To nip or not to nip? That IS the question.

What if you got to pick out whatever nipples you wanted?  Sounds awesome right?  Well in some ways it is.  But it is also totally overwhelming.  I mean, you're born the way you're born.  There's a balance to your  body.  I never really thought about what my nipples looked like until I didn't have any.  Now I'm supposed to pick?  Weird.
So I started looking at nipples.  In magazines.  Online. I even asked a few of my friends to show me theirs and let me take a picture.  Talk about awkward.  I live in UTAH!

I had pictures of my old nipples.

Okay, read that again.  Who says that?  bwahahahaha

Anyway, I was totally perplexed and so I decided to leave it in the hands of a professional.  My plastic surgeon is amazeballs, hot and male.  I told him "Make me rock star nips!"  And turned him loose!

Into surgery I go.  Again.  Have you kept count?

 First he measured many angles of my chest and then drew on where the nipple should be placed.

He had me stand, lay down and move all over to decide where to put them.  Here I am on the table again.  Oh yeah, and the 2nd fat grafting this surgery too.  Ugh. 

I know you are asking what the heck is he going to make a nipple out of?  ME of course!  He starts by cutting a strip of tissue out by using the scar line of the mastectomy on the non radiated side.  Might as well right?

Yup,that's going to be my nipples.  

Then he fold and wraps.  Hard to explain.  He had to draw it out for me.  But I was pretty dang impressed. 

 and some more fat grafting to fill them out.  My abdomen really hates this procedure.  I have to bind up  my abdomen for weeks to prevent clots.  

And then they sent me home.  Same day surgery.  Nipples!  Bazinga!  I felt pretty cool. They don't have feeling.  It's purely for aesthetics.  Next stop.....areolas.

Or so I thought.  My body got pissy again. It would not accept the tissue.  And in a matter of days the nipples started to die and turn black.  We tried a procedure where I stuck a huge needle in several times a day to drain any blood to see if that would release the pressure.  

But it didn't help.  This is what was happening....

 The purple is a kind of veinous congestion.  This is bad since it means the new tissue was not receiving blood flow. 

 Fortunately it didn't hurt

 But it was very frustrating to think I would need another surgery so quickly. 

 The yellowing is from the fat grafting that was also done during the nipple surgery. 

But even with the dying nipples and no areola they were starting to look like a nice pair of breasts and fairly balanced. 

Nothing was working and we didn't feel like I should head back into surgery so soon.  So my surgeon is also a wound care surgeon.  He sent me directly to the hospital to have hyperbaric treatment. 

In the treatment you enter the hyperbaric chamber.  You cannot wear any metal and no phones or iPods.  It does have a video feed so we watched LOTS of movies. 

In the chamber it becomes pressurized.  This is called a "dive" because it is the same pressure as scuba diving.  

 In the chamber you sit in one of these chairs.  One of the patients I did dives with was laying on a gurney. But I sat.  Once you are seated they get everyone ready for the dive.  As the pressure increases you have to drink and swallow and pop your jaw to keep your ear drums from rupturing.  I had one time my ear drum almost ruptured and they had to stop the dive and get me out.  Once you are at the appropriate pressue they place this oxygen hood on you.

The hood pumps 100% oxygen into you while you are in the pressurized cabin.  

1. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy saturates the patient's circulatory system with oxygen resulting in increased oxygen delivery to tissues. Specifically, hyperbaric oxygen therapy: Dissolves increased amounts of oxygen in to the blood plasma.
2. We had hoped this would reverse the dying tissue and save the nipples.  My treatment was every day for two  hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon.  I felt like a zombie.  The worst part is I had to start all of the this the week of Thanksgiving.  The previous year I was newly diagnosed and dying for the holidays.  My kids were really excited to have a Mom that wasn't sick this year.  I could see how disappointed they were to see me so sick again.  But we made the best of it.  I finished just at Christmas. 
3. It mostly worked.  They definitely got quite a bit smaller but at least something was left.
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   
4. I need a break.  I took a couple months off from surgeries and procedures. I needed to breathe.  Deana had died and I needed to healthy enough to fly to her funeral.  And honestly I hit a space of serious depression.  I was tired of being sick.  I was devastated at Deanna's passing. I just needed to find a new normal and it wasn't coming easily.  As a matter of fact for the first 7 months of 2013 it wasn't coming at all.  But I pushed through. It's what I do. 

Upcoming Blogs: Chemo and also the final finished girls.