No and that he was wearing scrubs with sleeves (these are references to Dr. 90210—Dr. Rey who lifts weights before each procedure and wears sleeveless scrubs to show his biceps). He said, “Full C, right?” and I grimaced. It was what I said wanted—everyone told me to push the limit because EVERYONE wants to be bigger than what they originally asked for. He drew on me and I made one last plea for him to make me look normal and natural. I really didn’t have any more questions so he left and we waited a while longer. I was starving to death and couldn’t stop thinking about In-and-Out Burgers with milkshakes. Finally the anesthesiologist came in and he agreed to do the IV there. I asked him for a feeding tube and could they put a milkshake in there? He thought that was funny. We made fun of his glove that had the finger cut out. I mean, why wear the glove in the first place? But he had me laughing so much (even before the drugs!) that my most feared part of the whole thing (the IV) was such a non-issue. He asked if I wanted a little something extra to relax—that it was like a couple drinks. I asked if it was like 2 Coors light or 2 Guinness’s. He said 2 shots of vodka so I went for it. Next thing I know I’m wheeled into the operating room and the doctor says, “1000 cc’s right?” and then I say, “Don’t forget about my Brazilian Butt Lift”. And then I’m waking up to a nurse giving me ice chips.

Of course my first question is, how big? See the doctor and I agreed that he would start with 325 cc’s and he would overfill them from there. She said, 375 cc’s and 415 cc’s. I’m sure my eyes bugged out of my head. Apparently the doctor told Brian that when I was lying on the table, it was clear I had absolutely zero breast tissue left and so they had to compensate for that. He didn’t think I would have been happy with the 325’s. He is probably right. That is why there should be three names for this procedure instead of two: Breast Augmentation (you’re just small going bigger), Breast Reconstruction (your breast tissue, skin, some muscle, etc was removed because of cancer) and then Breast Replenishment (your breast tissue was viciously pushed aside for the more aggressive mammary glands to feed your children and withered away never to return again).

I would have to equate the feeling and recuperation very similar to anyone who has gone through an extreme post-partum engorgement (like myself) where I was about a size E, very swollen, very painful and feeling like I’m being crushed by two heavy bowling balls on my chest. The upside to the breast augmentation is being knocked out by narcotics and not having to get up with a newborn. On the other hand, a breast pump doesn’t do much to alleviate the pressure of an implant. The scariness of their appearance is also like when I was engorged with milk, although I would say I was actually bigger when engorged, or maybe they were more like perfect giant shiny orbs. With the augmentation, my pecs are pushing the implant upward and the breast is swollen so from the side it looks like the nose of a Charlie Brown character. This is all normal and I hope it drops before I go to work.

I did throw up a few times which took a while to get the pain meds up to the appropriate level but I got some sublingual Zofran and that helped a lot. Mostly I have been alternating between the pain meds and valium and sleeping a lot. I’m bored but too tired to go out anywhere and too afraid of Christmas shoppers. Mostly I want to pick up my boys and give them big hugs. I think that’s the hardest part of the recuperation of all! I hope all my readers have a great holiday with their families.

Getting Ready for the Big Day

Last Sunday I went to the Orpheum to see a Broadway musical called “Man of La Mancha”. It was a story based on Don Quixote and it was pretty decent. I got to do a little socializing with Tami and Cindy (Cindy was visiting Tami from San Francisco). It’s always interesting to hear Cindy’s dating stories (she had just gotten back from 10 days in Paris with her boyfriend—hard to not feel envious of that).

The week started with a cold that I’m pretty sure I got from Ty. Brian had a dinner with his staff so I missed Pilates that night. Then Jack threw up Wednesday night and I stayed home with him the next day and missed Pilates then. So that kind of sucked. We spent most of the week preparing for our annual Christmas party. I made Brian do a project plan last year because he would leave a lot to the last minute and then would get really stressed out. This year he made a lot of things ahead of time and so while Saturday was really busy, he was very prepared by the time the party started. Brian makes all of the fancy finger foods from scratch himself. He loves doing it every year and really takes pride in it. I made the brownie bites from scratch and put the frosting on but that was it. My job is to make sure the house is clean and to keep the boys out the way and out of the kitchen.

On Friday I had my pre-op for my surgery. I had done a lot of research—looking at photos for what I wanted. I printed them out on good photo paper. The doctor was impressed by that. The big discussion in the pre-op is definitely on the size. I told him my biggest fear was being too big and he said that a lot of women say that. He promised that he would make me look natural and normal. He is going to start with a 325 cc implant and go up from them (they can overfill them). I love this doctor—he has the perfect bedside manner and is very well reputed. My surgery is one week away and I am starting to feel more excited than nervous.
Friday night was the book club Christmas party where we do a white elephant style gift exchange with nice gifts. Last year Tracy stole my gift of four red wine glasses. This year, there was a lot more stealing going on. Someone wanted to take their own gift and Pam said that they couldn’t. Then when Kathleen wanted to steal the gift that she brought, I said she could, that she was 9 months pregnant and if she wanted to steal her own gift, then fine by me. That caused a bit of an uproar. Lisa tried to pawn off a Michael McDonald Christmas CD as part of her gift but I guilted her into taking it out. Who wants that? Frankly I think if people were allowed to steal their own gift, that people would bring better gifts. I have enough lotions and bath stuff, thank you very much. I was the last number and then Tracy was #1 which meant that she could exchange with anyone as long as the gift hadn’t been stolen more than 2 times. All of the good gifts with the exception of one had already been stolen twice so I stole that one (a box of ornaments from China) – largely because I wanted them but what made it extra delicious is that Tracy wanted them and now she couldn’t get them. Tee hee. So now we’re even after last year. Now I can’t wait for 2007 to see what happens then. The funny thing is that I didn’t need wine glasses last year and Tracy did. Now this year Tracy didn’t need ornaments but I did.

On Saturday Brian took Jack to T-ball where Jack was swinging the bat around and accidentally hit a kid in the neck. I was glad Brian was there and not me. Then I took Jack and Ty to Jill M’s house to let Brian get stuff done. Jack and Connor played OK together. Connor was having some issues sharing his stuff. Both kids went down for their nap when we got home and I went to Target for some stuff for the party. That was a big mistake. Target was very crowded and I got grumpy trying to find anything. Nothing was where it should be and I think for just about every thing I needed, I took the very last one (thin black socks, light bulb, wreath hanger, round candles…). It took me like 2 hours to get through the store because it was so hard to find things and it was so crowded. I left my cart at the end of the aisle to check on something and was back within a minute and my cart was gone! There was another cart there with a bunch of stuff in it and I figured someone would realize their mistake within a minute but after 10 minutes, no cart. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Who would take my cart? And it took me 2 hours to find that crap… and I took the last one of most of the things in that cart. So I went out looking for my cart. After going through several aisles, I saw my cart with about three additional things in it. It looked abandoned and I’m pretty sure that when the person realized that it wasn’t their cart, they just decided that they were in no condition to be shopping and left. I pitched the extraneous things from cart and went on my way.
Thankfully Deb and Joe and Annette and Tracy came a little early to the party to help with the final prep work. Brian created a wonderful spread of food and the company was excellent. I found out my friend Ann used the same doctor I selected for my surgery. His nurse is one of her best friends. I spent a lot of time demonstrating the ROM Machine to various guests. Some tried it, even Jeanette who is 5 or 6 months pregnant and was wearing high heeled boots. Lisa passed off her Michael McDonald Christmas CD as a hostess gift. This was funny to me. I had a really good time at the party and didn’t stress too much about the fact that I couldn’t spend a lot of time with each guest.

The next day we spent time cleaning up the house. I had an appointment with an aesthetician that a friend recommended. As part of my post-baby makeover, I want to continue to improve my skin. I still struggle with blemishes and I would like to put that behind me. We were just going to do a consult but we ended up doing a facial and some microdermabrasion which I liked. She pretty much said my skin issues were systemic and to see a special doctor in Tucson for balancing out my hormones. I am interested but this doctor is in a private practice and doesn’t deal with insurance companies and likes to take 12 – 15 vials of blood for analysis (that is 1/3 of a pint). I am the woman who refused to take the 3 hour gestational diabetes test to avoid three blood draws in three hours. The thought of them drawing that much blood makes me woozy to even think about.

Not too much to report about the work week other than I exercised and did Pilates very faithfully, knowing that I will not be able to exercise for about a month after my surgery. On Friday Brian’s mom flew in for the weekend and his sister flew late at night to surprise his mom. We went out to dinner a couple times and Brian and I were able to have a date to the mall to get some nice shirts for Brian. Brian’s mom and sister don’t know about my surgery. I am afraid they will be judgmental about it. When they were here, Brian answered the phone with the speakerphone when my friend, Mary Beth, from Boston called and she said, Hi I'm calling to talk to Kelly before she has "her thing". I grabbed the phone and went to the bedroom but of course Brian's mom and sister asked if everything was OK. Brian said... oh yeah... it's just girl talk. Then he came into the bedroom and said, You have to figure out something to tell my mom and sister. I said, No I don't. You do... I didn't answer the phone on speaker in front of them! Fortunately they were very close to going to the airport so they didn't ask me anything. I can’t imagine trying to keep this a big secret from everyone. I don't have the energy to keep secrets like that.

So today is the big day. 2:30. I had my last meal at 6 AM. I know I will get more and more nervous as the day goes on but for now, I feel kind of numb.

Festivus

Most people who know me know that I didn't celebrate Christmas for the first 30 years of my life. My parents still don't celebrate it, my sister Nicki probably started celebrating it 7 - 8 years ago and my other sister Krisy and her husband have elected to celebrate Festivus. This is the holiday made up by Seinfield.

“Many people, influenced or inspired by Seinfeld, now celebrate the holiday, in varying degrees of seriousness. Some do it religiously; others do it with good tidings in their respect to Seinfeld.”

So here are the photos of how they decorated their yard (yes, this is for real). I can't wait to hear what all the neighbors say.

The Christmas Frenzy

It's been weeks since my last confession, I mean, blog post. I think I left off around early November. Some of the more notable events in November: Dinner with the Jill & Joe and Kids at Casa Blanca, a Mexican restaurant in Jill's part of town. Conversation with kids around is always a little challenging but we had a great time and the kids were pretty good actually. It helped that the restaurant was very kid friendly. It was very crowded when we left--since it's really the only place to eat within a 10 mile radius. OK, I'm exaggerating slightly but we are talking about south Chandler here. We went to a work skating party on Sunday and I tried to teach Jack how to skate. He didn't like it too much and I tried to help him skate but it was like dragging a dead weight around. So that didn't last. This skating rink allows you to push strollers so Ty got a lot of spins around. The kids liked playing the arcade games too.

We spent most of the next week preparing for our trip to Raleigh, North Carolina and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I took a couple hours to attend a jewelry show at Tracy's house where I bought some earrings and ring. Otherwise, I packed and packed and packed. On Friday around 4 PM, we headed off to the airport. Brian always drops me off at the curb with the kids, the stroller and 5 bags to check. I find this a little stressful since it's not possible for me to move all this stuff through a line. That's why I use the sky caps. Well, I gave the sky cap our three boarding passes that we printed out the night before and I mentioned Ty was a lap child.

Skycap: That child is not under 2.
Kelly: What?
SC: That is not a lap child.
Kelly: What do you mean? HE IS ONLY 16 MONTHS!!
SC: Do you have a birth certificate?
Kelly: No!
SC: What about an immunization record?
Kelly: No, I didn't bring anything--HE IS ONLY 16 MONTHS!
SC: Grumble...grumble Well, I'll let this go... but if the FAA found out... here put his birthdate here.
I proceed to write 6-24-03 (the year Jack was born) because I was so frazzled. Then say... oh, wait! and change the date... and the sky cap rolls his eyes again.

We had a four hour non-stop flight to Raleigh which wasn't great (because of Ty not wanting to actually since on our laps) but we made it. We spent the night at my sister's house and then left the next day for Myrtle Beach with the whole clan: my sister, husband and their 3 kids, my other sister, husband and their 2 kids and my mom and dad. We rented a 7 bedroom, 6 1/2 bathroom condo with a full game room (pool table, fuse ball, air hockey, pin ball, and a golf arcade game). The house also had 2 high quality big screen TV's plus TV's in every room. It was a really nice place and about a half minute walk from the beach, just across the street. The kids loved playing with each other and liked playing on the beach and feeding bread to the seagulls. The men were always playing pin ball or the golf arcade game or were actually out golfing. The women liked the outlet mall--they had all the good stores and we spent the a whole day there on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I bought a ton of stuff! We went back the day after Thanksgiving which was a big mistake because the lines were so long so we came back late in the evening when the people had thinned out. Overall it was a really nice time and I ate tons of sugar (but all homemade food) and we didn't eat out once because there was always a homemade meal (my mom and two sisters are great cooks!)

The trip home was awful (5 hours) and Ty was very restless, hadn't had a good nap, etc. Then the batteries in the DVD player died 2 hours in the trip so Jack was restless. There's really not much more to say about it other than I need to figure out a way to have an out of body experience during times like that. We always try to come back from our trips on a Saturday so that we have Sunday to get back into reality so Sunday we went to the zoo to check out the sting rays. It turned out to be an incredibly beautiful day and it wasn't that crowded so we stayed for several hours and had a great time.

Tuesday I got a health check. My employer has this program where you sign up for a health check and they give you $25. Then if you meet with a counselor about your results you get another $25. What have you got to lose? I got my test done on Tuesday, which may have been a mistake given what I had eaten the whole week beforehand. Within 2 days I had all my results (glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, body fat, BMI, blood pressure, etc). After 5 - 7 years of not having a cholesterol test (my logic was that I would not change anything with my diet or my exercise), I found out my results were quite good. I attribute this to the exercise more than my diet. Not that my diet is really bad. I don't like processed food and rarely eat fast food but I eat 2 eggs a day and will never stop eating cheese. Everything else was really good--also mostly attributed to exercise.

Ty got pretty sick this week--a fever, runny nose, and his breathing was labored and rapid. I started to think we should take him to the ER since he got really sick as a baby and spent the week in the ICU intubated because of a respiratory virus. We paged his doctor at 10 PM and we decided that breathing treatments would be the right thing to do so we got a prescription for albuterol. Fortunately we had a nebulizer from the first incident. He's been getting better slowly but he is clearly miserable and grumpy.

On Thursday evening I went to a parenting seminar by Dr. Sal Severe. He wrote the book "How to Behave So That Your Children Will..." and had a second book "...So Your Preschooler Will, Too". He was really, really good and I learned several new ideas and techniques. I bought his book too. I've been using a few things on Jack since then and have already seen some improvements. A lot of parents there asked questions about their kids and I learned something. That Jack's behavior is completely normal and that there are lot of kids that are more difficult than him. There were several parents with children with severe anger management issues (like a 6 year old who kicks holes in the drywall) and there was a case study where the anger came from something that seemed kind of small initially so I don't think any of us are exempt from that happening. But his concepts are very sound: set expectations, not being permissive or giving in, being consistent, and above all: be positive and don't show anger, even when your kids are being bad.

Friday night we went to cookie and beer exchange at Annette's house. We only knew Annette, Tracy and Shannon (and their spouses). The rest were neighbors we hadn't met before. I met a lot of new people and we had a good time. Shannon took her turn at being three sheets to the wind and had a great time--Tracy and I agreed that we didn't have time for a hangover the next day so we took it easy on the alcohol.

On Saturday Brian took Jack to T-ball and then I took Jack to Winter Wonderland, this little indoor festival that my work gives every year for the kids. Jack loved doing the crafts (he loves glue and glitter) and then we stood in line for 45 minutes to get a balloon animal. I can't stand doing that--what we do for kids. I rushed home because Deb was picking me up to go to high tea at the Phoenician with a couple more friends, Ger and Katherine. This is one of my favorite things ever. We had 8 different kinds of yummy sandwiches with the crusts cut off and then scones with clotted cream and lemon curd and then all the little pastries. Plus the tea and champagne. I really wanted a nap afterwards. We had a really good time talking and catching up. When I got home, Brian had picked up the tree so spent the evening getting the tree set up and giving the boys baths. This morning we decorated the tree and Jack loved that. Today's to do list: clean up the house, do laundry and print out photos of breasts to show the plastic surgeon!