Meeting with Dr. Becker next Friday

ahdjdbcjdjdbkf

I had my first post-surgery measurements done today at the 4-week point. I'm WAY down from 18% and a 350 ml difference to 10% with 200 ml difference. Before I was always going up and not down!

hugz4u

I am just so excited for you. You are getting your arm back! Thank you for posting. When your done with all those stupid bandages you are allowed to wrap up all " the doctors in denial" and stick them up atop of the Seatlle space needle. There will be many,many other doctors up there for all to see and laugh at. For the pioneer surgeons with this lymph node transplant technique.... you are allowed to give them a gold star!

ahdjdbcjdjdbkf

husz4u it has been hard for me at times to stay a believer after so many trials and traumas I could never have imagined. But my arm truly is doing better and my latissimus revision is a big improvement in both comfort and appearance. I'm going to count my blessings and celebrate all those who helped bring around these unexpected positive developments in my life. I'm so grateful I kept hoping and acted on it.

Helensamia123

Great news so glad to hear you are doing well...

Pitch-217

hi,

I am very interested in hearing if you are a good candidate and what the surgery would entail. I was diagnosed only 5 months ago with le and already are like you, want a fix to this. Can you give me more info on yourself, how you have lynph etc? I live in nyc area and would do anything to get rid of all this le daily work. So many of my dr's and therapist say surgery not a good idea. Nit enough research... I need people like you who have it to weigh in.

Thank you

PinkHeart

Pitch,
You are in luck in that there are highly experienced surgeons in NYC who do vLNT surgery so you don't need to travel should you have the surgery.

I went to Dr Richard M Kline, Center for Natural Breast Reconstruction, Charleston SC, who did my vLNT and bilateral SGAP recon.

I had mild LE. I have not had any swelling at all and December will be three years since surgery. I have had achiness in my armpit but I feel that it is from my axillary cording (also caused by ALND) that never resolved completely even after years of therapy with CLT-PT and attempts at surgery on it.

Wishing you all the best!

HappyTrisha

What a difference 5 years make! I never stopped on my journey to figure out some kind of surgery and I've ended up coming almost full circle. I am going to see Dr. David Chang at the University of Chicago on June 5th. I am confident I will leave there with a date for surgery. Will keep you posted. And now I'll read this thread, wherever I left off!

Trisha

HappyTrisha

For anyone around still reading this thread - Because I have had LE so long, Dr. Chang did not feel that LVA would be effective for me, even though they are staging my LE between 1 and 2. He said there would likely still be fibrosis. So what he is recommending is that I have both LNT and LVA. He will use lymph nodes from my neck for the LNT. All I was waiting for was to see whether insurance was going to cover it, and I got word from his office last week that insurance approved it. So now I'm waiting to hear from the scheduler to see when I will have it done! It's been a journey, but I never stopped searching.

mbc

Hallo,

I got Dr. Becker's surgery for a very heavy form of lymphoedema in my right arm last year. I have now had this surgery for almost sixteen months.

I'm male and I got breast cancer as in my european town there was a spike in cancer cases (heavy pollution) so even the rare male form is becoming common.

All my lymphonodes had been cut so i immediately developed a swelling in my arm and hand that was diagnosed as a stage three lymphoedema. I couldn't perform any task involving lifting any weight, even mynimal ones.

I ran across Dr. Becker's technique reading this forum, being an addict to reading can be extremely productive, in my purportedly advanced corrner of my nation no physician would know of a remedy to this condition.

Actually they practice a deviation of lymph into veins called anastomosis which has, rightfully, a bad fame of making things worse.

After surgery I experienced an immediate relief in the hand , the turtle like swelling of the upper side disapepared just the day after surgery revealing again the veins' and tendons' structure.

Arm was less swollen.but I was warned that for at leat two years I had to consider myself still sick, even if recuperating. Dr. becker was optimistic and told me I was looking good and that i would heal completely

It went on like this with some minimal, but continous, tendency at deflating for almost a year: nontheless I had to be careful and take specialized massages quite often (it's a specially modified Vodder method massage that was developed to support transplanted patients. The usual Vodder is actually dangerous according to Dr Becker's support specialist).

Roughly six or seven months ago I attempted some heavy (in relative terms) use of the arm and it started responding pretty well, with just mynimal swelling after exercise (light hammering): this swelling would be gone within an hour or even less.

But it was two months ago that things started going really well.

Coinciding with a good diet, I started to notice a marked improvement around the writst, where some deformation was still quite evident: there was a great improvement with wrist getting back most of its shape: what was more interesting, under an heat wave I could walk without noticing any swelling even after a long walk.

I even took a long hike under a scorching sun with a semi-light backpack and the arm came home without practically no damage, staying the same after the walk and an hour of car drive.

Since approximately a month after that the difference between my sick arm and the normal one took to look not much noticeable from some distance, moreover the forearm is still slightly swollen but its complex shape is again discernible, while before it was still shapeless and lumpy.

Most important, it keeps stable even under 30-40 celsius heat.

Dr. Becker said it would take two years before healing, and she was quite right. After sixteen months I now have an almost normal arm that I can use for carrying the usual packs of water from supermarket without damage, while I can even do soem light hamemring while tinkering in my lab with no consequences, barring some light swelling that ebbs quickly with some brief rest.

Today I woke up with a really nice looking right part of my body so I thought it was the rigth moment to post a first report.

Scar is another question but I got a huge cheloid from forst surgery, it grew again after transplant despite care but this is a problem that relates to my delicate skin:in any case Dr. Becker was also successful in transferring some fat into my armpit, covering badly cut nerves that had become a real pain after first surgery, so that I was also freed from a continous pain coming from sort of jolts such severed nerves were producing under stress.

So i'm now starting to feel extemely satisfied with the results.

Jennie93

Thank you so much for sharing, mbc. That is very encouraging!

hugz4u

mbc. That is so encouraging. Thx so much for posting. I hope you post in the future. We rely on you brave people for trying the surgery and breaking ground for us.

What kind of a diet did you do to help your situation? Wasit an anti inflammatory one?