Kym and I made a quick stop to see the plastic surgeon the day after Kym's mastectomy. We wanted to make sure her Jackson-Pratt drains were working properly as one of them seemed to be blocked. Everything was working fine and we got a chance to take a quick peek under the dressing to see Dr. Forman's handiwork. The site looked great. We had been concerned about the integrity of Kym's skin since her tumor has infiltrated the skin's surface forcing her surgical oncologist, Dr. Wright, to make a wider skin resection than we hoped. Thankfully, Dr. Forman had the necessary room to spare to insert an expander, which he will gradually inflate with saline to stretch Kym's skin in preparation for her permanent implant when the time is right.
With her post-operative harness and two drains on her side, I thought Kym looked like a bustier-wearing gunslinger...
Drains aren't too much fun to manage, but they are fairly simple to handle once you get the hang of it. Just as you can find a video on YouTube for learning how to do everything from French braiding hair to wrestling alligators, you can find videos for how to care for a JP drain. I put in a few of these drains during my brief stint as a clinician and was comfortable with them, but seeing how to handle them on a video can really help the uninitiated.
Kym and I are committed to chronicling our experience on this cancer journey. There are many directions I can imagine going with these posts -- from providing perspective on the caregiver experience to delving into the emotional side of it all. Our goal is to be helpful to others on the journey and to help ourselves keep perspective through our own. If you have thoughts about what you want to see here, please share.
And boy what ATTITUDE! Best best best!
ReplyDeleteWish I could be there to help with the butt-kickin' back-in-the-saddle energy. Beaming it from afar, every day!