I am writing this mostly so I can get my thoughts together and know exactly what I need to do.
I have very big boobs, around the 40 I range. I have for the past year been doing things to help get my insurance pay for a reduction. In the next month I will be going to at least three surgeons to see if I can get it done in July. That is when my mother can come and help out after the surgery. This is not something that I take lightly and I am a little scared. So many things can go wrong. Right now I am looking up the surgeons that my insurance will deal with and that other people have used. I am coming up with a list of questions to ask as well. The next post will be the list of questions and it will most likely be refined as time goes one. Depending on what goes on I might even post some of the answers. Today I found out a few things that gives me cause for concern.
1. It is not suggested that you take airplane travel less than 8 weeks after surgery. I had been planing on have the surgery in last July but that would only give me 5 weeks between surgery and when i have to go to Telford PA for a school.
2. Swimming after is bad, that is my main way of getting exercised . I see where this is coming from it just is not something that I though of.
3. I should think of renting a recliner or something of the sort. This would be to sleep in, this way I do not smush anything that I should not. Seeing that I sleep on my side this is not a bad idea.
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Hi, Michelle! Oddly enough, I found your blog by clicking on comments in another blog, which eventually landed me here. . .I'm also in Colorado Springs. You can blame today's snow on me, since I took the sandbags out of my truck over the weekend.
I had a breast reduction in 1997. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.
The recliner is a great idea. After my surgery, I did sleep in the recliner for about a good two weeks. I'm primarily a stomach sleeper, and the recliner did prevent me from naturally flipping over.
You will get a compression bra after the surgery. Most insurance companies only want to pay for one of these things. I begged my insurance company to pay for two, that way I could still wear one while washing the other. That was the best thing ever, since you will be wearing the bra all the time for the first few weeks after surgery.
Swimming is bad, because the way you swim puts a lot of pressure on the stitches. You have to be very careful not to pull or twist too hard, because that will pull on the stitches and make a mess. I learned that the hard way- I had to have part of the surgery re-done about three weeks after the original one. I stretched out some of the stitches, which caused a mess only the doctor could fix with surgery!
I was lucky, I didn't have a lot of pain after the surgery. I took the pain medicine for about three days, then after that-- I was more sore than in pain.
The weirdest part of the surgery was right after. If you're used to looking down and seeing a really large bosom, it's wild to look down and see your lap instead! I lost a total of 10 pounds in about 90 minutes.
The airplane travel-- that one I don't know about. It would make sense, with the presurized travel.
One other thing to ask the doctor about- scarring and feeling. I naturally scar, though my scars are not as bad as some I saw in the surgeon's book. There is one spot on each breast where I still don't have feeling-- 10 years after the fact. It's a strange sensation-- to still not have feeling there.
If your doctor doesn't suggest it, ask him to send you for a baseline mamogram before you have the surgery. I didn't have that done, and two years after the surgery, I found a bunch of lumps in my left breast. It turned out to be nothing more than granulated scar tissue, but the first thing the doctor wanted to know was-- why didn't I have a mamogram before the surgery? That way, he could have seen the pre-surgery condition of the tissue, instead of only having the after to work with. To find out if I had problem lumps or not, I had to have three mamograms, a needle biopsy, and ultrasound of the lumps.
I too, was quite scared of the surgery. That was the first surgery I had ever had, and I was nervous. I didn't sleep the night before the surgery, because I was a nervous wreck. The nice thing about the surgery- when they are getting you set up in pre-op, the doctor orders a nice sedative to calm you down!
I also had my surgery in July- near the end. It was easier for me to stay home, since it rained and rained, and rained some more that year! Having your mom to help you is great. I found out I actually needed my mom to help me with bathing, since too much bending, stretching, etc. could have caused problems. I also needed her to help me with bandage changes, since it was next to impossible to do it myself and get back into the compression bra.
Felicia
isisrising.typepad.com
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