It’s been a while since my last post. There really isn’t anything new to report. The stabby pains are still intermittent. My back still feels like it has a layer of plastic on it because of the wide swath of scar tissue.

I’m thinking of trying to find a massage therapist that is able to release scar tissue. I’m just kind of afraid that it’s going to be painful. Pain isn’t something that I really want to deal with more of. That’s another reason I’m not having another surgery any time soon. Technically speaking I’m still recovering from the last surgery.

This weekend we visited a few craft fairs and holistic shows. My endurance level is really quite pathetic. I don’t go very far before I need to sit down. At least not as far as I THINK I should be going. Really I should have been able to do the entire Cocoa Village craft fair without having to stop as long as I did.

Eventually I’ll get back to my old self. I AM doing better. I just wish I didn’t wear down so fast.

My right eye is feeling better. No one is dragging barbed wire across it anymore. So I think I’m going to start making plans starting this week for my new project that I’ve been talking about.

But first…a bit about nipples.

I know I’m not mentally ready for another surgery. I don’t even want to think about planning for it. Even after nipple reconstruction I’ll have to have them tattooed. After all nipples aren’t the color of Pale White Chick.

I also have to consider that if I DO have nipple reconstruction am I going to be looking at nipples that point at the ground again?? The Twins are big and they hang a bit. Dr. Elliott feels that a lift won’t do much of anything unless I lose at least 30 pounds. But then the Twins will shrink. That thought still freaks me right the fuck out because I still equate shrinking with losing them.

Yeah. I gots me some issues to work through still.

As it stands, I’m still debating the nipples vs no nipples debate. I may want the surgery eventually. I don’t know if I’m going to go back to looking at prosthetics for a temporary fix. I’m starting to feel like I’m sliding backwards.

Again.

It took us 5 years to decide that we’re moving to Orlando next year. I don’t make serious decisions easily. So I’m waiting again.

Maybe I’ll get the fake nips just to see. But then I’d know they’re fake and I feel like that would be lying and kind of demeaning to what I’ve survived and conquered thusfar with the plague-level botch job the HiQ did on me.

It’s times like this when I’m in free form blog mode that I wish I could reveal that quack’s name so that others don’t get hurt by him. Maybe if I just reveal the latitude and longitude of the practice?

I really need to find that agreement I signed and figure out a way around it.

My point in this rambling diatribe is that I will eventually figure out what to do. In the mean time I’m still wading through a bunch of mental crap. Wheee!!

Yeah I was dumb. I wore my contacts too long and got an eye infection. If anyone can loan me a sharp melon baller we’ll just scoop this puppy out and let me die now. I think the eye drops the doctor gave me is making this worse. I get sharp pains when I blink not long after putting in the drop. Or that could be my eyelid scraping across the infected area.

This sucks. I’m relegated to wearing my glasses now. Don’t get me wrong. i really like my glasses. The frames are awesome. And most importantly, I can see. It’s just…they’re glasses. Glasses suck no matter how cool they are.

So the point of this minor ramble is that my eye hurts so my posts will be short until this heals up some.

Thanks for understanding.

Does anyone remember The Vagina Monologues? I saw that show when she filmed it for HBO. It was inspiring, funny, poignant and moving. I, for one, did not know that the clitoris has nine times the sensitivity of the head of the penis. Though I wonder if that is the circumcised or uncircumcised head. The circumcised head has reduced sensitivity from what I have read.

Between VM and TED I have been inspired to do something. That “something” is rolling around in my brain, grabbing little bits of ideas. It could be a show in which I do the whole thing topless showing the lat flap scars and using my own body as a visual aid.

It could be educational dealing with research statistics for plastic surgery. It could be stories from women who have, like me, survived botched pastic surgery. It could be a book. Eventually it WILL be a book, but I think this will come first.

I think that I will show some of the worse photos. It has shock value for performance. It also has educational value because no one gets to see what breast necrosis photos look like. You can find photos of mild necrosis on extremities but ladies and gents I have not been able to find easily accessible photos of what a necrotic breast looks like.

I know it seems like a silly name but I still want to call the show “BoobCast”. “Cast” implies broadcast but it also implies healing or mending. It implies a knitting together and a form of support and protection. So I’m keeping the name.

For a long time I have been doing this because it’s something that needs to be done. It’s not something I really wanted to do. I felt like I needed to help women and their partners get through something that drove me mad for a time. It changed my life and I know that I am not the only one who has gone through this.

As I’ve said before, there is so much shame and stigma around plastic surgery. Some people actually feel that, because we had surgery to try to change something about ourselves, we deserve what we get if it goes wrong.

We need to shine a light on that darkness and talk about this the same way we brought breast cancer and prostate cancer out of the closet.

It’s time.

The last few days have been pretty exhausting with the trade show and all the travel. In that breif period I have noticed a distinct ache in the Twins. Not in the muscle wall behind but actually IN my individual breasts. I can feel the muscle roll around. Well, not so much roll as shift. And it feels like the skin is filled with a round, flat rock. You know…the kind you use for skipping. Except thicker.

I’m guessing that because I have been abusing my body, my chest (that is still healing BTW) is, very simply put, not amused with me. So i am feeling more sensation. Feeling more sensation is a good thing. That tells me that nerves are repairing and regrowing themselves.

I can’t even really take it easy for the next few days. I have another trade show on Saturday and set up Friday night. In the mean time I have more bottles to decant, more holiday sprays to blend and a general inventory to replenish.

In the mean time it’s probably a good thing that I can feel the muscle flap. It’s just one more part of the wonderful world of “recovery”.

This afternoon I was talking to a woman about BoobCast and what I have endured in my journey. What she told me didn’t really surprise me. It saddened me to no end though.

Her mother, a 70-year-old breast cancer survivor with bilateral mastectomy, developed necrosis after her TRAM flap breast reconstruction. Please follow this link (http://bit.ly/17vGa6) to learn more about this type of reconstruction).

My understanding is that even though many surgeons downplay the risk of necrosis, it still happens much more frequently than we are led to believe. The woman in question, we’ll call her Mom, has said that she doesn’t want to undergo any more surgery.

I don’t blame her for that. Especially not at her age. It just saddens me that she will  live with the results of what the necrosis has done to her. Of course she will probably not talk about it and that will be one more woman suffering in silence because she was not given accurate information about the risks of the surgery she was undergoing.

This MAY not be the fault of her plastic surgeon. Sadly, sometimes necrosis occurs through no fault of the surgeon. Mind you the following opinion comes from the Hack in question (HiQ). He said “Sometimes these things just happen and no one knows why”. I need to investigate if that actually holds truth or if it was some kind of sick, twisted cop out.

So this is going to be one more thing I need to add to my To Do list: Research statistics for breast reconstruction and plastic surgery complications. I REALLY think it is much more wide spread than is being reported.

During the trade show I was selling at today I had my first massage since the latissimus flap reconstruction. Granted it was just a 10 minute chair massage but it was still manipulation of muscle tissue by another person.

I kept anticipating pain. Now I was already IN pain in my left shoulder. I was just waiting for screaming stabby pain in my back. Surprisingly it didn’t come. She did go very lightly because she didn’t want to cause harm. I think that I would want a massage therapist with a few years of experience if I were going to have a long massage.

I asked the therapist if she wanted to look at the scar lines so that she would know what she was dealing with. She gave me a look like she had just sucked on a lemon and told me no. She further explained that the latissimus spread from shoulder blade to waist. In hind sight I don’t think she really understood exactly what she was dealing with. I think she thought that my scars were that long…from shoulder blade to waist. They’re not. They really just go from just below the bra strap to about three inches above my waist.

Even though it relaxed my shoulder and eased my back a little bit, I really think that I’m going to seek out a massage therapist that has experience with a post-surgical back patient. That would be my advice to my readers as well. An improperly trained or inexperienced massage therapist could cause harm through ignorance. That’s the last thing anybody needs is more pain.

I learned a valuable lesson tonight. A jacuzzi is an amazing tool for loosening up a knotted back. After a 10 hour drive and booth setup for tomorrows trade show it was the best thing I could have done for myself.

I’ve talked before about why my back feels like there’s a layer pf plastic wrap under my skin. It’s the scar tissue from the removal of the fat, skin and muscle of the latissimus flap reconstruction. It will probably be another 6 months before that has released enough for me to feel normal again.

After today though, I felt like someone had dragged me over a mile of asphalt. The layer of tissue under my skin felt positively raw. So my darling, thoughtful hubby drew us a hot bath in the jacuzzi tub here at the hotel and I soaked for half an hour.

Heat opens up capillaries and draws blood to the surface of the skin. More blood brings more nutrients to the tissues. It also helps muscles to unknot. So this was a wonderful thing. My back no longer feels like there’s a layer of sandpaper between my skin and my muscles.

Sometimes healing sucks but it’s little things like this that make it much more bearable.