Surgery and Beyond

Snatches of memory:

I'm suspended in midair in what I think of as a sex swing (but is really a Hoyer Lift).

Bee-needles of numbing agent pummel my back for my epidural.  The anesthesiologist sends zings down my body because she keeps hitting nerves.  I get to see my blood pressure and heart rate dive as I ready to pass out.

I pull a bloody tube out of my nose after sedation.  It scratches my throat to hell.

I'm in the ICU for observation.  I feel I don't deserve to be there.

Someone tells me I'm missing a rib.  I'm hallucinating from the drugs.  I'm actually missing a section of rib.
~*~*~*~
My incision is on the front of my chest because my surgeon thought recovery would come easier.  It's approximately four inches long.  I might have a scar that's visible even while fully dressed.  I don't mind much.
~*~*~*~
The trip home was four hours.  My pain medicine lasted three.  Pale and shaking, I hoisted myself onto my toilet after we got home.  I made it, though the pain was excruciating and exquisite.  I thought it'd be worse.
~*~*~*~
My hospital stay lasted just two days.  I was home for Thanksgiving after all.

Nurses check my vitals and healing twice a week so I don't need rehab.  Two therapists evaluated me to make sure I can do everything my pre-surgery self could do; they confirmed I don't need them.
~*~*~*~
I have significant nerve damage in my left breast, the swathe of skin impacted surprises me.  Few people will tell you how odd nerve damage can be... or how much it can hurt.
~*~*~*~
The mass doesn't seem to be cancerous.  I could officially be declared cancer-free right around my 34th birthday.  Part of a rib is the price.  A scar I trace with my fingertips and ponder, just for a moment, what could've been.