Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Day 16

These last few days have been interesting.  I left the plastic surgeon's office Monday with some directions for scar treatments that were pretty interesting.  I'm going to go into some details that everyone might not be into, so feel free to stop reading here.  The directions were to cover my incisions with Vaseline, let it sit for a few hours or overnight, then take a wet wash cloth and try to rub away the glue that is covering it.  I didn't really understand exactly what this meant at the time, but the directions sounded easy enough so I didn't ask more questions. 

Monday night I slathered on vaseline and Tuesday morning I started the second step.  I wet a wash cloth and started rubbing away at the incision.  It was a very strange experience.  Here I was pushing on and rubbing with something warm and wet on the side of my breast, but I cannot feel a thing. It was even crazier when the glue actually started to come off.  I had no idea how my incisions were actually closed, but they didn't look pretty.  They were smaller and thinner than I had expected, just a thin line with some brownish reddish chunks of skin in a few areas and an all over greyish tint that I thought meant I was headed toward having necrotic tissue (dead tissue that would just fall off eventually).  They weren't awful, but weren't pretty. Well after a bit of work, this stuff started just peeling off revealing this tiny pink scar.  All that grossness was just the glue with dried blood in it.  I was just amazed! I was so excited! I now understand why so many women post pictures of their healing--they just want to share this amazement with someone else. I had a hard time not taking a picture immediately and sending it to Mitch's phone, but thankfully rethought that one before I actually did it. 

It took a few days and quite a bit of Vaseline and rubbing, but eventually it all came off.  I was all set to begin the next step in scar care involving a silicone product called prosil that cost $21 for .15 oz. (smaller than a chapstick tube).  However, there is a bit of bleeding from the incision still.  Not a ton, not in all areas.  I called the doctor about it today and asked if I what I should do.  The nurse explained that I should not use the prosil scar treatment until it's completely closed up and that I need to be careful and watch for signs of infection.  Too bad, I waited to call until after I had already put the prosil on.  Oops.

All that work left me a bit sore--more than I have been feeling lately and feeling more run down than yesterday.  I hope I'm just imagining this because I'm a worrier and it's not an infection coming on. 

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