October 14: Four days after surgery

Today is shower day. 

It. Has. To. Be.

**

We make the plan over coffee. It's raining outside, but the dogs are anxious for their walk anyway. 

First, we'll gather the supplies: towels, the bandages that will cover my incisions, clean clothes, the shower chair that's been parked in the hallway waiting for the last two weeks. 

It will be Will's job to reach up to adjust the showerhead to the handheld setting and maneuver the chair over the rim of the tub. I'll somehow fashion a tie for my drains and maneuver myself inside. We'll cover my nipple grafts (sorry, you may not have seen that coming) and then the incisions for the drains, so nothing gets wet.

And then, we'll be ready to go.

**

The worst part, I thought, would be the anesthesia, based on my short but unsavory history of not handling anesthesia well. Now that I'm mostly on the other side of it -- still falling into a sudden nap when I sit on the couch, but mostly alert -- the worst part is the drains. 

I've been fitted with two Jackson-Pratt (JP) drains, one on either side of my chest, and if you don't know what those are, you are living in the blissfully ignorant world I was in just a few days ago. The drains, essentially, are what allow a bilateral mastectomy to be a same-day, recover-at-home surgery. (This fact in itself is insane.) The base is a suction cup, and the fluids that are silently, gently, suctioned toward the collection ball encompass the ick that needs to come out of a person after surgery: blood, lymphatic fluids, the little yellow beads on top that look like fat skimmed off ground beef. 

The drains need to be handled carefully, to keep them clean, draining, and ideally not pulling on their incisions. We received a crash course in drain emptying in the post-op room, from a nurse who was clearly ready to head home. Will took detailed notes. K and K paid attention and asked questions, and I tried to stay awake. The cleaning happens twice a day (or more, if there's more fluid), and each time the collection balls are carefully emptied into little plastic cups, the fluid measured, recorded and flushed. There's a complicated system of opening and closing valves, washing things down with an alcohol wipe, recording numbers on a chart. In four days, my fluids have gone from a dark red to a lighter red to a dark orange. Ideally, they will drain less and less, and eventually, they can be removed. 

**
So, the drains are a godsend, but also a pain in the ass. The tubes dangle, can only be carefully clamped or clipped to my binding vest, and get in the way of all movements. 

Yesterday, we had a post-op appointment with a nurse practitioner, who inspected the drains, the grafts, the general condition of my incisions. She was full of jokes and reassurances, and somehow managed to make my body feel less like something from Frankenstein's laboratory and more like a healing, normal body. 

I won't forget that. 

**

The smell, more than anything, woke me up this morning. My smell, emanating from my underarm when I carefully adjusted the mountain of pillows boxing me in. It's a sour smell, a five day old smell, but it's an alive smell, a healing smell.

Now it's time for that shower. 
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