5 years after surgery

Debalah

I am new to this site, and discussion board but I feel very alone at times with my symptoms and decided to see if there's anyone else out there with similar problems.

I had a double mastectomy with tram flap reconstruction, and a hysterectomy July 2010. Today, almost 5 years later I stIll have no feeling in my breasts and stomach. It's not just numb to light touch, it's completely numb. I even tested to see how numb I am by putting the tip of a knife on my stomach & put some pressure on it....nothing, don't worry I was careful, I'm not about to injur myself! I can't even feeling pressure. In the shower I can't feel if it's too hot, too cold...nothing. My stomach muscles are very weak and I can't sit up unless I use my arms to push myself up. Now I decided to try to get back into shape and I think I might've given myself a hernia, I have a bulge in my upper abdomen. Sometimes I just get so frustrated and tired of what happened to my body because of this surgery. Is there anyone else going through the same thing? I would appreciate your input and advice, thanks

inks

I am not as far out as you but I have no feeling in the breasts as well, I had implants. I guess the numb belly is common with open abdominal surgery, I had a c-section 3 years ago and it's numb around that. I am not familiar with flap surgery but would assume you should be safe to do situps and bring yourself to a sitting position without using your arms. You may have to start exercising gently but you'll get there. My cancer center has gentle exercise classes, and so does the local breast cancer coalition. I wonder if physical therapy or even occupational therapy would help you. I am 1,5 years out and had my first PT appointment today.

And a funny thing about my numb stomach - my belly was very flabby after having the baby and it was so numb from the c-section that it got caught in my pants zipper.

Debalah

Just to clarify, I don't simply have weak stomach muscles, they cut my stomach muscles and transferred a piece of it to my breasts. I will never be able to do a sit up because of the much needed stomach muscle that is no longer there. That is what happens during a tram flap surgery. From what I understand they have now changed this surgery because of this issue and no longer take the stomach muscle to use in the breast.

Kathleen26

Hi Debalah. I had a TRAM flap on the left side in 1996, and like you, it took many years to get much feeling in the stomach around the excision. Twenty years out now, I have some feeling above and below but not within an inch of the incision. I have none in the back of that arm or the breast area, but weirdly enough, I do have feeling in the skin that they pulled up through the abdomen to form the top of the new breast. I still get a lot of painful chest cramps right at the point where the abdominal muscle was folded upward.

So far, I found yoga to help me the most in getting some muscle tone back in my abdomen. I tried Pilates, but as you note, without the rectus abdominus, that just resulted in me hurting my neck trying to do the exercises. Most of that I just could not do. Sit-ups are tough, but I can do other things like kayak, which has strengthened my obliques quite a bit. The key thing is to get the other muscles around the missing one as strong as possible. A physical therapist might be able to advise you about how to do that without hurting yourself.

If you've got a bulge in the abdomen, you should get it checked out since you may have dislodged something or given yourself a hernia. That would not be hard to fix though, compared with what you've already gone through.

You're right, the TRAM flag is now called DIEP, and they don't take muscle. They told me at the time that I wouldn't need the muscle, but they pretty much whitewashed that. I could really use it, but I've learned to work around it.