Ramblin Rose: PT for the Boobies....and more!

Hi Everyone
I've been going to physical therapy for my breast reconstruction issues for almost a month. Julie Wong is the PT.

That ugly bulky oatmeal shirt is the 'gown' they make you wear.

She's pretty amazing, as a person, and a PT. She had cancer a few years ago, and after her lumpectomy she couldn't believe how much it changed the way she could move her body. This inspired her to look in to working with breast cancer surgery patients, to help them get back their range of motion as well as working on the scar tissue associated with the surgery.

But I don't need to ramble to much on this, you can click here and check it out yourself. Watching this makes me feel so lucky I have the opportunity (read health insurance) to get the help from all these great people.

When I go there, I know I should be concentrating on getting my strength back and my flexibility, but mainly I just ask her when they are going to look better.

I have to admit, I haven't been great about the exercises she prescribes. It's like homework, and I am a bad student. Honestly, I don't see how sitting up and slowly stretching my neck to the left and right thirty times with deep breaths will help my breasts look better. She does her best to explain to me that when you get a mastectomy, they take your pectoralis muscles and stretch them over the implant so that there is something between the skin and the bag of silicone (otherwise the silicone bag would be more vulnerable to rupturing). They don't do this with regular breast augmentation because those ladies still have all their breast tissue and milk ducts to protect the implant.

Anyway, because these muscles get stretched, they are tight and they pull your neck and shoulders down, like they are trying to go back to where they were. Oh, my poor body. It must be so confused. So you do these stretches to lengthen the muscle which I guess is somehow supposed to help with the appearance of my breasts. She also prescribes some serious breast massage. Well, massage really isn't the right word. It's breast wrenching. Breast twisting. Breast major maneuvering. It's all to break up the scar tissues that formed around the implants because, in Julie's words exactly (and she reiterates this to me every time I go), Your body is saying, Hey! There's something foreign in here and it sends scar tissue, so you have to go in and break it down over and over until one day your body says, Ok, I can live with this foreign object. It's OK with me.

In Julie's world, my body talks to itself. Which is fine with me as long as it's also saying, Hey, let's not let anymore of those stupid malignant cancer cells grow in to tumors, and also, it's probably a good idea if we tell those fat cells to shrink a little because Rosalie just brought a new pair of jeans that are just a tad too tight. Seriously, all that weight I lost during chemo, it's baaaaaaack. It was weird anyway to be smaller post pregnancy than pre. So now I just feel like a normal new mom trying to lose baby weight. I even joined a gym. The local hippie lady gym in Fairfax. It's so low key. Ladies are lifting weights in flip flops. I love it. Getting there when I go back to work will be difficult, but I'll cross that bridge, blah blah.

So, after Julie does some work on me, her assistant Joe teaches me some new stretches (which hopefully I remember to do) and then he has me lie down with heat on my back, ice on my chest and electrodes attached to my upper and lower back sending electricity to the muscles.

I'm not 100% sure what the electrical doodads are for, but the ice and heat are to keep me from being sore (after all that stretching) and it works. I get to control the level of zapping I get with a little remote. It goes up to 60, but I can only take it to 5 before I get the heebeejeebees. It just feels freaky.

After that, I am inspired to keep the scar tissue Julie broke down with her strong hands from reforming, so I drive home hoping nobody is looking at the strange lady feeling herself up in the car next to them.
Something I thought I would never think, but the day I have to wear a bra again to keep my boobs from sagging will be a great day.

In other news, for those who just want to see baby Sadie (Hannah and the Great Aunties)....

Greg and I took Sadie to the Fairfax Farmer's market the other night. Greg said it was like a park in 1968 with the music and the crowd. I thought it was great. We ran in to my new neighbors, Andrew and Liz and their 18 month old son Henry who just so happened to be crashing the blanket of my other friend Susanna (no not that Susannah, but it would have been nice to see her too) and her husband Greg and Lorelei (I think that's how you spell her name).

Here's my little family on the way to the market.

Oh wait, you want to see her a bit closer? I don't blame you. Here you go.

Andrew and Liz came over tonight to watch the debate. Eh? I thought it was boring. But Greg didn't. He's enraptured. Not sure how Sadie felt.

We successfully celebrated Amara' Jay's birthday last Sunday.

Here's my dad, his girls, and their girls at the party...

Yeah, that's a sucky picture of Nina, so I'll make up for it here

And here's a good photo of us with our cousin Whitney.

And me with cousin Judy

I had an MRI on my chest. Hannah was so great and met me in the city to help me with the baby.

Though she was pretty perfect.

But me, I hate these tests. I hate the IVs. The hot rush of of the dye injection that makes you feel like you peed your pants. The laser that scans your body like something from the Terminator movies.

They were following up on something they saw on my lungs in my original MRI right after I got out of the hospital after having Sadie. I was a mess. I had a cough I couldn't get rid of so I think that's what showed up on the scan. But still, the day of the test I thought, what if? It's not like I don't have reason to worry, right?! Got the results yesterday. All is well.

Then we went to lunch. I stayed to pay the bill and Hannah disappeared with my kid. Found her flirting with some firemen. Because what's cuter than a fireman holding a baby?

After that we met Dan and his parent's at the MOMA to see the Frida exhibit. I love Frida. Both of them.

Hannah snapped this of me and the baby with the original, but we couldn't do a redo where I didn't look sleepy eyed with Sadie facing forward because we got in trouble for using a camera. Oops.

Phew! That's a lot of action. Sadie needs a drink.

No. I don't usually take my kid to a bar. This was an exception. I ran in to my neighbor Stacee and her baby, Parker (8 days younger than Sadie, but weights probably 10 pounds less) after I picked up Sadie from daycare. Here we are at my dad's work in Fairfax.