Appt. with the Plastic Surgeon

Bret and I had a good meeting with Dr K. (plastic surgeon). We went over the surgery plan again in detail. She said that it will probably take at least 4 - 5 hours for both surgeons to complete their parts. I will stay in the hospital that night and be discharged the next day. I will have two drains that will need to stay in for about 10 days...I have heard these are a pain to deal with but I have learned some good tips from my online group on how to make them more tolerable. She said I will not be able to drive for almost 3 weeks and will probably be off from work 6 weeks total. She said that once I heal from the surgery we can start doing "the fills". This is where the implant that has been placed behind the muscle in my chest wall will have saline added over a couple months to PUMP EM' UP! She said each patient can decide how fast or how slow they want this process to go...after each fill there will be discomfort as the muscle stretches so it just depends on how much pain I can tolerate. Once we get to the "desired" size we will then schedule the exchange surgery. This will be done as outpatient and I should only be down for about a week. Months after that it wil be time to talk about nips/tats. I will need to have another outpatient surgery to complete that final phase and again I should just be down for a few days. We reviewed the different implant types again. I am still leaning towards the gel (gummy bear) implant vs. the saline. She agreed that these seem to be a better choice for reconstruction patients. I told her I was hoping to be a full C when this was finished and she started pulling out implants....the first one was 450ccs which is what usually ends up being a C....then she pulled out a 650cc..my eyes about popped out of my head --- it looked so big so I quickly handed it back before Bret could come over and give his opinion....we all know he would probably prefer the bigger ones but I am the one that will have to carry those babies around!!

Anyway, it was a good appt. She seemed a little more personable this time which was important to me...this is someone I will be seeing a lot of over the next year so it is important that I like her. She is in practice by herself and a large portion of her work is reconstruction. It is nice to talk to her because she really understands all the breast cancer lingo and understands what these types of patients are going thru. I was able to talk to her about all the things that I have read "that can go wrong" with implants and she was very good about talking about her experiences and she just comes across very confident that this will turn out well.

Hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day!! Love, Jan