DIEP Flap...warning...graphic content

When I look at myself in the mirror everyday, I'm still happy that I chose the DIEP Flap surgery. I know my breasts are my own body, I don't have implants to worry about redoing. But during the hospital stay and the weeks following, that was a whole different story when I look back on it.

When I woke up from surgery in the ICU after 12 1/2 hours of surgery, I slightly remember friends and family standing by my side. I was hooked up to every monitor known to man and a heat pad across my chest. When they do the DIEP flap procedure it's microsurgery, so they crack your ribs to reconnect the blood vessels. The first 24 hours are the most scary because your body may reject your tissue and you could have your boobs literally die on you.

Luckily, I was a good patient and all was well and stayed in the hospital for about 5 or 6 days. It was when we came home that it was the hardest part of the healing process.

I started to realize that my incision for the tummy tuck area was splitting, so we went to the doctor and I had an infection. So I literally had an open wound from hip to hip that my amazing boyfriend at the time (now husband) Matt had to pack with gauze twice a day in the shower for me. He held me in the shower when I cried, looking at my open wounds and stitches all over my body. I could barely sit up straight because I was pulled so tightly and didn't want the wound to grow.

Weeks later I went back in for a touch up surgery to close my stomach back up, and that wasn't going to be the last time, I would have to go through this one more time before my body was deemed back to normal.

I know people wonder about my obsession with the movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I see myself like Sally, the character that was covered in patches and stitches all over her body, and it was a part of her. That's why I have a tattoo on my thigh of Jack and Sally, with Jack stitching her right breast. It represents what Matt and I went through together.

Done by Juan Gollaz of Black Diamond Tattoo