Hangin' in There

Hello to all!

I am feeling rather guilty for not posting as much here on my blog of late. As I mentioned before, I am posting more these days on Facebook than here. So if any of you are still keeping up with my blog here, and haven't seen anything from me in awhile, you might check my Facebook page when you do a search for Debbie Brady Brueckman.

Now to Larry. PRAISE GOD, he is fine after having had 8 inches of his colon removed a couple of weeks ago! There was no cancer, and since they did the surgery lapriscopically, his recovery was much quicker! He is doing great! Thank you one and all for your prayers and your concern!

As for me, I am gearing up for my next surgery, and it will be the "big" one I had hoped to avoid. I will be having the latisimus flap surgery on Aug 12, performed by my plastic surgeon as my reconstruction. It has been a year now since my diagnosis -- can you believe that?? And since my radical mastectomy of Aug 6, 2009, I have had a tissue expander implanted in the void in my chest. For the first many months after my mastectomy, I would receive saline "fills" in the tissue expander, in the hope of stretching my skin enough to eventually cover an implant. Unfortunately, radiation un-did everything the tissue expander did, and shrunk my skin. Now the tissue expander is still in there, but all the more uncomfortable, since my skin is so very tight and taut over it. It is quite painful. Since my skin shrunk, I am now going to have to have the surgery I had so dreaded: the latisumus flap surgery, where skin will be taken from my back and moved to the front to cover the implant. My plastic surgeon explained it this way: He will make an incision in my back at the bra line, then "tunnel through" to the front, and pull the skin from my back through an incision in the front, then stretch it over an implant. Ugh. He says it is on par with another mastectomy, pain-wise and recovery-wise, so I am bracing myself. And I will need some more prayers, please. My recovery time will be 4 to 6 weeks, but I will be sooooo very glad to get this tissue expander OUT of here! It is like a rock in my chest, it does not move as a natural breast does, and it is very hard to the touch.

So that's the update for now. As I said, please check out my updates over on Facebook if there aren't as many updates here on my blog. I so appreciate those of you still hanging with me on here, still caring and still praying! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. As I said, I can't believe it's been a whole year now, and I can't believe even yet that this happened to me. But I have come a long way in this year, and that has been in large part from the support of all of you! Thank you!

Love, Deb 333333333