For those of you that don’t know, Courage Is My Strength is only part of my mission these days. I use this blog and my YouTube channel to hopefully reach women that need information about what they are going to go through with their mastectomy and reconstruction surgeries, but I also have created Team Courage Racing. My dream was to create an off road race team to help inspire and encourage women to keep their spirits alive, and to keep chasing their dreams even after the changes and heartache they go through with these surgeries.
Great news from Denver, it seems that doing Yoga caused the ports of the expanders to show thru my muscles and skin, but I don’t have to worry about the ports wearing thru and causing damage. That is great news.
Even better, we sat down and scheduled my next surgery date. I will be having surgery Friday, October 15th. They will take out my awful expanders and put in implants on that day. I should be able to go home that day, or at least to a hotel if I don’t feel like making the ride across the Rockies, and will need to take a few weeks off of work. But it’s exciting to be finally moving forward again.
The summer is well underway at last, and its time for serious fun and play time. But for some of us the summer brings stress and surgery and uncertainty.
Hmmmm, it’s been a crazy week. Ha! I guess it’s really been a crazy life, but let’s just talk about the recent days.
All of a sudden, Courage is growing rapidly. We should reach 50,000 YouTube views by June 1st, and 100,000 views in August. We now sometimes hear from several women a day, and that is the best news of all. I have also found some pretty amazing women myself, and my wheels are turning in my mind about ways to make them part of my Courage Vision.
So many of my new Courage friends are dealing with new expanders and are a little concerned with the way they look. I wanted to take a minute to let everyone know I’m doing okay, while also comparing 2 weeks post op to 3 months post op so that you can see that although there is still a long way to go, the results improve dramatically after a few months.
This blog did get a post awhile back from a man going through this surgery with his wife. I was on the road and couldn’t give it the time it deserved and want to talk a bit about it now. Also, some of my medical posts are so far down the blog that some people don’t see them, and don’t know what this surgery means for women.
Alex, although you have probably started going through this already, your wife will be almost crippled by her surgery. After a mastectomy a woman can not use her arms, can not sit up by herself, can not eat, brush her hair, or even clothe or go to the restroom by herself.She will have drains and bulbs full of blood hanging out of her body that are constantly pulling on injured muscles and causing her tremendous pain. She will look into the mirror and see a butchered body where her beautiful body once was and not even recognize herself. She will have to face the fact that she will never again feel her body react to a man’s touch or to cold, and she will deal with people who think this operation is just like getting implants.
Courage Blog is almost 4 months old and we have reached the incredible mark of over 1,200 visitors and over 13,000 video views on YouTube! That’s not visits, but individual visitors. Thank you to all of you that have spread the word and have helped make Courage such a success in such a short time!
6 visitors online now 3 guests, 3 bots, 0 members Max visitors today: 9 at 06:04 am MDT This month: 22 at 09-08-2010 01:08 pm MDT This year: 27 at 05-13-2010 11:15 am MDT All time: 27 at 05-13-2010 11:15 am MDT
