Fill 'er Up, Part Two: Living with Expanders

Doesn't reconstruction seem like an amazing process? It is! But it also can really fucking suck. At first, my chest looked like two craters. I didn't want to look at myself, with that shape and an obvious lack of nipples. For several weeks after the surgery, I did not have skin sensation, like when your gums are numb after  a dentist injects novocaine, except it was my entire chest. The only thing I could feel was if there pressure the expanders/my chest. Pro: can't feel pain. Con: can't feel anything else. The weekly fills were coming along well, and I returned to work 6 weeks after my surgery. It would take just over 2 months of fills to get to the size I wanted, so I had to learn to live with the expanders back in my normal life. The lack of sensation hindered my ability to hold animals as part of my job (I'm a veterinarian), because I couldn't easily tell how hard I was holding them. I can't explain how weird it is to have a Great Dane jump and place it's feet on my chest, only to feel a little change in pressure. Work was definitely interesting, to say the least. By the time I got to my last few fills, I started to regain some sensation which was a good and bad thing. I was glad I was regaining sensation, but that meant that each fill came with the pain of a needle poke. It has been several months now, and I'm still waiting to see if I ever get full sensation back. 

It took getting used to the fact that the expanders don't move. At all. No squishing, no slipping. Like half of a softball just stuck underneath your skin. My chest lumps  would get slightly bigger every week and I would find myself running into the edges of walls or my coworkers with my chest. It took adjustment every time they got bigger! I playfully coined it 'bumper car-ing', because I would walk into something and instead of squishing like a normal breast would, there was resistance and I would be pushed backwards. I would walk quickly around a corner and be pushed backwards without knowing why, because I couldn't feel that my chest hitting anything. Additionally, with the increase in size, every fill was accompanied by two days of discomfort, because I could feel how tight the skin felt. Like butter scraped over too much bread, as Bilbo would put it.

If you have a mastectomy and expanders, get used to sleeping propped up. The expanders are dead weight on your chest. I wasn't allowed to lay on my back or my sides for at least four to six weeks after the surgery. After that, I still slept propped up because if I tried to lay on my side, the expanders would pull on my skin (because... gravity) and it would cause pain. Also if I lay flat on my back, the expanders would cause a lot of pressure on my chest. There is a lot of fluid in these big things that are just sitting on your chest, they don't move around and spread like breasts would so laying flat means slightly more difficulty breathing. Luckily, I had many pillows in a variety of sizes and shapes that helped me sleep. And men think throw pillows are a waste of money!

Sleeping, bumper car-ing, and skin stretch were minor inconveniences compared to what happened with my later fills. I started to notice that within the hour after a fill, one or both of my arms would start to hurt. It began with a dull pain, which then progressed to tingling, then a cramp, and then it would turn into an extremely painful sensation like a charlie horse in my arm that wouldn't go away. I was able to deduce what was going on because of my own medical background, but I did run it by my doctor and my nurse. As the expanders were filled, they started to stretch not on only the skin but also the nerves in the area. Stretched nerves = much pain. I would have the pain for two to three days after every fill. Sometimes the pain was so extreme that I wouldn't want to move. I was prescribed gabapentin after the surgery, which is a pain medication that works best on nerves, and my doctor recommended I started to take it again when I needed it. I got used to taking it the morning of my fill appointment, and staying on it for two to three days after the appointment. Being able to take the gabapentin was a major relief.

Due to the pain after those later fills, my nurse gave me some options for continuing fills- I wasn't at the size I wanted to be yet! 
1. Get the same amount of fluid every week and stay on the gabapentin as needed
2. Get a fill every two weeks instead of weekly
3. Get less fluid injected weekly  
It was great to have options, but I kept up with the 60ml injected weekly since the gabapentin offered enough pain control.

Living with my Barbie chest, gentle hugs, avoiding bending over, and being careful with jumpy dogs... Just a few of changes I would have to live with until I can get the expanders replaced with implants. Also, a bunch of acne on the skin between my chest lumps, which my plastic surgeon said is common for some reason. Yup, chest acne. Have I mentioned that this all just fucking sucks?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drained

Image
*Content warning: this post contains pictures of my chest and drains after surgery* I had been told by several people that I would hate my drains. I was optimistic at first. After all, the surgery had gone so well, maybe the drains would be better than expected too? I was wrong. So wrong. They were plastic pieces of hell worming themselves into my body. The mastectomy surgery involved removal of a large amount of breast tissue, as well as the nipples in my case. When this much tissue is removed, there is empty space underneath the skin where drainage from surrounding tissue can build up. The drains make sure that extra fluid, blood, and small pieces of tissue are removed from your body. With such a big surgery, your body can't break all that down and absorb it faster than it is made. If all that gunk were to sit around under your skin, it could slow down healing and cause a major infection. The type of drain my surgeon used was called a Jackson-Pratt drain, or ...
Read more

The Next Step

During the six week recovery from my mastectomy, I scheduled an appointment with an oncologist. An oncologist is a medical doctor that specializes in cancer. Despite all that I had been through, I hadn't actually seen an oncologist yet. Most of my care had been provided by the general surgeon I was seeing through the High Risk Breast Center. She was the one who recommended a referral. I was anxious in the waiting room, I always am at these specialty appointments. As usual, my husband and I were the youngest people in the waiting room. The only people under 55 years old.  I would rather be surrounded by people my age, it would make the entire situation seem a little more fair. I know, life isn't fair. Still, being surrounded by much older people always reminds me that the cards I have been dealt suck. The oncologist didn't need to do any sort of physical exam, she just sat down to talk to us about my history and what the next steps should be. I had brought ...
Read more

Size Does Matter

Are my expanders big enough yet? I would ask myself this question after every fill. There isn't a guideline of how much fluid injected equals a certain cup size, because cup sizes vary by woman based on her own size and shape. I spent a lot of time agonizing over knowing when it was enough, when I was at the size I wanted. I had to think to myself: what I would regret more, having my fake breasts be too big or too small? I was a c-cup before the surgery. I knew I wanted to be at least the same size, or maybe a bit bigger. My plastic surgeon assured me that the decision didn't have to be final, I could always go through the process again for bigger boobs, or get smaller implants. Not that this information helped. I would have to be a little insane to want to go through the expansion process again, let alone another anesthesia. Can't forget that insurance deductible either... After each fill appointment, I would go home and hold one of my old b...
Read more