Waking up

Waking up was absolutely awful. I could hear lots of loud hurried voices around me, I felt myself being lifted from one bed onto another and being wheeled around. I had this feeling like being touched by thousands of hands all over my body but my brain couldn’t keep up with all the little touches. I had SEVERE pain in my arm where the IV had been put in. I started screaming that “it hurts!” “ it hurts!”  They couldn’t figure out why I was in so much pain from my arm because I wasn’t coherent enough to tell them exactly what was wrong. They tried about 3 different times to get an IV going in the other arm so that they could take the painful one out and once they did I felt a ton better. BUT, that is when I started feeling the difference in my body. Not pain so much as pressure in my chest and lots of burning. I was in the ICU and told that my husband would be able to see me shortly which had me extremely excited. In the backround I could hear this strange sound like that you hear when they are monitoring your babies heartbeat when you are giving birth. This swishing heartrate sound. I was told it was a Doppler implanted in both breasts to monitor the blood flow and they said I had AMAZING blood flow to the flaps that had been transplanted. I looked down and felt my breasts and they were extremely swollen. SO much so that they came up to my collarbones, mostly on the right side. I was wearing a new hospital gown that was opened and I was absolutely THRILLED when I saw the insicions. Dr. Fusi had drawn and explained much larger ones than I had, so I was happily pleased. One nipple was protruding and looked almost normal minus the surgical tape over the incision but the other one was purple and inverted. I knew this would fix itself over time. I also got a peak at my stomach. It was pretty swollen but all of the excess skin from having my children was gone! For those of you who have had babies know what im talking about! I couldn’t see much so I ended up asking three different people if I had a new belly button. Obviously ive watched several plastic surgery shows and read up on it and if they take a lot of skin they have to redo your belly button. I later asked one of the plastic surgeons who had worked with Dr. Fusi and he said it was the same one God gave me, they just put it in a new spot. So at that point I had a good idea what I looked like. I had six drains total (long tubes with bulbs squeezed for suction) coming out of my body. Two under each arm/breast and two underneath my stomach insicion near my pelvic region. I had surgical tape over very small incisions over and along the sides of my nipples, surgical tape all along from hip bone to hip bone but that insicion was VERY thin. My belly button looked FUNKY to say the least. It was protruding with stiches all around it. All in all I was pleasantly surprised with my post op look knowing that it could only get better over time.