The Long Forgotten Hole

'Never did follow-up here on the old blog about the whole radiation-recall thing from my JUNE 2010 post. But here's how the doctor appointments played out:   Nothing. Nadda. No staph or other infection shown by the biopsy.   No reason why the symptoms appeared in the first place, and no explantion why they went away.  But I guess that was good news.

As a reward for having no infection or disease or other condition, I now have a hole in my skin. Yes, a permanant hole in my skin from where the dermatologist scraped the tissue at my masectomy scar for the biopsy. For weeks I thought it was trying to heal. I thought the "dark" spot I could see was a scab trying to form. Then one afternoon I nearly fainted when I discovered it wasn't a scab at all, it was the lining of my implant!

I heard a gurgling as I was drying-off from a shower. Huh? What the..?
I realized as I moved my arm, I could hear a squishing sound.

Remember how the boys (at least the ones in our neighborhood) used to try to make fart sounds by holding one of their hands under an armpit and then squeezing that shoulder? Well, that's kind of what my squish sounded like, except more muffled.

I moved my arm again. I heard another gurgle. To my horror, I looked down at my scar and, literally, I saw water bubbling-up through my skin from my own body cavity !! The "dark" spot I had been unconcerned about for so long wasn't even a scab, it was a hole to the internal darkness of my chest wall!

Now for the gross part. Stop here if you're squeamish and/or if you know that I don't filter my experiences.

So of course the next thing I did was lift my breast/implant to see if any more fluid drained out. And it did. I almost threw-up it was so unsettling. The "pocket" of skin that holds my implant is stretched bigger than the implant itself. As water from showering seaped-in through the hole, it accumulated in the crease at the bottom of the pocket. Holy moly.

I'm always tempted to take a flashlight and hold it up to the hole to see if I can actually look THROUGH the implant and check-out the inside of my chest cavity. That'd be cool.

To this day in January 2011, my skin isn't healed. The only "fix" for the hole will be to have it stitched up. But at this point in time, I've learned that I have bigger fish fry.  Stand by for details my dear readers.