My breast augmentation surgery & recovery experience

[Mandy71]

Hi ladies,
Here is the story of my breast augmentation surgery and the recovery. First I’ll start with a synopsis, and then I will include my journal of how things fared.

My long-awaited twin peaks emerged on August 18, 2009. The surgery went very smoothly, yet I was enormously tense and anxious. I received 325 cc on both breasts. My recovery was difficult for the first 3 days and was quick after that. I had no complications thus far, although the bruising on my left breast was rather bad. But the bruises disappeared by week two.

A little background on me: To start off with, I was pretty flat. I wore 34A bras most of the time and was at one point a 32B (in my early college years). Then I got married, had three lovely girls, breastfed all of them, and gained breasts to a size 36B while breastfeeding. After losing the pregnancy weight to my normal weight of 110 pounds, my breast flattened out to a dismal 34AA most of the time. My nipples were stretched out and pointed south. Looking at my breasts, I lost my appetite.

My self-confidence and body image were very low, even though I worked out and looked pretty good for my age, currently 38 years. I weighed as much as I did in high school. But I hated looking at myself in the mirror, especially naked.

One of my hobbies is writing, and I had to do research on breast augmentation for one of my characters in one story (which I never finished). After doing a little research, I asked myself why don’t I get the procedure. Having implants doesn’t make me a floozy or diminish my intellect. They would merely be alterations in important body parts that currently reduce my self-image. That was about five years ago. Since that time I have read four books on the topic. I am informed about the problems that may arise from the breast implants. However I am willing to accept the risks, in order to improve my appearance.

When I was thinking of sizing, my surgeon warned me that I don’t want to go too little because his experience told him that I would regret it. I sort of paid heed to his advice but not enough. I specifically told him not to give me big ones on the day of surgery. I told him I was thinking of the 350 – 375 cc range. But I trusted him to use his judgment about doing his best not to have rippling occur. He advised also that I get silicone implants because I didn’t have much breast tissue. Silicone looks and feels a lot more natural. I nixed the silicone and asked for saline because of all the silicone-related diseases that I may get from these implants and because I would have to pay for specific MRIs every 3 – 5 years to detect ruptures.

Now I do regret not getting bigger implants. I wished I had gone to 400 cc’s or more because I believe that was my breast size initially after the surgery. I was so darn pleased with the size for about one week. I was ecstatic about how I filled my clothes. But now that I am about two months post-op, my breasts have shrunken a full cup size. I was once a full 34C and now I am a full 34B. Oh, man. If the financial landscape looks better soon, I will get redo to “fix” the size.

Here is the journal of my breast augmentation surgery and my recovery experience.

August 18, 2009; 12:00 PM

The drive to the hospital was long and relatively uneventful, only that we took a wrong turn once. Going without makeup or moisturizer to the hospital was weird but so was getting this surgery. I used to stereotype these breast augmentation patients as being shallow, brainless automatons who just want guys to look at their boobs. Now I am one of them! Actually I am going to downplay my boobs’ existence in my clothing choice and not try to get people’s attention on them. I am doing this for myself and to build my self-confidence NOT to attract unwanted attention. Even if I did want to attract attention, I don’t think the size that I am going for is going to stop traffic.

The nurses prep me and have me fill out paperwork. They have me in those compression hoses and tell me this is routine. The anesthesiologist appears and talks to me about my past medical history.
The surgeon then comes in and marks me up. He says if I go too small I may come to regret it. I tell him I don’t want them too big. He asks the ballpoint range in terms of cc’s that I think I should be getting. My answer is around 350-375 cc’s. He says he thinks the same.

Finally I am wheeled to the operating room. Before leaving me at the elevator, my husband says to have fun. That blessed creep. I gotta love him for his zingers.

The nurse has me lay on the operating table. Then the anesthesiologist starts her meds and says I will feel a cold sensation in my right arm where the IV is. She tells me to start paddling my feet. All I last remember was trying to paddle my feet and poof. I was gone.

Next thing I wake up disoriented in another room. That was fast, I thought. I look down at my chest and see a strap and bra. And most importantly, I see cleavage. Then I see a nurse talking to me. But try as I may to be shake off the sleepiness, I conk out again. When I come to, the same nurse comes to me and asks me how I’m feeling. I say “sleeeeeepppppy” and conk out again. I don’t know how many times this scenario was repeated, but I do remember at one of those times when I am struggling so badly to keep my eyes open, that my exertion resulted in me tooting twice in a row. Funny thing is, the nurse didn’t even laugh. Maybe recovering patients did that a lot! Eeewww.

Then when I was more awake, they wheeled me to another room, a bigger room. Nice flowers await me on the table from my surgeon and his staff. What a good gesture. The man knows how to win even difficult patients like me. I notice other patients in the same room divided by curtains. Two of the men are snoring so loud. One of them is a heart surgery patient that just wants to get up and doesn’t let his nurse do her job. One recovering lady gives me a great smile and I try to smile back. But I really don’t know if I could do that much because I still pass out every so often. There is a different nurse taking care of me now, who is really funny and tells me the post-op care instructions. She talks to the anesthesiologist who suddenly appears to ask how I am doing.

My husband takes awhile to get to the hospital, but when he finally does, I am somewhat more coherent and talkative. He drives me home and asks me about the operation. Actually I am only guessing that he was doing that because I was still in outer space. I survived, as he can tell.

That night was kind of rough. Four hours later, as instructed, my husband let me take my Percocet, Compazine, and Keflex (antibiotics). I managed to throw it all up. I threw up three times that night after drinking water to wash down the meds. So we waited about 15 minutes after the last vomiting episode. My husband then had me take a Compazine (nausea med) without water. Surprisingly that tablet was small and didn’t need water to get down my throat. Then he waited some more minutes, and next gave me the Percocet tablet without water. I was able to keep this down also. Then I did the same with the Valium. These meds helped me to sleep at a 90 degree angle on the sofa through much of the night. My husband then woke me at around 5 am to have a Keflex pill. My man really rose to the occasion.

August 19, 2009; 9:45 PM

I am feeling about 3 times better than yesterday. The nausea is almost gone. At rare times, I still feel a bit lightheaded, but I am in control of myself. The pain is bad but not that bad, about a 4 or 5 from a scale of 1 to 10. I expected excruciating pain. To me, it was similar to the pains of having swollen breasts while breastfeeding –- when they get engorged. So pleasantly it is only uncomfortable pain, especially at my nipple areas where the incision sites are. I’ve been really out of it though. I’ve been dozing off most of the day.

August 20, 2009; 3:00 PM

Things are getting better and better. I am now not as drowsy as I’ve been yesterday. The pain is tolerable. I am not going to take Percocet (the prescribed painkiller) anymore because it causes me to be dizzy. Tylenol and Advil work for me, so I am alternating between the two. I am still going to take Valium at night to help me sleep.

The children have been absolutely wonderful so far. They are so understanding, although I don’t think they know I had a boob job. They just are gentle in hugging me and do things for me. So sweet. My youngest says “gentle, gentle” when she sees me and isn’t allowed to be picked up by me. Oh, it has been heart-wrenching. But I got to recover fast and then I can hold her all she wants. Our children are so very cute and need to be cuddled.

August 21, 2009; 10:45 PM

My husband drove me to my follow-up appointment today. I got to see the new set finally. I have been curious, to put it mildly. They’re not too big. I found out that I received 325 cc in each saline implant. The surgeon did a fine job listening to my wishes. But right now I can tell they’re swollen and there’s some bruising. But boy, oh boy... I wanted to jump for joy because I no longer look like a man with gynecomastia and overstretched nipples.

I got a full shower tonight. That felt wonderful. My husband got a look at the twins in full light because he had to help me with shampooing. I am to keep my elbows at my sides for one full week. Yes, yes, yes, that is difficult to do. There were some problems in wearing my surgical bra after the shower. My husband washed it on delicate cycle but it came back all funky straps everywhere. We tried to make sense of it.

August 22, 2009; 10:00 PM

I am four days post-op from the breast augmentation surgery. I’m feeling great. But my bra was put on incorrectly, inside out. No wonder the bra strap was all weird. I noticed this positioning of the bra in the morning and corrected it. But the bra has been bothering me quite a bit today. So itchy and uncomfortable.

When I showered I noticed a fresh strip of bruising, about six inches long by ½ inch wide, that the bra band probably caused. It is purple-black. I think I will call the doctor’s office for advice on Monday. I believe it was caused by wearing the bra inside-out. And it may be my imagination, but I think my left breast is a bit more swollen than my right.

August 24, 2009; 4:40 PM

One word: Itchiness. I now get these itches (I’ll call them the itcheez) all over my torso, especially around my breasts. I haven’t asked the plastic surgeon’s (ps) office yet about it, but I read on breast augmentation websites, that it is a normal thing. The skin is stretching from the implant, therefore it will itch. I hate the feeling. It is sort of comparable to the hives that I get when I exercise for about ten minutes (doing running or something that gets my body temp up high). When I get hives, the relief is a good hot shower. The hives then disappear within 30 minutes after showering.

These itcheez seem to be “attacking” my skin for the past three afternoons, when the house temperature reaches the 80s. I scratch everywhere it itches, even though I know I am not supposed to do that (some sources say scratching makes it worse). But I try to scratch lightly whenever possible. But there are some spots that simply scream “I am the ITCHEEZ and I am here to torment until you scratch!!!” It is barely tolerable at times. I wonder how itchy the women who get really big implants become. They must want to tear their skin out.

The strip of bruising on the underside of my left breast now looks worse than yesterday. It has spread in the middle in a nasty circular pattern. I hope it goes away soon because it looks so bad that I just might want to scratch it also. It kind of looks like someone beat my left breast with a baseball bat.

I called the ps’s office about the bruising today and emailed some pictures. They said it looked normal and not a hematoma, as I feared. Hematomas are poolings of blood that escape from blood vessels and become trapped in the tissues of the skin after surgery. It usually means that the breast that has the hematoma will have bad capsular contraction. The ps office staff said that the bruising naturally moves downward and the yellowing shows that the bruise is healing.

But I am ever so thankful that I don’t seem to be having any of the more serious complications. I hope I won’t have to change those words. Overall my breasts (without the bruising and the incisions) look really good. So I am pleased.

August 25, 2009; 11:30 PM

I am now 7 days post-op and things are better. My bruising is still very present and seem to be taking their time to heal. There are a lot of yellow bruises on both breasts. That strip of bruising on the underside of my left breast is fading although still dark. My breasts do look less swollen than a few days ago.

I got bad itcheez today. It was a really warm day, which makes my itching worse. I hate the feeling but if I have to put up with only this condition for the sake of my implants, then I’d say they are definitely worth it.

Bruising, however, is the least of my worries. I just hope that I get stronger fast so that I can eventually lift things that I normally lift, like laundry baskets, Sophia (about 23 pounds), shopping bags, and other household stuff. I must get back to doing all the household tasks that I am used to doing (shopping, vacuuming, sweeping, shopping, etc.).

August 29, 2009; 10:45 PM

I am almost two weeks post-op; next Tuesday will be the 2 week mark. I feel really fine, just have arm raising tightness when I try to lift my arms over my head. I have no need for Tylenol or Advil. There is still discomfort when I get up in the morning around my nipple areas but that usually goes away within minutes.

Friday’s appointment with the PS went well. I am healing quickly. The oozing in one of my scabs is normal. It just happens (the oozing) when the scab is falling off and the new skin is not all there yet or dry enough. I don’t know the technical terms for wound healing, but the PS says it looks fine.

There was one mistake I made. I had put Neosporin on my scabs to protect it from infection since the past day. The medical assistant says not to do that. She says to keep the incisions as dry as possible. No moisture on the scabs except when showering. But the PS says it doesn’t look like I did any permanent damage.

I am really satisfied with the results thus far. The breasts are riding high and somewhat firm, but I look vastly different in my eyes. I no longer cringe when I see myself naked in the mirror. I look good now. There is a lot of massaging work that still needs to be done with the breasts. But I look forward to that. Now at least I have breasts! My nipples still point downward a little, but they don’t look tired, dried up, and used up. They point outward more and there is definitely more fullness to the nipple areas.

[polemama]

Thank you for posting your detailed account so I may have a better idea of what expect. So glad to hear your journey was successful!
Enjoy your new additions

[aderr02]

Thanks so much for posting such a detailed story of your recovery. I'm getting so nervous- what to look forward to really helps though!

[Mandy71]

Before my breast augmentation surgery, I tried to read stories, blogs, and journals of other ladies' surgical experiences. So I guess I am doing my "part" to help fellow breast augmentation women. These true stories I read helped me a lot, as I am usually a person who wants to know the exact details firsthand. There's a side of me that wished I was awake for the surgery, but the sane side says "I'm glad that I wasn't."

Good luck!!! -- I hope you did your research on getting a good surgeon and all the other options that need to be decided.

[AWholeNewMe]

Thanks for posting your story. I have done my research and feel extra prepared.

[tacomagirl]

Thanks for your story--especially the post-op recovery part. I am 3 days out from my breast augmentation and the notes about your bruising was really comforting .

Congrats on your boobs! Thanks again for sharing!