Nursing Nightmare.

Alright, so if you don't want to know some gruesomely detailed information about my breast, you probably shouldn't read this post. You were warned.

Here's my story.

At 10 days post partum, I woke up with a super high fever. 102. I felt like crap and just miserable. I then realized I had a big bump on my right breast and it was all red. I had heard about mastitis, so called my OBGYN and talked to a nurse. It was a friday, and they close at 12 on fridays, so they called in an antibiotic and told me to massage the area. If I wasn't feeling better by tuesday I needed to come in and be seen. Well, by the next day, my fever was gone, and I was feeling a lot better. I still had a painful bump but thought I could probably get rid of it eventually. So, I finished the antibiotics (10 days) and STILL had a big bump. The problem was, I couldn't massage while O was eating, because of it's location, so could only massage it in the shower or after or before she was eating. It NEVER went away. So, 6 days after I finished the antibiotics (this past saturday) I woke up and it was all red again. It had been painful off and on for a week when I nursed, but I didn't think much of it.

Monday morning I woke up and called the OB. I had a slight fever on Sunday night but none since. But, my lump was red and hot and hurt to even touch it. My OB isn't in on Mondays, so I talked to the triage nurse, and she said she would talk to the other doctor, and call me back. I waited, and took some advil. The nurse called back and said Dr B wanted to see me as soon as possible and if I could come in at 1. So, I said yes and went on my way. (At this point, I was wondering if the pains were from thrush in my breast, and was just frustrated because the lump was making it hard for O to latch correctly.)

I went to my apt. The nurse calls me back and this is our conversation (she was a different nurse than the one I talked to on the phone):
Nurse: "So, are you pregnant?"
Me: "haha no"
N: "Ok, when was your last menstrual period?"
M: Ummmm Jan 28th 2013...
N: Ok, so you're nursing. What kind of birth control are you using?
at this point I was super confused. Why didn't they know that I had just had a baby? haha
Me: Ummmmm I had a baby 3 weeks ago, sooooo none?
Then the nurse laughed and said I looked great and sorry she didn't read much of my chart (since I normally see the other doctor).

So, I talked to Dr B about my problem, and she decided to check me out. The left breast looked good and normal. She opens the right side and goes, "Oh. Ouch" Yay me. She then tells me I'm going to hate her, and she's glad Dr P was out of the office so I can hate her instead of my normal dr. She tells me to lay down, and puts gel all over my breast. Then came some of the worse pain I've ever felt. She squeezed and pushed on that lump as HARD as she could. So hard that I couldn't even get the word "STOP" out of my mouth. I was crying and holding onto my pants for dear life. She did it for at least 5 minutes. When she was done she goes "Oh, well normally we can pop a clogged duct and milk will shoot out like a pimple, but yours is just slowly leaking out, and the lump won't go away."
So, it turns out she was worried I have a breast abscess underneath the milk duct. A pocket of puss. A pocket of infection. That was just pushed on for minutes. I was hurting SO bad. She then told me I needed to get into a breast surgeon asap.

The nurse went out to try to get me into a surgeon. She comes back and says, "Here is the address, go there right now." I realized this was not a good situation, so called my mom (who was watching my kiddos for me) and asked her to come. I needed to feed Olivia anyways, plus I just wanted my mommy with me! My AMAZING friends offered to watch Jaxon for us, so my mom came on her way.

The doctor came in our room and honestly wasn't very nice or encouraging. She told me what I most likely have was a breast feeding abscess. In case you don't know what a breast feeding abscess is: (A breast abscess is a painful lump in breast tissue, this is one of the most serious breast feeding problems, but is also very rare, occurring in only about 6% of all breastfeeding moms that have mastitis and/or recurrent plugged ducts.) She said "Well, do you want to breast feed?" I told her I did. She said "Well, this isn't going to be an easy fix. You won't be cured tomorrow. This will be a long process, and we will need to work together and you will need to be patient." Gee, thanks lady. Way to make me feel better.
She went over the options:
1. Drain it with a needle in the office. Problem, it can refill up and I may need to have multiple drainings.
2. Put in a drain (I googled this and found out this: Larger abscesses are drained using a catheter and done by surgery. The wound is usually left open to drain and heal. Yes, please let me have an open wound that will be draining pus near my child's mouth? yum. (I THINK she told me that I could pump but not breastfeed... but now I can't remember...)
3. Surgery or take a pill to dry up my milk

So, we decided to start with option 1. She said that the nurse will come in and get things ready, and that my mom had to leave the room. I lost it at this point. I just started crying and crying. Why couldn't my mom hold my hand while they stick a huge needle into my already sore breast and drain pus? I was feeling so many things. I was terrified and mad and discouraged. It wasn't fair that this was happening to ME. What did I do wrong? My mom said the look on my face made her just feel hopeless. Her child needed her and she couldn't do anything for me. 

The nurse was super nice to me at this point because I was bawling my eyes out. They set up and the doctor came in. They did two shots of anesthetics, and can I just say, THEY BURN LIKE HECK. It was a deep burn that made me cry harder. Then she stuck the big needle in to drain, and that hurt too! She said, "Sorry, the anesthetic doesn't really do much with an infection this big" WHAT?! Then why did you even do it? (just kidding, I'm sure it would have been worse without it)

The good news is pus came out (so no cancer or other random reason I have a huge lump in my breast.) They are sending it to a lab and want me to come back Thursday to do it again. I'm on another antibiotic, and hopefully we can fight this.

I had never even heard of this before. Has anyone ever had experience with this? I'd love to hear a good ending story. The doctor seems to want to push me to just let my milk dry up :/ I'm feeling very stressed, discouraged, and honestly am hating nursing right now. Its getting me pretty down, and I hope we can fix this problem, and I can enjoy it again like I did with Jaxon.