Global Mission

Global Mission
A Heart for His People

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Part 1: My Surgery

It has been a few months since I have posted an update. So much has happened, I'm not quite sure where even to begin.  I will break things down into parts with this post focusing on my surgery day.

On December 12th, I embarked on the beginning of the next season in this journey.  I underwent a 13hr surgery where I had a bilateral mastectomy with immediate DIEP flap reconstruction.  I also had a right sentinel lymph node biopsy to check for lymph node involvement. 

I chose this surgery because they use your own body fat from your abdomen to create new breast. This means that I will have nothing foreign in my body that does not need to be replaced every 10 years, which is the case with implants.  You would be surprised how many people have complications with implants!  I didn't realize this until I started to do my own research on my options.  The only downside is that my recovery is a bit more extensive with DIEP flap reconstruction. Recovery is expected to be about 12 weeks long with a 5lb weight lifting restriction for those entire 12 weeks. There are also a few touch up surgeries to be expected within the first year to complete the whole process. 

The long awaited day had arrived and my husband and I drove to the hospital at 5 in the morning.  My nerves were surprisingly calm. The nurse called me back.  I was prepped for surgery.  The doctors came in to speak with me and drew out their plan on my body. I have never had surgery before so all of this was very unknown territory. My mom, brother, and husband came back to see me off.  We all prayed together, doctors included, and off I went.





















13 hours and 2 blood transfusions later (the chemo had my hemoglobin down which led to excessive blood loss), I awoke to the familiar faces of my family.  All I could think about was my sweet sweet Amara who had her Christmas concert that same evening.  I was so surprised to see my ROCKSTAR husband there when I woke up, because he also had to take Amara to her concert.  





This little girl had been counting down the days for her concert and also had correlated the days to when my surgery was going to take place.  The look on her face was so brave and courageous.  And look at my man, would you ever know by looking at him that his wife was in surgery at that moment and had to step away to be super dad for a few hours? And then whisk.... same day...few hours later... he is there back at the hospital to be the first face I saw when I opened my eyes.  I love him so!


Here is a clip of me right out of surgery...I had been awake for a few minutes so these are not my first words but none the less they show my condition... I was very puffy! 


My first night in the ICU, where they keep you for a few days to monitor everything, was one of checking my vitals every 15 minutes and keeping me comfortable.  One thing that they had to do was to put a little Doppler in an opening in my newly created breasts. In order for my newly created breast to survive, my plastic surgeon used my blood vessels from my abdomen and repositioned them up in my breast.  This  would allow blood flow to keep the tissue alive.  This can be a risky thing and complications can arise.  Thankfully mine cooperated.  Every time they put the Doppler in the slits there was a pulse...yay! Without being too graphic here is the general idea..








This gives you the general idea !                                         





This was the beginning of a long road of recovery.  Just sharing my story with you brings up so much emotion that I don't realize that I am carrying around.  On the day in and day out I feel really good, but when I look back at all of this I feel somewhat emotional.  God has given me the strength to walk through every challenge. Looking back at it all now, I feel all of the feelings.  But going through it I was unfazed. One friend once said to me, Soldier on, Soldier on!  Those words are exactly what I did and continue to do.  I will leave you with this for now and will follow up with more in another post regarding the road to recovery.

Blessing to you today!  We have much to be grateful for!

~Amanda


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