First off - in case you didn't know - I'm pregnant. Right now I'm about 21+ weeks.
Secondly, I've been dealing with some scary health things that have added a lot of stress to our family's life. I've tried to laugh about it as much as possible - but there are some days when the pain and exhaustion gets me down.
If you haven't been following my strange saga, this is what I posted to my LLL group for informational purposes about a month ago:
I haven’t been posting much these past two months as I’ve been dealing with the strangest thing that I thought I’d share with all of you. I have an auxiliary nipple (looks more like a dark scar, really) under my arm in the Tail of Spence (edge of mammory glands). When I was 2 months pregnant I began to leak a little bit of milk for several days under my arm. That little leak stopped but bacteria must have seeped in and I ended up with a massive infection under my arm – identical to late pregnancy/post pregnancy mastitis in the actual breast. I’ve had two ultrasounds of the mass and it is an orange sized hard mass of infected tissue. My OB tried the traditional antibiotics for mastitis (Dicloxacillin) but that didn’t help. My surgeon tried to lance and drain the infection, but that didn’t work either. If anyone has had mastitis, you know the pain that is felt. I had an OB appointment today and I feel like an anomaly in the world of ‘armpit lumps’ – I definitely have something not everyone has seen nor heard of. I have my 4th appointment with my surgeon next week where she will tell me if she will have to surgically cut it out or not. I am now using a heating pad under my arm all the time to try and ease the pain and, hopefully, reduce the size of the lump. The pain is either like a searing burn or a throbbing pain that radiates from my armpit down my arm and through my breast. What worried me the most was that if I do get the surgery, will I still be able to breastfeed? The answer is yes. They will only be removing the tissue and glands by the Tail of Spence. All of this has been fairly scary as this sort of thing is in the ‘unknown’ category. If you look up ‘early pregnancy mastitis’, you’ll find a lot of information about the bovine community, but not humans. I wanted to share this as before the last two months, I had no idea one could get mastitis during pregnancy, this early, nor under the arm.
Life has left me exhausted. The pain wakes me often at night and after 4 years of quasi-co-sleeping, I’m finding Doodle wakes me more than lets me sleep – his knees and elbows are sharp these days! So when evening comes around I’m just thankful my husband is home from work and I’m able to sit a bit and have him clean the dishes and play with the boys.
And this is an update after my post-operation appointment yesterday:
I am going to make this as short as possible. Today I went for my first post-op appointment with my surgeon/oncologist. What she has come to the conclusion is that I have a massive infection in my sweat glands called ‘hidradenitis’. There is a paragraph long report on the findings with some really big words but the sentence that stood out was ‘The histopathologic findings are most consistent with granulamatous lobular mastitis, a condition that usually appears on average 2 years after pregnancy, in parous women ranging between 17 and 42 years of age’. Well, that’s me.
My surgeon said they found lots of ‘bugs’ in the tissue they removed. She said it was a pretty disgusting lump of stuff that she pulled out. It was a solid mass of infected yuck. I told her ‘that’s fantastic!’ and she said that’s not what she expected to hear. I told her ‘a disgusting lump of stuff’ is better than hearing the big ‘C’ word. So what normally happens once they find this type of infection is two different and super powerful antibiotics would be prescribed for this to be taken at the same time, but as I’m pregnant, that’s not going to happen. So I’m on a ‘mild’ antibiotic right now and I have another appointment next week. She extracted a lot more infected fluid from the area today with the biggest (girth) needle I’ve seen in a long time and seemed to think she’ll be doing the same next week. But she said I will be fighting this for a while and I’m to watch for more fevers over 100 degrees, redness, and pus. (I’ve had low grade fevers since this all began in January). She said my exhaustion has to do with my body trying to combat the infection. It seems as though the infection might also be starting on the other side, but we’re not sure at this time – we just have to keep an eye on it. So in the meantime, I’m to get as much rest as possible and take care of myself. Thank goodness the weather is a bit nicer and the boys can run themselves ragged outside in the backyard while I catch a few rays on my pale winter skin!
So that's what has been going on with me...
Through all that that we've tried to keep going and have a normal life. Doodle turned 5 years old and that was just amazing to think about. Snorter now has about 8 words and will be receiving speech therapy 1 day a week at our home soon.
I couldn't resist this one of Snorter's tush when he sleeps!
Doodle on his new Razor 360 - fun!!!
Me....tired and worn out but having a Batman of a time at Doodle's 5th birthday party!
