Can someone prepare me for my major surgery?

I'm going to have a pretty major surgery July 11, 2011. In both of my underarms, all of my sweat glands become easily infected. I had a pretty bad MRSA outbreak last year in them so I went to surgeon. He's going to fix it for me. He is scooping out both of my underarms. He said he's removing about a orange size of tissue from both of my underarms. There is going to be some rearranging of the tissues inside so I'm going to have about 250-300 stitches in each underarm (including the internal dissolvable stitches). My surgeon said that more than likely, because my skin will be pulled so taut in the stitches, I will burst them open (yay for me). Can someone help me fully understand how to care for myself without the use of my arms for about a week. I'm alone during the day at home. How can I handle the pain and discomfort?