More home care...

My home care nurse came to visit me 24 hours after I left the hospital. She would continue to visit me over the next couple weeks every day. I received 24 staples over almost an eight inch incision spanning across what was my right breast, all the way under my right arm where my lymph nodes were. Each day the nurse would change the dressing over the staples, cleaning it as well. I also had two drains inserted into me. I can best describe them as something that looks like a hand grenade (it literally fills the full palm of my hand. About two feet of tubing is attached to this football-shaped ball and another six inches of tubing is inside me. The tubing inside me is flatter and has tiny holes all over it so fluids can get into the tube and travel down to the grenade-like object that gathers all the fluid.  Initially, it's mainly thicker blood but it slowly becomes thinner and lighter, pulling in some fatty tissue (I know - yuck!). The drains cannot completely fill and they need to be drained on a regular basis at the beginning. The first day, a crazy amount of fluid was drained - half a litre from one drain! The other drain was more of a typical amount - about 180mL. A drain will be taken out once it reaches a total of 30mL for two consecutive days. Now I wait...