Fipples Nipples

Sorry...I know you all were hoping for a picture of my foobs..Instead you got this ugly picture of me..

Hellooooo! Yes, I am still alive. I know you all have been wondering where I have been/why I haven't written in so long...Well, the honest truth is that this REALLY crappy thing happens sometimes....And that REALLY crappy thing is called LIFE. Between being a full time mom, working full time as a nurse, being a full time maid/cleaning lady at my home/personal cook, and everything in between, I have just about FREAKED THE fuck out. (To be quite honest.)  Nothing serious has happened,  just a bunch of LIFE, and a few nervous breakdowns and hormonal psychotic moments, multiple times a day... So yea. That's my excuse........

But the good news is that on Monday, I am GETTING NIPPLES!!!!!!!! YAY! This will be the last step to my reconstruction process. (Not counting areola tattoos) There really is light at the end of the tunnel. And the light at the end of that tunnel really resembles nipples. Hehe.   ( . )  ( . )

I am not getting nervous about getting nipples at all, but it's weird and kind of unnerving because I have become so used to seeing myself in the mirror, looking like mastectomy barbie doll. Being a woman, being a nurse, the overanalytical thoughts have begun to float inside my head, and are overtaking my brain lately....Thoughts like-"What if the nipples, or "fipples" (fake nipples) don't look right and it messes EVERYTHING I have had up to this point, up?".....Thoughts like-"What if the bloodflow to the fipples isn't adequate and one of my fipples falls off in the middle of the night and my dogs eat it?"  Thoughts like-"So my fipples are going to be ETERNALLY hard??"...Thoughts like-"What if the fipples deflate/flatten out? What's the point??" No pun intended there....Hehe....Thoughts like-"What if I don't like the fipples? It's not like I can just warm them up and they'll go away....." GAHHHHHH!!!!

But seriously. It's scary. Every fucking step to getting your breasts reconstructed is scary as hell. Yea, they are just boobs, and like I've said before....Boobs don't make you who you are.....But would you want your nipple falling off in the middle of the night? Would you want your husband to gently caress and kiss your nipple one night and then get a mouth full of nipple? This is serious stuff....

But on to the more serious/medical stuff.....Because if I keep freaking about my future fipples falling off, then I am not going to sleep at all tonight. And you probably won't either....And you probably aren't going to look at your own nipples the same way for a while, huh?? 

 My plastic surgeon that performed my surgeries will be doing my nipple reconstructions in her office. She said it will take about an hour, and she will only use local anesthesia. There's no need for general anesthesia because I have no feeling at all on my boobs, due to the fact that they cut them off (I had a double mastectomy...DUH!, and I now have silicone implants...(FYI-if you are new to my blog, you need to go WAY back to my older posts to catch up...Starting in July...) There are places on my foobs that I have some sensation, but over 97.3% of my foobs have absolutely no feeling at all... My doctor said that I won't even require pain medication and can even go shopping afterwards......But then the THOUGHTS enter............

"What if my fipples are bloody for a couple of days? I can't walk around with bloody fipples...that would freak the crap out of people..."

"What if one of the nipples starts falling off and starts taking the skin off my foob with it and I can't feel it? Then my muscle/silicone implant would plop out on the ground randomly...Weird alien shit there."

"What if the doctor accidentally pierces or cuts too deeply into my skin while doing the procedure and ruptures one of my implants????????????

AAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So anyways..(See I told you I have multiple psychotic/hormonal moodswings on a daily basis...I warned you!) .She will use a "CV flap" method to form the nipples....She won't have to take skin from any other part of my body or anything like that...The skin that she will use to make the nipples is the skin on my breasts......Here is an illustration of it to kind of give you an idea...



I realize this isn't a boob and a nipple, but you get the idea...

 There's a lot of other methods of "making" nipples, I guess it just depends on the surgeon..And by the way, there is an old school method where they take skin from your VUUULLLLVA and use that skin to make a nipple. My opinion-if your doctor wants to do that method to make a nipple, RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN! And if the surgeon happens to be a man, ask HIM how he would like it if part of his WEEWEE was cut off to make a nipple when there are other, much easier and less painful methods....And then kick him.In the weewee.

I will attempt to take pictures during the procedure because my doctor is just cool like that and lets me do stuff like that, but if not, either way, you know I will be eager to post pictures of my fipples as soon as I can. So stay tuned for Angela's fipples....And remember.......

Go ahead and google "nefarious". I know you want to.

What are you Full of?

We just got back today from my follow up appointment.(.My post-op appointment, to be exact)..Everything looks good! My poor foobs are starting to bruise, and are in that lovely diarrhea-yellow color bruised stage right now...But they look good. And as far as that lump that had me scared.....(You know, the one that my doctor sent off for biopsy during my surgery, because she found a lump of mystery tissue while taking my expanders out...) Well, it turns out that it was just dead fat tissue (fat necrosis), and nothing serious....THANK GAWD! I was kind of stressing over that. I knew deep down that it was probably going to be nothing, but still, to be faced with "We found a lump and don't know exactly what it was" kind of freaked the fuck out of us after surgery......So yeah...WHEW!

Here is a picture of my foobs, without the steri strips on...(My doctor took them off today.) She also didn't use any stitches, staples or anything...She used internal stitches and being a week out of surgery, and with these scars being reopened, I think they have healed beautifully.....You can see that my left side is still a little higher than the right, but that is because of the swelling, and my doctor thinks that it will settle into where it is supposed to in the upcoming months...You can see the bruising around the scars....The lovely diarrhea yellow color...

6 days post exchange surgery.

It feels weird to finally be done with the breast part of this whole journey...No more expanders...No more fills....No more.....The next step-Nipples......That is another blog....Not for tonight though...Not tonight......

I have just been soooooooo exhausted lately. I don't know if I am trying to do too much, not allowing myself to rest, or what, but I get so irritable at certain times of the day because I am so tired..I can barely keep my eyes open. (Of course, except for now, and it is almost midnight....I should be in bed!)  I understand that it hasn't even been a week since I had my surgery, and that I need to allow my body to heal, and I need to rest, yadda yadda yadda, but come on.....I'm not some geriatric patient who needs a daily nap...I feel like such a slacker when I have to wimp out and go actually rest my eyes for a while during the day...I don't work like that...And plus, when you have a 6 year old and a 4 year old, it doesn't work like that either.....Things have to be done...And dear ol' husband just won't do a lot of the things that mommy does.....Like laundry, dishes, cooking, making beds, sweeping, etc.....The show must go on.....I ain't no geriatric!

ON THE OTHER HAND.........I absolutely DO feel like a geriatric, in the aspect of being so constipated that it has completely consumed my days.......Yes...This happened to me the last time I had surgery...I went 8 days without taking a shit after I had my first surgery, and it was possibly the worst experience EVER to physically go through...This time, it's about the same....It is awful!

I am so full of shit that I am afraid to eat solid food because I don't want to" back it up" anymore than it already is inside of me...Is this what old people go through? SHEESH! And I even started taking stool softeners before my surgery this time, to try and prevent this problem.....I have been doing everything I tell my own patients to do when they tell me they are "backed up".....I've been drinking tons of water....I've been taking my colace (stool softeners), and MOM (milk of magnesia), I've been trying to move around......It is just due to the pain medications, and the general anesthesia I had for the surgery....I guess that anesthesia really puts my bowels to sleep..For like a week......SHIT! I am going to stop taking my pain medications, put up with the pain, just so I can take a shit! Yea, it's that bad...

Sorry....I know you just wanted to know all of that....But this is real stuff....lt REALLY happens to lots of people after surgery! And just because I am a woman, with beautiful boobs, that doesn't mean I can't talk about being full of shit! We are all full of shit at one point or other....(Some of us are just more than others...)

Here's me, at my post op appointment.And yes..I am full of shit..

These Boulders Upon my Chest

This is what a bilateral mastectomy, (non nipple sparing, skin sparing) looks like. WITH immediate reconstruction, using tissue expanders!!! OH JOY!

 Since I am completely done with my tissue expansion phase, I wanted to take a look at my first picture of my foobs, and compare it to the monstrous boulders that lie inside of me currently. The picture above is the picture that was taken back in July, just a few days after my surgery. At the time of my surgery, my plastic surgeon put 260cc's of saline into the expanders. This usually doesn't happen in most cases, but because I live far away from my doctor, and would have to return every 2 weeks for my fills, she wanted to go ahead and give me a head start to my fills. (THANK YOU, Dr.Tsao Wu!!!) The weird ass looking thing in the middle of my foobs was the little cord that I called the "pain pump" that was inserted under my tissue to continuously leak local anesthetic for about 3-4 days to help decrease the pain in that area.


During these 3 months, with bi-weekly trips up to Albuquerque, NM to get my expanders filled, (which is a 550 mile round trip, WITH a 6 year old and a 4 year old, mind you,) I am so happy that I am done with the "fill" chapter of all of this. Yes, the pain is still something that I have to deal with on almost a constant basis, and that's fine. I'm just so glad that we don't have to make those trips like that every 2 weeks anymore. (But like I always say, this is what I wanted and felt I had to do to prevent myself and my family from having to invite cancer into our lives, so I guess I can't complain at all, huh...)  OH, and yes, my doctor is freaking awesome!


This is what my foobs look like NOW! 500cc's of saline inserted into the expanders. I am now just waiting for my exchange surgery. IMPATIENTLY waiting, that is.



The Age Old Question

The time has come in this long and dreadful journey of Foobage, where I now get to decide between silicone and saline....Implants that is...In about a month or so, I will be having my "exchange surgery", in which these dumb ass, mo-fo, uncomfortable shit bag, tissue expanders will be taken out of my foobs, and then replaced with squishy (AWWWW!) implants.....And I cannot wait for this surgery...Seriously. I have dealt with these rocks-for-boobs for 3 months now, and have dealt with daily pain and I am SO done with it. I am ready to have foobs that won't break a rib when I sneeze..(And for the record, yeah...It happened last week..I sneezed and I'm pretty sure I cracked a rib or something, due to these expanders, NOT allowing my lungs to expand during my big sneeze, and I guess the severe crushing pressure broke a rib....) Lovely, huh?

So like I said, I now have to seriously think about my choice of what type of filling I want for my boobs....Silicone or saline implants..?? (God, I sound like I am a jelly filled donut or some shit.) I have pretty much already made up my mind, but I have come up with  pros and cons, etc....

First of all, I wanted to know exactly what silicone was......Well, I know that it is not something that is natural...It's made up of chemicals...Our bodies do not normally have silicone in them, and it is a foreign alien object, and once introduced into the body, can sometimes be rejected by it..The way I see it, the foods we eat are loaded with all kinds of chemicals, and some even have silicone in them such as:
-Pizza Hut's Cheese that they use on Pizza!! (That's the only one I could find..I tried to find more, but couldn't..Sorry!!) Do our bodies reject those foods because of the chemicals??I've never eaten at Pizza Hut, and then thrown up randomly, due to silicone poisoning... NO....So there...

The implant that is in front is silicone, and the one in the back is saline...Decisions, decisions..

But as far as other chemicals, think about all of the chemicals we put in our bodies on a daily basis, think about all of the makeup that we put on our skin, that is made up of chemicals and funky shit....Lotions, shampoos, oils-now all of that stuff DOES contain silicone....Not to mention lubes for "enjoyment"...And f.y.i.-water based lubes are way better and less irritating for the hoohah, than silicone based...Just in case you wanted some free advice from a nurse..  :)  Bandages, those stupid little silly bands that our kids are wearing, cookware, some types of grease, and a lot of other crap are made up of silicone...I just don't feel like researching all the stuff to tell you the truth....That's all the stuff I found in a short amount of time... :)

Now as far as what saline is....It's water with some salt in it....Normal saline...It's an isotonic solution which means it is a perfect balance of H2O (water) and Na+ (Salt)....  Sorry..I'm getting back into my nursing shit...I'll stop...But that's basically what it is...Our bodies are basically made up of (approximately) 70% of water...That's why most people choose to go with saline implants..I guess because they feel that it is safer...If one ruptures, your body is just introduced to more water, and eventually absorbs it...It's non-toxic, in other words..We, human beings, like to use stuff that is "non-toxic"....Safe enough, I guess...


Silicone or saline implants-no matter which one, comes in a silicone outer shell...So there's just no way around it...You are gonna have silicone in those boobs one way or another...The tissue expanders that I have inside of me right now, (that I loathe), are filled with saline, but the shell is made up of silicone.....



These are what tissue expanders look like..The port is the dark metal part, where the needle is inserted to "inflate"them with more saline to expand them, to get the muscle ready for the real implant.


I hear that silicone implants are "squishier" and feel more natural than the saline implants do...The saline implants have a reputation for "rippling"..Ya know...Like what you see with all of the anorexic, celebrities on the red carpet, who think their boobs look great, but then they bend over, and your like, "WTF! Did you see her weird ass looking boobs??!( But then again, who am I to talk, because I don't even have nipples on my tits, so I guess I don't have much room to talk...My boobs pretty much are like barbies...They don't move...They are nippleless. I should stop talking shit about celebrities with bad boob jobs because...Well, just because...)

Probably the most important thing for most women that are trying to make this decision of silicone vs. saline is the whole safety issue...Basically, if for some reason, the silicone implant ruptures, you really have no idea..Your boob or boobs won't deflate like they would if they were saline implants...With the saline implants, there would be an almost immediate difference in boob/foob size. They pretty much deflate...And you are left with a saggy, deflated boob... But if a silicone implant ruptures, you really can't tell because the silicone is basically like gel, and just kind of sits in your body and tissues, and can/and has, gotten into the bloodstream of some women, and has killed some before...(RARE!) So how do you monitor this shit?? GEEZ! (Now that I scared the bejeezus out of ya!)

Well, with the silicone implants, my doctor told me that it's best to get yearly breast MRI's to monitor and check for ruptures....I asked her if my insurance would pay for these yearly MRI's, if she deemed them necessary, and she said she didn't know...But then I read something that said breast ultrasounds could detect a leak in silicone implants just as well, and aren't as expensive, if insurance will not pay for the yearly breast MRI's..Now as far as the saline implants...It's not necessary to have breast MRIs with these to monitor for ruptures, because like I said, it's pretty obvious when one has ruptured or has begun to leak....There would just be a difference in size..

And just in case you were wondering, my doctor told my to ABSOLUTELY, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE to NEVER,EVER, EVER get another mammogram.....(Well, considering I've already
had a handful of them in the past year, along with a breast MRI, I think I'm good....) She said doing so would probably rupture the implants....(And I guess that goes with either silicone or saline).

So what is a girl, that is ready to get these expanders out, to do? Decisions, decisions....Right now, in all honesty, I am thinking about going with the silicone, despite the obvious cons I have listed....The way I see it, my foobs are gonna be fake no matter what...So why just go with the super fake ones? Silicone!

Save the TaTas?

I used to have a bumper sticker/magnet on the back of my car that read, "Save the TaTas!"  (Save the boobies, in other words-breast cancer awareness....DUH!)  That bumper sticker fell off in an automatic car wash about a year ago, and just today, I saw a car with the same one on it and it got me thinking... I kind of feel like a hypocrite....I'm not saving my tatas...Not only am I NOT saving my boobies, I am completely doing away with them, just so that I won't have to worry about getting cancer in them in the future....How is that for NOT "saving the tatas"? Geez, that's harsh....

I guess when I put it into perspective, I am not saving my tatas, in order to possibly save my life, so that makes it okay. That is the BIG perspective....When I put it into little perspective, all I am having done is a simple bilateral mastectomy....All they are doing is taking my breast tissue off my body.....Not a big deal...

I had my pre-op appointments these past 2 days, and the reality of all of this is starting to really set in. The scariness of it is really starting to hit me and starting to make me nervous. But I just have to remember to be in control and remember that I am the one that has control of this situation. I am the one in the driver's seat. 

At the pre-ops, I signed all of my informed consent forms, which basically were the papers in which I signed to give the doctors permission to remove my body parts....(One part of it said exactly this: "I consent to the disposal of any tissue or body parts which may be removed from my body.")   WHOA.....Now when it's laid out there, on paper, like that, it is a little freaky...And morbid...And this is coming from me....A nurse..I like morbid.....But I guess knowing that it's MY body parts/tissue, it's just a little freaky....But anyways...Everything was explained to me, what to expect the day of surgery/after surgery, the first week, blah, blah, blah.....I signed everything, and now all there is left to do is wait...Wait and be nervous..That's it....Easy enough, eh?

God Bless Nipples

To get nipples or to not get nipples, that is the question......Who knew that I would EVER be facing the question, "Should I get nipples on my fake boobs?"  But for those whom happen to be BRCA positive and are getting their breasts removed, and those of whom are getting reconstructed boobs, will more than likely  have to face this question....(Unless they have a nipple sparing mastectomy, which is where the surgeon takes all breast tissue, except the nipple.)

I've done my research and have talked to multiple doctors, and in my case, they all have told me, and I have read, that it is very risky to do nipple sparing mastectomies because the nipple harbors cancerous cells in the breast, and this procedure has the highest number of cancer occurrences in women who have had nipple sparing prophylactic bilateral mastectomies. (Whoa,that was a long sentence.) Now this is just my opinion, and I am in no way trying to say what is right or wrong, so don't take it that way...For me, I don't want to have a nipple sparing mastectomy because of the cancer risk...For others, they might want to save their nipples for whatever reason, and that's fine. Like I've said before, we are all going through our own journey, and whatever we decide is right for us, then that IS right.

I received the letter in the mail today from my insurance that the breast reconstruction (for both my breasts!!! Haha) is approved!!!! So everything-the mastectomies, the reconstruction, EVERYTHING-is going to be covered by our insurance. How awesome is that?? I really do feel blessed. I'm aware that many women have to fight for years to have their insurances cover surgeries/reconstructive surgeries.So I am very blessed and thank God for everything that I have and don't take anything for granted. Believe me.

But getting that letter got my husband and me talking about nipples..(Don't ask me how-we just did...) I reminded him how the plastic surgeon said how most insurances won't pay for the tattooing of areolas, and how one of my friends and I were joking around how we would just draw them on....(And then somehow we started talking about drawing extra nipples on my boobs and how weird that would be. Haha!!) Well, Bryan, my husband, said, "So you want nipples??" UH......YEA! Of course I want nipples...But then I to thinking about it.....And this is what I thought about....

*My nipples won't have a purpose anymore....Why do I need them? It's not like I will ever breastfeed or feed or nourish a newborn baby again with my breasts, with my nipples again, so what's the point?
*My nipples won't serve as a sexual "play toy" anymore...Seriously...Well, that pretty much goes for my boobs after surgery...From what I hear, you don't have feeling in your reconstructed boobs after surgery, and most women never regain feeling in them for the rest of their lives...And that goes for the nipples, too...So it's not like I'm going to enjoy having my boobs stroked or caressed during sex.Or my nipples sucked, licked, etc......(Well, do we ever? Haha! Don't tell our husbands!!)

*My nipples won't get so hard they "can cut through glass" when it's cold outside anymore...This is a good thing....For one thing, it's kind of painful when nipples get that hard, and it's kind of tacky when you look down and see your own nipples pointing straight out of your shirt...And your bra...So that part I won't miss....Not at all..

*Last, but certainly not least, I don't want to look like a freakshow for my husband. He is totally supportive and says that he doesn't care what I look like, but I care. I mean I am having my boobs cut off, and am going to have nippleless boobs for a while, and while he says he "doesn't care", I know deep down, he's gonna be like, "Whoa, those are some funky looking boobs." So I want nipples for him. I want areolas for him. Does that sound weird? Whatever...That's what I want, and that's what's right for me.

So I guess the lesson of the night is-Nipples....The next time you look down at yours, give them a kiss and don't take them for granted. Even though they are just nipples, they are something that someone out there may miss and wish they had....I only have 2 months left with my nipples, so I am going to make sure I don't take one more day with them for granted...(But not in a gross way.Haha)