Sans Nipple…

Here it is…the moment I’ve been waiting for…the first sight of my scar and I am so pleased.

This is the first time my surgeon has seen it, too and he was very pleased.
There’s no fluid, very little bruising, the implant hasn’t moved. the port hasn’t moved
and the scar is wonderfully smooth. Some of the areola has been saved and this will be used to make the new nipple and a new areola will be tattooed around it. Good, huh?

This photograph was taken after I’d had another 40ml of saline injected into the implant.
The breast will settle in time and look less like a football!
The injection and fill-up didn’t hurt at all; in fact, we were all laughing about it. However, by the evening, the tightness and stretching of the muscle was very painful but this has now eased and the painkillers helped.
Next week, I’m having the final top up…not 40ml, I don’t want to poke TB in the eye.

EDIT: Just in case you were wondering, I will be having the other breast worked on so it will match!

Two weeks on…

Here I am two weeks after my mastectomy. The dressings are off but the steristrips are still on…they will be removed in a couple of days and I will get my first glimpse of my scar and nipple free zone!

Having an immediate implant, although painful and uncomfortable (with more of that to come as it is inflated gradually once the swelling has gone) has, for me, been wonderful. My implant is under the muscle so is causing a fair bit of pain but this will eventually subside. A delay in reconstruction would have made it a longer, more painful process as the skin would need to be stretched and I’m not good with pain.

Hmmm…I’ve mentioned pain four times in the paragraph above.
Lord, I am such a wimp!

New boobage!

Wehey…back home and out of bed! Time for a catch up, too.

The view from my hospital window…perdy, no?

Right, the more serious stuff…

My surgeon has a neat set of different coloured pens and I assume he simply cut along the dotted lines. Actually, the blue line around the nipple and down and then the one under  my arm is where he cut. He was able to cut within the line around the areola so will be able to use it to reconstruct the nipple, lessening the amount of tattooing needed. The red outline is the implant and the little red box is the port for inflating with saline. The blue Xs are where the drains exit and I had a third one but cannot remember where it exited.

Here I am two days after surgery. Two of the drains have been removed. All I can see in this photograph is the tummy which has mysteriously appeared. It can’t possibly be anything to do with Mssrs Green & Black, can it?

Here are the drain bags. I had to take these everywhere with me. It was good to come home with only one left. ToyBoy is emptying it each morning for me as it is quite tricky to do with my numb fingertips.

I also had to wear, and continue to wear, these super sexy surgical stockings…

Trust me…this is a lentil bake with swede and mashed potato. YUM!

I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. There’s a tightness across my chest, which I guess is the muscle being stretched by the implant underneath it and a soreness inside as well as where the incisions have been made. I have antibiotics, iron, paracetamol, tramadol, ibuprofen and in the hospital I also had oramorph and man, do I need it all!

But so far, I’m happy. The shape looks good. The implant has already had saline put in it and will have one or two more inflations. I have a Becker Implant, which acts as a stretcher too so will not need replacing unless my radiotherapy causes the muscle to tighten uncomfortably around it. When all the swelling has gone it will be about twice the size of my other breast so I will need a prosthesis for two or three months until I can have an implant to even them up.

Having an immediate implant has been such a good thing. I wish I’d known this was possible right from the start as it would have saved some anguish…I’d been told it couldn’t be done until after radiotherapy. My one criticism of this whole process is that the members of my team don’t always talk to each other.

Now the only thing playing on my mind is whether or not I should opt for a mastectomy on the other side, too. At the moment, I think it would be easier than maybe having to go through chemotherapy ever again.