Last Week's Surgery

For several years now. I've had an ever growing lipoma on my right arm. While many lipomas reach a certain size and are content to just stay there, mine felt the need to continue to grow until it ended up weighing almost 14 lbs. It's difficult to manage with something that large on your upper arm, especially when it's your dominant hand. I've had to alter a lot of my behaviors. There were some things I just couldn't do, like eat in public (the lipoma would make my shirt ride up so high you could see my bra). There were other things that were simply just more difficult, like typing or trying to brush my hair.

Last Monday, this lipoma was removed. I've been trying to get it removed for a while now, but no one was ever really comfortable with doing it. I finally found a doctor who was, and, honestly, I'm glad it was him because the whole thing ended up being more complicated that we thought it would. We believed the lipoma was just under my skin, but it turns out it was in between two large muscle groups on my arm. The surgeon had to move between them to cut the damned thing out. What was supposed to only take a couple of hours ended up taking over four. What was supposed to be an outpatient situation ended up being me staying in the hospital overnight for observation.

Now I have over 40 staples in my arm. My skin HATES the staples in much the same way it used to hate me wearing earrings. I also have a drainage tube and my skin hates it too. I'm hoping the tube comes out on Tuesday because I'm very tired of dealing with it. I mistrust it and somewhat hopes it just falls out on its own.

Despite the pain and the skin protests, so far things seem better than they did before the lipoma was removed. Even now, I have better range of motion that I did and my shirts fit so much better. I feel like less of a freak. It didn't take as long to get used to as I thought it would, even though I've had some balance issues from time to time.

Healing is never an easy process, especially when you have a pretty large wound. The worst part for me is that I have a sinus infection going on, so I keep coughing and sneezing all the time. Thank heaven for antibacterial stuff. I'm also staying really tired. Healing zaps a lot of your strength. While I am not as fatigued as I was after the bloodhell in January, I am staying as tired as I used to before I got my CPAP. It's been a rough week and probably next week won't be a lot better.

Though a few weeks from now, things could be much better.