Week 2 was a low point

After devoting several days to healing activities such as I mentioned above, I was keen to see what improvements I had achieved, so it was deeply depressing to find when I took this photo on Day 12 and compared it to the ones taken 4 days earlier, only to find that BB was actually looking more swollen and discoloured, rather than less.

This was the start of a very bad week for me, emotionally, and it was definitely the low point of the whole experience. I was sleeping very badly, because of needing to be propped up on pillows and unable to lie on either side, and I was finding it very difficult to manage on my own with such a swollen and tender breast. It seemed to complicate even simple things like cooking or hanging out the washing, and I was becoming more and more apprehensive about the consequences of this stubbornly persistent haematoma.

I felt I had somehow failed in all my attempts to encourage it to heal, and my guilt was increased by the very kind and well-meaning comments from friends that I was probably “overdoing things” like the gym, driving and looking after myself at home. So I felt the situation was “all my own fault”.