#my brain hurts and I’m hungry so once the tylenol kicks in and I eat I’ll be… less grumpy

[floral-hex]

So if I cancel an appointment the day of, I’ll get charged $100, but the doctor can cancel the appointment an hour beforehand and I’m just shit out of luck. Very cool. Not a bother at all.

[zephyr-together]

it’s been exactly one month since top surgery! here’s a summary of what all went down! disclaimer: please do not feel that you need to feel pressured to remember things from this post or any other, your doctor should instruct you on the most important things to do or not do, and also this is my experience and everyone’s will be different! 

I saw Dr. Kenneth Wolf! I highly recommend him if you’re in the area or able to get to him, very skilled and very cheap (only was $5400, $5900 if you get nipple grafts which I ended up deciding not to have) there is a 250 lb weight limit though, they weigh you the day of surgery so if you’re unsure if you’ll be able to make it I’d suggest seeing a surgeon who operates more on plus sized folks

he was/is SUPER booked, I had my consultation in October and had to schedule surgery in June. this made me confident I made the right decision though because of how many people go to him, and having to be stuck in the body I didn’t want for a lot longer than I thought made me more eager to have it so I wasn’t as scared as I would have been otherwise. that being said, it might be smart to ask ahead how long the wait time is so that you can save during that time! because I didn’t know about the wait I had already had most of my money that I got together since last June so I could’ve had it about four months sooner, but hey everything worked out in the end :) 

speaking of saving money, for this doctor there’s a $500 down payment that I paid when I went to the consultation visit (if you’re out of the area they can do consultation over email btw!) the rest was collected about a week and a half before surgery. I have a debit card so it had to be split up in three transactions. I’m very thankful they worked with me on that!

I went into a small room where the doctor met me, marked me up and took my picture. then he said the anesthesiologist would meet me, which she did in a few minutes and went over a bit of questions/paperwork and took me to the operating room! 

I lied down on a table with my arms out, it felt like I was an alien getting vivisected, that combined with my needlephobia made that a bit scary but I’ve been waiting so long so it was exciting too. they had me hooked up to an IV but I think they did that while I was under because I felt the needle go in and then out. and then in a minute I was out! 

I wasn’t aware of this because it was during the surgery but they have a machine to massage your legs to keep up circulation and I had a tube down my throat too. when I woke up the first thing I hear is “the surgery was a success!! :D” and it felt like a weird dream because of anesthesia but in what felt like a few minutes I was almost as awake as normal which was surprising because I was out of it for hours after getting wisdom teeth out so I thought this would be way worse in that way

I had three intense sensations when I woke up: nausea, tightness and hunger. they asked right away if I was nauseous and gave me an alcohol patch to put on my nose which immediately took the feeling completely away. I had a very specific craving for Burger King’s impossible whopper, I think that’s because of not being able to eat I wanted something substantial like meat (vegetarian so closest thing to it) and something QUICK because hungy 

the tightness was pretty intense and unexpected, I felt desperate to rip off my surgical vest but they assured me it’s actually fairly loose. I think it’s just the incisions that give you a tight sensation but what you see and feel on your body is the vest so your brain says that’s the culprit I think. as time went on I ended up feeling desperate for the vest actually but I’ll go into that later

when I got the whopper I’m VERY thankful my dad who met us after picking it up also got the milkshake because I couldn’t produce saliva at all and didn’t know that would happen. I think that’s from having the tube in my mouth. I also could barely hold anything with my left hand because of that being the arm I had the IV in, but both the no saliva and limp left hand things went away in a few hours I think

by the time we got home which was I think an hour and a half after I woke up, I had really intense pain in my throat and under my armpits. the painkillers they gave me eventually kicked in about an hour or so after I took them, I’d suggest to bring them to surgery maybe if possible so you can take them asap, I think I wouldn’t have had that at all if I did, at that level of intensity anyway. for my throat I basically went nuts and drank water, had popsicles, ice cream, fruit, cough syrup, etc and it went away in 2-3 days or so

speaking of the pain under my armpits, that was from the tubes in me to drain extra unwanted blood and puss and stuff like that, it sounds super awful but I wasn’t allowed to remove the vest for five days and I’m naturally sweaty so I didn’t even know there were tubes in me or that I was draining until like four days later. I was stuffed with tons of gauze under the vest so eventually when I did notice the drainage we pulled out the dirty ones and pushed in some clean ones (they provide you with the same kind of gauze). the main awful thing about it was just the idea of having tubes in me, it didn’t bother me so much when I thought it was part of the incision haha...

now that I complained about the tube and throat pain I will say the “pain” for me of the actual incision area was almost nothing for me at all, just a bit of a weird tingly or pokey sensation every so often and that’s all really. but again everyone is different ! 

appetite was funny because it felt like I’d feel really hungry and eat hardly anything and feel good! another post suggested to have pineapple to help with bruising and I think it worked because I ate pineapple constantly and had pretty much no bruising at all

also I hope this isn’t too gross but I couldn’t pee and I was constipated. it wasn’t too much trouble because for the. pee I could just push and it’d come and for constipation that’s a problem that happens for me in general. both took about a week to wear off. they’re side effects of anesthesia I believe. other side effects I had from that were my legs and arms would feel pretty sore at times and my legs were wobbly, they said that I’d need to move my legs around a bit every once in a while to prevent clotting and I got a bit nervous about that so I ended up going for two walks a day! probably not needed to do that much but I think it helped speed up leg recovery 

after that more intense pain was gone after just a few hours I felt fine to watch shows and play viddy games! I thought I’d be zonked out for days or something but I was pretty alert after just a few minutes of coming out like I said. I could’ve probably drawn or made plushies too but it just felt so weird to move my arms at that point and was probably for the best I didn’t and just watched stuff and played games and slept a lot. it felt a bit frustrating how boring it was at times after a week or so but I just focused on how much of my life I’ll feel good now because of this so the recovery time isn’t that bad knowing that

five days after the surgery I had my first post op appointment! this was for the doctor to inspect the incisions, give us ointment to put on the scars and more gauze, and to finally be able to throw away all of the gauze that was under the vest! at this point I was allowed to take off the vest to replace the gauze and put ointment on as well as shower, and was given bandaids to put on the tubes for showering. however the sensation of not having the vest on at this point was SO horrible to me, I felt like a doll that was being pulled and unraveled apart, it made me want to throw up too so I took a shower as fast as possible and then just opted to get my hair shampooed at salons every other day for a couple weeks, so in retrospect I could have not gone five days with no shampoo but nothing can go absolutely perfectly after all!

a couple days later I ran out of oxycodone and tried replacing it with motrin which gave me three vivid nightmares in a row of having really bad fights with my parents and friend over dumb things which sounds silly but it messed me up emotionally and I kept sobbing uncontrollably out of nowhere that I felt like such a burden to take care of. I thought I was just emotional from the surgery but as soon as I switched to tylenol that went away completely! I don’t think it’s that motrin is bad because I looked it up and it’s a rare side effect, it’s just either that my body specifically doesn’t like it or it was the way it was combined with the antibiotic I had 

the second post op was to remove the tubes and it was 13 days after the first post op. they said if you live out of the area you can remove the tubes yourself so I’m very thankful we’re in the area haha. the left tube came out so smooth and quick that I didn’t feel it even come out at all! the second hurt for a second but I think because it kept getting bent backwards but it didn’t hurt too much. the tubes were SUPER wiggly and actually pretty flat so I think they’re constantly improving them to make them less and less noticeable. 

I was told I had to use the bandaids on my holes for showering and keep gauze on them too for just two more days and I could also throw the vest away then. I still felt too sensitive to get rid of the vest yet and wore it for another week, I still have it in case I want it for now (been going without it for about three days at this point) it still feels very strange without it since it feels like it’s holding you together but I think no matter how healed you are it will a shock to your body to not have that on anymore...also the “holes” from the tubes are more like slits which just look like slightly more open areas of the incisions so it’s barely noticeable. there’s some swelling where that used to be but that’s going down! 

now at this point where I’m at, I still feel best putting ointment on with gauze and bandage wraps I bought as a transition from the vest to nothing under the shirt which seems to be working pretty well! it might be that I’m autistic that I’m so sensitive to that feeling and had to have my vest on longer and now this instead of nothing. also I took three weeks off of work initially (I work a desk job) and asked for a couple more weeks of working from home before going back to the office to be able to adjust

also I will say if you live alone, I think you can handle surgery and taking care of yourself if you’re determined, as long as nothing you need to use to feed yourself and whatnot is up too high, too low, or too heavy. but if you can I’d highly suggest staying with someone who can help take care of you, it really helps easy the transition. in my summary I will say there was almost no pain at all but a whole lot of WEIRD stuff I wasn’t used to, but in the end it’s not a whole lot to deal with, considering!