Yesterday was 1 week post-breast-reduction surgery. Larry met me for my 2pm appointment at Dr. Coleman Brown's office. He's such a nice man. So glad I chose him! Dr. Brown removed the bandages and clear waterproof tape covering my incisions (slightly uncomfortable, but not too bad), and then removed the two drains coming out of my sides. Wahoo!! And, for the first time I got to see my nipples in their new position. (Can't believe how easy it is to talk about my nipples now and to be topless in front of medical people without feeling self conscious!)
Before I continue with the medical stuff, I want to share with you my sense of accomplishment after finishing this 2,000-piece puzzle during my first week post-surgery. It was nice to have something to do besides laying down to rest, reading, and watching TV on the couch. Good distraction from having to deal with soreness and drains (more on those in a moment). Plus, I get to have a colorful photo to go along with this post!
OK, back to the medical stuff...
I thought I'd include photos of what these drains look like. Here it is coming out of my body on one side. Apparently, inside me (on each side) there was about 10" of tubing kind of circling the area of surgery, held in place by 1 stitch and the tape. Then there is a long section (about 3 feet) of tubing outside the body ending in a bulb. The bulb has lines so you can measure the amount of fluid and a valve where you then dump out the fluid in the toilet. Then you press hard on the bulb to get the air out and close the valve. This creates a vacuum (see 2nd photo) that helps to draw the fluid out of your body. It works really well. It's a pain because you have to carry them around with you all day and sleep with them in, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The apron-like drain holder I wrote about in my last post really helped. Plus, the fluids decreased a lot day by day, so that at the end of the week, I only had to empty the bulbs once a day. I'm very happy to be free of them, though!
When Dr. Brown removed the drains, I could hardly tell they were coming out. Once the drains and bandages were gone, I got to see my incisions. They still have Steri strips (narrow white tape) which will come off eventually on their own. My breasts are still swollen and a little sore, but I love their new shape and carrying around 2.5 pounds less breast tissue! Wish I'd done this years before, but oh well.
Next, I got out my list of gazillion questions, saying "Yeah, we're those people"and Dr. Brown patiently answered them.
Most of my questions were about the mastectomy I'll have in 3 months, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 1, 2018. In that surgery, Dr. Pamela Wright will remove all the breast tissue, and Dr. Brown will install the tissue expanders and sew me up.
Here are some of the things I learned:
The next operation will be about 3 - 4 hours long.
They'll be able to use the same incisions as Dr. Brown did for the breast reduction.
The recovery is likely to be a little harder, because they will be removing a lot more tissue.
I'll have 4 drains instead of 2, as well as a device called a Prevena wound vac for the first week. Apparently, this provides continuous negative pressure which will help my incisions heal properly and help my skin adhere to the implant pockets Dr. Brown will create out of sterilized cadaver skin (!) called AlloDerm. This is really important because the blood supply to keep the skin and nipples alive is only coming from the skin and fat layer just below the skin.
Dr. Brown will insert tissue expanders into the implant pockets during the mastectomy. These are like deflated implants with a small amount of saline in them that allow the incisions to heal without too much pressure on them. After a couple weeks, I'll start getting regular injections of saline into the expanders until I'm the size I am now. I think this process will take about 2 months.
Once I'm at the desired size, I can schedule the final surgery for a few weeks later to swap out the expanders for the real implants. That's an outpatient surgery. At the same time, Dr. Brown will do fat grafting to fill in areas where I will be a little sunken after the mastectomy (for example, where the doctor has removed the breast tissue that angles up towards your shoulder) for a more natural look.
I won't have any feeling in my breasts at all initially, since all the nerves are removed with the breast tissue. Bummer. However, some people regain some feeling over the years as nerves slowly regenerate.
Products used during mastectomy and reconstruction:
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