Fair warning: I’m about to say nipples a lot. If you want to play a drinking game – drink every time I say nipple. Tomorrow is my first surgery, the nipple delay. It’s an outpatient surgery that should take about 1.5 hours. During the operation, my breast surgeon lifts the skin from the tissue and takes samples from the nipple to make sure there are no pre-cancerous or cancerous cells, so I can keep my nipples (I should have the pathology report on Thursday). Also, this surgery stresses out my skin and causes the blood flow to start changing a week before the mastectomy, making the mastectomy a tiny bit less traumatic and increasing the likelihood my nipples will survive the mastectomy. My mastectomy is the following Tuesday the 26th and I’ll be in the hospital for a few nights after that one with a 4-5 week recovery period.

To prepare for tomorrow’s surgery, I did a hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment per my doctor’s recommendation. The reason to do the hyperbaric treatment is for faster healing after surgery. I was a bit scared, but it was actually really relaxing. You get into this big giant tube and it feels like you’re in an airplane with your ears popping a lot at first. Luckily, they gave me water and gummy candies to help with that. It isn’t like an MRI, so you are able to move around all you want. They had a bunch of movies to choose from and I picked Legally Blonde 2. It was a pretty good choice because it was exactly the length of my session, 1.5 hours! I felt really relaxed after my session and am going to go back again the day before the mastectomy.

I am a bit nervous for tomorrow, but really trust my team and am ready to begin this process. The anesthesiologist called me tonight to go over my allergies, which I thought was awesome. The only bummer is my surgery is not until 3:45 so I may be pretty hungry/thirsty all day tomorrow since I can’t eat/drink before surgery. Anyhoo please send good vibes/energy/prayers for me tomorrow afternoon. Adam will be guest blogging during my recovery so I’m sure he’ll post an update on how everything went.

In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of me in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber.