Surgery completed!!! 8 hours later...

Yep, my surgery took a grand total of 8 hours, which seems like a VERY long time and FELT like a very long time when I woke up.  Just in case you're just joining now, I had my initial preventative double mastectomy this past March 18, 2014 and my final breast reconstruction surgery AND an added bonus of a lapraroscopic ovarian cystectomy to get rid of a nagging cyst that had been hanging around for 6 years on my right ovary, on Thursday, 9/11/2014 at 9:30am.

Had to do a pre-surgery flex ;)

Now, the OB-GYN said the surgery would take her about 1.5 hours, but apparently the cyst had made it's home on my ovary and fallopian tube and did not want to leave.  So her surgery ended up taking about 3 hours.  Then it was the plastic surgeons turn and he said his procedure should take about 3 hours...well it actually took about 5-5.5 due to the fact that Thelma (my left breast) had encapsulated the expander with a giant mess of scar tissue and made it extremely difficult for him to get to.  He is an excellent surgeon and took his time removing all of the scar tissue so that the least amount of damage would be done to my muscles and skin.  He ended up being able to get 210cc silicone implants into each (which is a little bigger than we thought we'd get due to the fact that we had to stop expanding in july because of the scar tissue), so I'm pretty happy!!!  They do look a bit swollen right now, so it'll be nice to see them in a few weeks once the swelling is gone!

I should also mention that I started my period the day before the surgery.  This made things interesting and a bit awkward because I had to ask the nurses for pads and since you don't wear underwear in the prep room they told me to just hold the pad between my legs....."uuuuuum okaaaaaaay."  When I woke up from surgery I couldn't tell if the cramps in my tummy were from my period or the surgery, so this made things a bit confusing!! Overall, I guess it was ok...if I had to choose, I definitely would choose NOT to have my period during surgery!!!

My tummy post-surgery. I couldn't bring myself to post a picture of both my tummy and breasts.

I am so thankful I had excellent surgeons and that they took their time to ensure each procedure went as perfectly as possible.  But, waking up after an 8 hour surgery definitely has an impact on you and I was discharged to go home that night.  Well, I can tell you that was the last thing I wanted to do because I was so out of it an exhausted.  Pain wise, I only noticed how sore my left breast felt when I moved my left arm.  It felt like I had done 1000 push ups or something.  My right seemed fine!  My tummy was a bit swollen and uncomfortable and there were sharp pains in my left shoulder(due to the extra CO2 hanging around after the insuflation from laparoscopy).  I tried to tell the nurse I wanted to stay and didn't want to go home but he was following duty and continued with the discharge procedure from the hospital.  And so I went home and fell asleep shortly after to begin my recovery!!!