Doctor love, anxiety, and being a little crunchy.

Friends, Family, Neighbors, AMAZING PEOPLE in my life… y’all really deserve all the virtual thank yous and hugs and kisses that I could send you right now! Your words of encouragement, support, comfort and validation that it’s OK how I’m feeling when I’ve been very honest with how I’m doing the past week or so has been a breath of fresh air for me!

The last two days (Monday and Tuesday) were tough and really really rough emotionally. I knew this was going to happen. A few “pink sisters”  (how cute is that description – I just love it!) that have gone before me and already experienced this surgery and a few other friends in the medical field had tenderly told me that anxiety may happen, you will be emotional, it will be painful, you will get frustrated, etc AND ITS NORMAL (whew, glad to know its not just me! I’m still normal – good to know!) so I KNEW and prepared for all of this, but knowing/preparing and actually experiencing are just so very different. I like to be prepared, so I am so very grateful that they shared their honest opinions of how it may be and what I should know and be prepared for. I like to be prepared (overly prepared sometimes), so I am so thankful. Sometimes it lessens my anxiety or worse sometimes it heightens it. More Xanax, please?!? Just Kidding… but seriously, it exists for a reason and I’ve had to take it AND it has helped so much. No shame AT ALL. I will be your biggest advocate for finding the right doctor and figuring out what works for you, its not always an easy path at first – at least in my experience it hasn’t been. I am not a medicine taker, but I’ve learned to swallow my pride about that and do what my doctor recommends. In my case – thankfully she is a she and understands all these girly, emotional, sometimes irrational (I wish I had the wide eyed emoji to insert right here) feelings all of us women can get and very bluntly said to me a few days ago on the phone – Carly, just take the medicine. FINE, I will! There’s no me attempting some natural hippie remedy like I do in every other part of my life this time – just good ole Xanax. BUT hippie, crunchy, natural – however you want to explain it – remedies will be back soon. 😉 …post on that and how I have gotten a little “crunchy” in my ripe old age of 31 is coming soon – probably tomorrow! Its basically as long as a book, prepare yourself.

I really do love and respect  my doctor, she is very quiet and reserved and just gives the facts not leaving much room for what ifs and conversation – which is normal for a dr and I appreciate the facts, less worry- but I think the more she’s around me she’s warmed up a little and has figured out that my personality is very transparent and I’m ok hearing hard news or good news, but more importantly that she can celebrate the good news with me and talk about it, something she was more quiet about a few weeks ago.

Anyway! I totally didn’t mean to go on a tangent about my breast surgeon, anxiety medicine, and how I love a good natural remedy,  but I need to give credit where credit it due. She’s just awesome and the Lord knew I needed a woman doctor and I’m SO glad it worked out with her.

Now, to my original reason for this post – which was titled “Post surgery – 2 WEEKS!!” was quickly edited when I started my above tangent! Here’s a little update on what’s happening now and some prayer requests I have and appreciate you praying for when you think about it!

FACTS and PRAYERS
–I am officially 2 weeks post surgery and I have survived! 😉 

– Pain and Meds – I am still having to take pain medicine regularly, not as much, but if I miss my scheduled dose it gets painful very fast. Today we are going to start to try to slowly get off the pain meds and take less of them and more Motrin. Will you please pray for this transition? My Dr wants me to be off pain meds completely by 4 weeks, so I have about 2 weeks to slowly transition away from them and I’m hopeful that it will work!! I’m feeling pretty confident that it will be fine! The pain medicine makes me extremely tired and just feel blah, eventhough the pain is gone while I’m on them the other side effects really stink.

–Emotions – The past two days have been really hard emotionally. I knew this was coming, but I guess I forgot. I haven’t been in as much pain, but I still have to not try to do too much and I still need to rest, but it just makes it hard sitting here all day. Im not a sitting here all day kind of person. I’m still very limited in what I can do with my arms, so its just tough. I’ll be fine, but I just have to realize that even though I’m feeling better physically, my body is not ready to do what it should be able to do yet and thats a hard thing to realize. I really thought I would LOVE being free of all responsibilities for a few weeks – nope, I hate it. I miss holding John, I hate that Steven has to do it all – for me and John, and that I just can’t help. I know this is part of it, but I’m just being honest right now.

–Anxiety – (Part 1 – I wrote yesterday) *sorry some of this is repeated from my tangent at the beginning of the post! I have been anxious a good bit and it comes on quickly, sometimes for no reason at all. I was warned about this too and I have a prescription of xanax for it, I just need to take it. I don’t like taking medicine, but I need to because its needed at times. I don’t really know what else to say other than that and probably just preaching more to myself to be honest, but this too will pass eventually and I will be OK! Ready to be back to normal life, my body just needs to catch up 🙂 (Part 2 – I wrote today) Anxiety is better today, I took a xanax and it really helped so I may preemptively do this as needed when I feel like it could possibly be a stressed situation. I cry at a moments notice nowadays, so I’m thinking it may help just manage my emotions when I’m frustrated at a drs appt, etc. prayers for that please. I hate feeling anxious and on edge, but after the appt today I’m feeling much better. Thank you for your prayers, they’re working because the last two days have been rough and today I feel like a whole new woman! 😊

–Drains, Needles, and Expanders – oh my! I got my drains out last Friday and I noticed that I had fluid buying up on one side so I was able to have that aspirated this morning and its all good. She had to take out about 30cc, which is a pretty significant amount, but not too much to where they were concerned. Thank goodness I’m still completely numb around there because she used THE BIGGEST NEEDLE I’VE EVER SEEN and I didn’t feel a thing! I really should have taken a picture of it –  Y’ALL it was a huge needle, terrifying 😳 Thank goodness I didn’t feel anything! Not really ready for the feeling to come back and I have to start feeling these needles again… still haven’t gotten used to them. My plastic surgeon plans to start the process of filling up my expanders in two weeks!! I’ll go every week or two to fill them up a little at a time.

–This may be TMI, but I just gotta give y’all something to laugh about since I’v been talking about all this anxiety and emotional stuff… My armpits are SO hairy! I can’t lift my arm high enough to use a razor. My doctor said since I don’t have any feeling there either it wouldn’t be very wise to stick a sharp object where I’ve lost feeling – Steven agreed, I on the other hand was willing to take the risk! Good thing I’m not raising my arms up any time soon, its like a jungle! Ok I may be exaggerating a bit, BUT I did buy spray deodorant… hairy and smelly armpits, now that would just be terrible!

–Friday Morning – I have a Leep Procedure on Friday morning. I’m not too worried about it, but I hope that whatever is there (cancer or abnormal cells or whatever caused me to need this procedure in the first place) can be easily removed and that she doesn’t have to take too much of my cervix to get it all. Please pray that its all removed and small enough to not have to take too much of my cervix. PS. I know I mentioned the c-word… cancer – this is totally different than my breast cancer – this kind people get very frequently and its easily remedied with the procedure I am having. No cause for concern yet, and its likely not even cancer, it could be other things and easily removed. It’s all good.

–SLEEP – John has a cough that kept us all up two nights ago, he’s seems fine now. Steven is having trouble sleeping in general and he needs sleep the most. I hate going to sleep, I’m sleeping fine, but I stay up so late and just do not want to go to sleep, once I am asleep I’m fine but getting there is not fun. See one of my past posts for my recent sleeping situation, its pretty comical.

That’s about it for now. Thank you for continuing to commit to joining me in prayer, I’m so grateful! Y’all are seriously the BEST!! I’m glad I can be real and honest… even about my hairy armpits 😳 – we all need a good laugh and not take ourselves so seriously all the time! I am one lucky girl to have all of you!

I love you all!
Carly