Skin-sparing Bilateral Mastectomy

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Denidom
Denidom Member Posts: 10
edited March 2018 in Breast Reconstruction

Hi everyone. I just had a prophylactic skin sparing double mastectomy done. So I have tissue expanders in my chest right now both sides. And I'm just wondering if anybody could tell me if they had a lot of trouble with major discomfort with these tissue expanders in.

The drain tubes have been driving me crazy, but I'm getting them out this coming Friday, and I can hardly wait. But I feel like my tissue expanders are causing me grief and now I'm having second thoughts about going through with reconstruction. I just got my pathology report, on the tissue they took off and they actually found cancer in my left breast, so I guess it was a good thing, I decided to do that.

I would love to hear from anybody, that can give me their experience with these dumb tissue expanders, so I can tell or compare it to my experience and see if I'm just being a wimp or not.

Thanks



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  • rdeesides
    rdeesides Member Posts: 459
    edited March 2018

    Denidom-

    There are some other threads on this topic... I think the main one is called TE Troubles. Anyway, no you are not being a wimp. They are pretty miserable. I hear that once you get the exchange to the permanent implant it gets much better. I’m sure someone else will chime in.

    Rebekah

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  • star2017
    star2017 Member Posts: 827
    edited March 2018

    I found my TE really uncomfortable for the first month or so and then I got used to it. It doesn’t bother me now. It used to hurt to sleep on one side afternoon a while but even that is not an issue after the expansion

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  • LiMa66
    LiMa66 Member Posts: 73
    edited March 2018

    Denidom~ I've described mine as twenty pound thorn-covered bowling balls. But, I hear it gets better. Eventually. Still waiting... :)

    Hang in there. This too shall pass.

    Oh, and you're not a wimp. You're a warrior. Remember that when you have those doubts.

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  • Denidom
    Denidom Member Posts: 10
    edited March 2018

    I love your description of them that's awesome. I am just worrying because, I seem to have a lot of allergies to everything and I was worried about whether I would react to these things internally and if so how I was going to be able to tell the difference between a reaction and adjustment.

    The PS said to me that he was going to start filling them this coming Friday after the drains come out and I'm leery about it. I was thinking I might want to remove the tissue expanders and forget the idea of reconstruction. I'm 3 weeks in from my surgery. I find having the pec muscle over top of them makes it feel like I have too much there. It interferes with my natural arm movement and feels like it's encroaching on my armpits. And I'm still having to take extra strength Tylenol all the time to deal with how I feel. I'm also having difficulty sleeping on my back, because I had a brain tumor removed out of the back of my head last year. I wake up with a sore neck everyday and I'm wondering if I'll ever be able to sleep on my side again which is how I normally sleep.


    Thanks for the suggestion to check out the TE log and I will see if there's anything in there that will help me at all.




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