It's August already?!

Man, the last three weeks have flown by. I've been supremely slacking in my posts, not because I don't have much to say, but because we are so busy that the day goes by before I've realized it even started. Unfortunately, this post is not going to be about the girls, it's going to be about me, so sorry if that is a disappointment. (They're doing great and will be fully blogged later)

**Warning - this entry is graphic and not for the squeamish**

About two weeks after the girls were born, I got mastitis. That's when a milk duct gets blocked and can get infected as a result. The lactation specialist gave me a series of actions I could take to clear it up: massage the blocked duct firmly, hot pack it, take lecithin supplement (it acts as a kind of lubricant for the ducts), use the ultrasonic vibrations from my SoniCare toothbrush, and keep pumping. I did all of these and eventually the big fat rock went away.

Flash forward a few weeks and a different lump showed up. This one wasn't painful, though, so I didn't put as much effort into clearing it up. I did all the recommended actions, but not as vigorously. For about three weeks it wasn't a problem...until it was. Suddenly it got really painful and I had a big red spot on my chest that I initially assumed was from all the extra hot-packing and massaging.

For two days I tried to deal with it on my own, since the last one resolved eventually, but it was getting progressively worse. I woke myself up with a shriek when I rolled over on that side in the night. Even the weight of my T-shirt on the skin gave me a stabbing pain. (Have you ever had a hangnail that gets infected and is tender and sore? Multiply that by, like, 7,000, put it in your breast and then proceed to bump it on nearly every doorway you go through simply because that's the most painful body part to bump at the moment.) I gave in and called the lactation specialist - who wasn't in. I got transferred and left voicemails and spent half a day trying to talk to someone about what I could do when I finally got a call back from the lovely midwife, Diane, who had helped us through the first months of the pregnancy (before we had to go to specialists).

Diane told me to come right in and she'd see me as soon as I arrived, possibly bringing in a doctor to take a look if needed. I so appreciated that she was the person following up! We have our niece, Darian, with us to help with the girls this month, so I left her and Sean and went to Bellevue Medical Center on my own.

By the time I arrived, I had a magenta spot on my chest the size of a lemon, and the rock hard plugged duct had a soft spot in the middle that was raised like a bee sting. She and the doctor took one look at it and said, "That looks REALLY painful." To which I replied, "It IS."

They immediately got me seen next door for an urgent ultrasound which determined that it was so infected that it had turned into an abscess. Yikes. I thought it was painful to have my T-shirt on the skin, but the ultrasound probe pushing on that spot was like a white hot knife. I teared up and braced myself and it was luckily brief. The only way to fix it was to go down to General Surgery and have a surgeon cut open the abscess and drain it.

The doctor (who I shadowed for several days when I was pre-med and who now has intimate knowledge of my breast - awkward!) prepared me with shots of Novocaine into the surrounding tissue. Injections of Novocaine hurt like a ***** on a good day and this wasn't a good day. This was a needle going multiple times into incredibly tender and inflamed tissue and sending unbelievable pain radiating throughout my body. I screamed through clenched teeth and clutched my hands together at my waist so that I wouldn't lash out and hurt him. I sobbed, like the kind of sobs that have you catching your breath several times before you can let loose with the next one. And before even a few seconds had passed, he had already cut into my skin and I could not only feel the slice of the scalpel, I could feel the pus flooding out of the incision and pouring hotly down the side of my chest. It was quite possibly the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. Worse than the contractions of my freshly cut uterus after the c-section. That bad.

I was still sobbing when the doctor told me that Novocaine doesn't usually work well on infected/inflamed tissue. Thank you so much for the warning on that one, buddy. If I'd known what I know now, I would have forgone the anesthesia altogether and just had the incision done without it. The extra pain of the needle going in over and over added nothing but misery. He also said that it was about a shot glass and a half of pus, and I could expect more to drain out over the next several days since the wound would remain open.

The line at the pharmacy was extraordinarily long and I was taking deep breaths to get through the pain until I could get the meds and antibiotics and go home. I was prescribed an antibiotic that I have to take 4 times a day for 10 days - I'm a nursing mother of twins, how the hell am I supposed to remember to take this stuff when I need to? And the pain meds aren't good for nursing, so I'm going without for now. I already can't use the milk from "the bad side" until the infection is totally gone, since now that the abscess is open it could get junk into the milk, so I need all I can get. I have to pump "the bad side" and dump it in the sink, which is ever so wasteful from my perspective.

The good news is that today everything feels SO much better. My clothes don't hurt. I can lay on that side. I can bump all the doorways in the house. Yay! This was definitely an unexpected part of pregnancy that I don't want to recur. Now, no more getting cut open, right? This should be the very last time. *knock on wood* These girls better never have any health problems to make up for all we've been through already!