DIEP Surgery -- Day 2

At 7 am Jackie (the physicians assistant) made her rounds. It was expected that at this time I would move from my bed to my chair for about an hour. However when Jackie looked at my breasts she was a bit concerned about some slight changes to the right one, this coupled with the fact that my blood pressure was very low made her opt to keep me in bed until the following morning. My blood was extremely unlikely to clot and I had no fluid built up in my legs so everyone felt comfortable with just letting my body rest rather than pushing it at this point in time.

Day 2 I will admit to feeling overwhelmed. I had a lot of mucus build up in my lungs yet I still had to do my deep breathing. Coughing was inevitable but it hurt! Luckily coughing is a good sign and a way for the lungs to clear out so I kept up with my pain meds and continued to hack away. My husband did a wonderful job of encouraging me to deep breath and really expand and contract my lungs.

The day went by pretty fast, I was still on a liquid diet which was not super appealing to me because I love food! But I did order a delicious tomato soup from the room service and also enjoyed their chocolate pudding. I was happy to be able to keep those things down, it was a sign that my nausea was under control. At the end of Day 2 I sent my husband home again to help put the boys down and to get some solid rest of his own. He was such a trooper and needed his sleep!

That night my temp reached 102.5 which warranted a call to my doctor. I had to really push the deep breathing and was given ice packs to put in between my legs and a cold wash cloth on my head. Eventually we got my temp down to 100.3 which was better, but it still ran high the rest of the night. My biggest concern at this point was that I was developing pneumonia. A nurse had told me that after a longer surgery lungs do tend to be prone to that so my active mind latched onto that piece of info and used it a motivation to fight through. I kept repeating "God is within her, she will not fall" which is a portion from Psalm 46. My pastor had shared that with my husband and I the day before surgery so it wash fresh in mind mind and it assisted me in getting my spirits back up.