We Are Going to Pump You Up

Yesterday I went to the doctor, as I do most Mondays, to get Pumped Up. I have an expander that is meant to expand the skin where my breast implant is to go. I was getting 70 ml of saline injected in each time until two weeks ago when the usual injection caused my mastectomy scar to pop open in one spot. Also, I suddenly had a lot of stretch marks.

I went to the doctor to have her check out the new hole in the scar. She gave me a prescription for a topical and an oral antibiotic and sent me on my way. I decided to skip the next appointment to let things calm down a bit. Of course, this was during the time that I was feeling down, and an effect of that was going on a pill strike. I just couldn’t deal with taking my vitamins much less prescriptions, so I didn’t.

On this last visit I informed the doctor that I hadn't filled the prescriptions and she was a bit alarmed. She said it was common for the body to reject the expander and that there were signs of redness. Also the hole in the scar wasn’t healing well so it was time to bite the bullet and actually take care of it. She gave me new prescriptions and I promised to fill them and follow directions. Then I had another injection, this time of 50 ml.

In the past several weeks she has asked me at each visit if I had enough pain pills. I was a little puzzled by the question. Although the fills were a little painful, especially at night, I rejected the idea of taking pain pills on general principles. I’m just not into taking drugs, prescription or otherwise.

I changed my tune last night. Ouch. It was a bad night. I was up for hours. We’re getting to the point where this is no longer easy. The expander has to be expanded to be larger than the remaining breast, but it’s already a lot larger and I have 90 ml more to go (or two more sessions.) The expander is now huge and hard and the skin is stretched impossibly tight. I ended up taking one pain pill but that didn’t help much. After an hour or so I took another. Finally I got some sleep. I’m starting to wonder how I’m going to get through this next phase.

So cancer is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m ready to have this episode over and done with but there’s still more to slog through. I remembered that a woman in my support group had an infection from her expander so I'm going to be careful and take all my antibiotics, as much as I dislike them.