Does This Boob Make My Butt Look Fat?

I'm still in the hospital.  My spirits are okay.  The chest wall where they performed the mastectomy is healing well.  The chest tube continues to be a source of pain.  My pain management right now consists of either taking the narcotics that make me vomit (despite the scopolamine patch), taking the narcotics that make me itch all over in combination with benadryl which stays the itching a little and puts me to sleep,  or taking a cocktail of pills (tylenol, pill to address nerve pain, and muscle relaxor)  This third one seems to be less effective in terms or pain management, and you can only do it every eight hours.  Anyway, you can imagine I had a restless night.

Kevin already filled you in on the chest tube insertion, but having experienced it, I thought I would elaborate a little.  First of all this all happened in the middle of the night so I got the thoracic resident.  He had the nurses give me some drugs via IV.  He explained that these drugs would not numb anything, but they would serve two functions.  One, they would help me relax.  Two they would make it so I would not remember how much it hurt.  Before those drugs really kicked in, he began the procedure by numbing my skin with Lidocane.  The incision he made in my skin to introduce the tube did not hurt.  The insertion of the tube HURT LIKE A BITCH and has been a source of aggravation ever since.  The chest tube is hooked up to a suction device which is hooked up to the wall, so it means I can't travel far.  I have to use an adult potty chair at my bedside which is pretty charming.  Once I see the thoracic team and have x-rays I'm hoping they will change the device to a water seal.  I don't know exactly what this means.  I just know that if I'm not on suction that I can carry the water seal device and probably be un-hooked from the rest of my stuff long enough to go to the real bathroom.  I'll be glad when I'm done with the chest tube; however, I expect it's going to be painful when they pull it out.  I would also like to shower, but obviously that is out of the question.

We spoke to the surgeon last night.  Based on the surgery and pathologist review of the actual tissue, my cancer staging is worse than we expected.  I think he said the tumor was a few centimeters, there were 5 centimeters of DCIS, and at least 10 lymph nodes involved.  I need to review this with him again when I'm not so hopped up on narcotics, and see the printed report, but I think this puts me in the 3C stage.  Stage 3 is not considered early stage cancer.  You can google the survival rates for this stage if you're interested.  The surgeon said he was able to get clean margins, but a couple were close.

My proportions are obviously different now then they were, but I'm finding I'm not really as creeped out as I expected I might be.  I'm signing off now to eat something so I can take another pain pill.