...and it's mostly good. Each day I am feeling a tiny bit better. Each day when the district nurses come to change my wound dressing, they say it looks good and clean. Each day I honestly feel more grateful than anything else. I am so grateful to have a healthy, happy, (spoiled rotten) baby. Having a baby to take care of means there is no time to wallow and feel sorry for myself. I have had a few dark moments, but I have cried them out and then gotten back to life. I am also grateful that things are not worse. My issues, although painful and thoroughly inconvenient, are not life threatening. I have had truly excellent medical care that has all been completely free. (You will never hear me preaching about the evils of 'socialized medicine'. My care has been fantastic, and it is the same care that a prince or a pauper would have received. And that is all I shall say about that.) I truly do have so very much to be thankful for. I thought about this today when I put our little Pilgrim and Indian figures out on the mantel. So that is the 'good'.
The bad? Well, I am a bit frustrated about the fact that I have basically been house bound or in hospital for the last five weeks. In my mind I am ready to re-join the rest of the world, but my body still very much needs to rest, recover and rebuild. It is already November, and I feel as though I completely missed October. On the days that I looked out the window, it appeared as though October was a nice month: mostly crisp and sunny. Oh well. Today my friend Sonia helped me pack up Halloween and pull out Thanksgiving. It is time to move on.
And the ugly... I have a big, deep hole in my boob. This is problematic for a few reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that it is ever so painful and needs to be re-packed and dressed by a visiting nurse daily. (Thank God for the district nurses though. They are brilliant and come right to my door every morning.) My broken boob definitely restricts what I can do. I am awkward. I cannot take my baby up and down the stairs and actually find it difficult to lift and carry her at all. I wish I could hold her against my chest to comfort her as this seems to be her preferred position, but this is not possible right now either. So I am creative and awkward... aren't those qualities the mother(s) of invention?
Here is the ugliest bit of all. Turn away now if you can't bear it.... I am still breastfeeding but only on the right side. Nursing on the left would be far to painful and would most likely complicate the healing of the wound even further. Although I am not feeding on the left side, this does not mean that my brain has told the left side to stop producing milk. And since milk ducts were obviously severed during the surgery, every time I nurse Lili on the opposite side, milk pours out of the wound on my left breast. When I wake up in the morning, my wound dressings, night gown and pillows are soaked with stale breast milk. (I warned you, didn't I?) I keep hoping that the milk production on the left side will taper off, but that doesn't seem to be happening. I am also curious about what will happen with those severed ducts when the wound actually heals. Any physiology experts out there have an answer? Today I have put on a bra, and I have half of a baby nappy (diaper) stuffed on top of my wound dressing in hopes that this will keep me from soaking everything in sight today. Progress report soon...
Until then I will continue to count my blessings. What else can I do? I am a very blessed lady.
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