As in Bugs Bunny’s on my butt, in band aid form. Peggy, one of the nurses at Swedish Cancer Institute, put it there after she gave me a Lupron shot. This one is good for three months instead of one month like the two previous shots. I can feel the difference. I also have a Daffy Duck band aid on my upper left arm. Peggy also gave me a flu shot. I have a simple gauze and paper tape dressing over the inner bend of my elbow. That’s from my blood draw. The phlebotomists are old school. Too bad because if they’d given me a Porky Pig band aid I would have had a Warner Brothers’ trinity on my left side.

Last but not least, I have gauze and dressing over the small portion of missing skin on my breast. I found out yesterday that I lost all of the skin in a little area. Dr. Welk told me that what I had been looking at and thinking was deeper skin was actually subcutaneous fat. That was mildly disconcerting since I was unaware that I had been peering at a deeper layer of my insides all this time. He also told me that the skin would heal from the edges in by forming a bridge over the wound. That skin will not form connections to the fat below, however, He did say that the area had revascularized (the blood supply has returned to the area) and the tissue was granulated (a stage of tissue healing), which are good things.

Overall, Dr. Welk was happy with how things were proceeding so he added a bunch of saline to my tissue expander. He did, however, recommend that I have about a square centimeter of skin grafted from my abdomen to my breast. In his usual way he said, “It’s no big deal. It’s just a pinch of skin. It will take less than 20 minutes.” I was feeling brave so I said, “Dr. Welk, last time you told me something was only going to take 5 minutes, it hurt like Hell.” He said, “This won’t even hurt like Heck.” “How about Purgatory?,” I pressed. “Not even like Purgatory. No big deal.”

So I agreed. I met with Dr. Rinn for my medical oncology appointment and she also said she thought it was a good idea because it would reduce risk of infection. So I had a good appointment with her, got my shots, scheduled my next appointment for next January (yay, three months away!), and went home.

This afternoon, I’m going to see if Dr. Welk is right about this little “no big deal” skin graft. If he’s wrong, I’m not just going to give him Heck, I’m going to give him Hell! 🙂

T minus 5 months, that is. At long last, I have scheduled my TRAM surgery date. If all goes as expected, it will be on March 11th. Yes, that’s a long time from now but it was the earliest available surgery date and I am fine with waiting. For one, I need to make some money to pay for it! This way, I’ll get to enjoy the holidays as well as my 23rd wedding anniversary on March 10th. Almost more importantly, I should be able to enjoy the summer of 2013, more so during the summer of  2012, which included three surgeries between June 27th and August 8th followed by a medical leave that lasted until September 10th. I spent the majority of that summer in and out of the hospital and then another month in recovery. I’ll need to take some time off after this next surgery, I’m thinking at least four weeks.

I had a particularly good appointment with Dr. Welk today. He asked me a bunch of questions about what it’s like for me to be a psychologist. He is usually not very chatty. Maybe he ate his Wheaties today!