More Stitches

If you are looking to have a mastectomy or have had one, please note that what I write that has happened to me is extremely unusual. I have always been a slow healer so this may have happened to me because of that. So, please do not read this as it is what will happen to you, it is just what happened to me and I am a very special person! Last Tuesday I had stitches to rejoin parts of my incision back together, I left that appointment disappointed that I seemed to be all of a sudden breaking down. On Saturday morning, another part of my incision opened up. I was convinced it was enormous - my perspective is very skewed on my own body. I was also convinced on Sunday that it was infected - no it wasn't, it was just fighting against those internal stitches again. Bright and early Monday morning, I had an appointment with my surgeon. He cleaned the area and checked my stitches from last week, which looked great. I had two areas down from the external sutured areas that needed a stitch or two but the places where the external stitches had been put in looked like it was healing. He sent me home with an antibiotic just in case since I had a few open wounds and he still wanted me to start chemo as soon as possible and an infection would set back chemo for more time. On Tuesday, I went back to have more sutures put in to close the most recent incision problem. We removed the bandages around my external sutures and found my skin had pulled back from them overnight. We have no idea why. So I was given choices. 1. I could have them all resutured moving outward to use more viable tissue and using thicker sutures would ensure that the area would remain together. 2. I could leave the wounds open and allow them to hopefully heal but that could take months and my risk of infection would be extremely high and most likely chemo would be compromised. 3. Or I could go into the operating room and have them redone there under anesthesia but I would have to wait until at least a couple of days for an OR spot to be opened and I would have to go through pre-op testing again. This would definitely move chemo back even further. #3 was extremely tempting but I knew I needed to do #1 just to get moving forward. I was in the office for 4 1/2 hrs with about 3 hrs of suturing happening to me. No person should have to hear or go through the procedure that I went through happening to themselves. It was not fun. I felt like a trooper though. No tears this time around but a lot of hand holding from the nurse. So, now I just keep putting out into the universe the following words: "Please let me heal correctly this time! Please!" I told my doctor I would do anything to make this work - I would eat crickets if he told me to. I have upped my Vitamin C intake because I read that if Vitamin C intake is low it can delay healing and surgical patients without enough vitamin C don't make collagen appropriately - maybe that is my problem since I don't appear to be making collagen appropriately. I am eating chicken or turkey even venison, or high protein foods at all meals to increase the amt of protein in my diet to help with healing too. Today, I am sore. Very sore. As I heal slightly, my nerve endings are being awoken so the further away from surgery I am I get more feeling. Thus, having tugging and pulling and having my arms in different positions than I have had them for the past 5 weeks was difficult. I am sure I am bruised but I am under so many bandages that I can't tell. It is getting better though. I am sure it will be much better tomorrow. I'm visualizing daily my cells healing and my body fighting infection. I know it will happen. I need it to happen now please!