What a Drain!

Drain, Oregon

Three years ago, my mom and I took my kids and drove down to Southern Oregon to the dunes there on the coast.  My brother and his family were up visiting from Southern California on vacation.  After about 10 hours of being cooped up in the car together, it was starting to get dark and we were, officially, in the middle of nowhere. We came across a town called, DRAIN.  Drain, Oregon.  This is where the nuttiness began.  You'd be surprised how many words rhyme with drain.  My mother and I spent the next 30 minutes or so making fun of Drain Oregon.  A town that took us less than 3 minutes to drive through provided us with a lot of entertainment.  We made up such jewels as "I wish I could take a TRAIN out of DRAIN!"  and "You have to STRAIN to even see DRAIN!"  Yes, we were on a comedy roll.  I laughed so hard, I cried and I thought I was going to crash the car.  The children were petrified that the big people in the front seat had totally lost it.

Unfortunately, we soon learned that our experience in Drain was a "you had to be there" moment.  We gleefully told our Drain story to anyone who would listen and always were met with the same confused glassy eyed response.  To this day, whenever my mom and I mention Drain, Oregon, we start to giggle and people around us question our sanity.

Sadly, when we talk about drains today, we talk about the ones attached to my body.  Four of them to be exact.  I hate drains.  I know I've said that before but it's my blog and I like to repeat myself.  At this point, I'm not in much pain from the incisions - just a little phantom nipple pain here and there.  It's the drains that are painful.  If I try to do anything much at all, they pull and hurt.

We are down to emptying them once a day now and one side (the left) is looking really good.  The output is next to nothing and the color is really light.  The right side seems to be putting up more of a fight.  It's still very dark red and the output is still quite a bit (though much less than at the beginning, of course).

Tomorrow I have my second appointment with the surgeon and I'm hopeful that I'm going to lose at least 2 drains, maybe 3!!  I was told that some people have drains in for as much as 5 weeks or more!  I don't want to be one of those people, thanks.  I'm not looking to make a name for myself as the most "drainiest" woman.

I'm still taking pain pills once or twice a day (along with the anti-nausea pills) and mostly it's because of the drains.  It's frustrating to feel like you could start to do some things - like you could start to live a normal life again, but the pulling and pain of the drains, something that is external to your body, holds you back.

I'm still having some pain from my arms to be sure, but I had a huge success the other day in that I was able to actually apply deodorant!  I was able to lift my left arm just enough to get the deodorant sort of close to where it should be.  That was a huge relief!  Even I wasn't liking the smell that was emanating from my body by that point.  And, under the category of TMI:  I can only shower my bottom half because of the drains - so I've got to have *something* to cover up my "natural" smell.

So, appointment with the surgeon tomorrow and then appointment with the oncologist on Thursday.  The Thursday appointment is when I'll find out the recommendations for chemotherapy and where we go from here.  I'm feeling anxious about that appointment but I'm ready to just know.

For now, I'll just be so happy when Drain is, once again, a town in Oregon that I once drove through.