Hey! Wide awake at 4am wondering about lumpectomy recovery!!
So I’m going to be having a lumpectomy at some point in the next few weeks hopefully, I have a party hire business which entails lots of lifting as you can imagine. I will of course have staff to cover for me, but I just want to hear from people realistically when were you up and about after lumpectomy? How long after can you drive? What’s the recovery like?
Anything I can do to help myself heal quicker? Anything you did beforehand?
I’m eating really well, using the sauna and exercising to get in the best shape possible! Any other tip welcome x
Hi @katie91 I had lumpectomy in July, had three weeks off work and was up and about after about a week - although it is very individual! I would say the main thing to do is the arm exercises thy give you as this improves the movement in your arm, heavy lifting is a no go but the surgeon told me I could be back running after 3 weeks and I went for a run fine on the 21st day after surgery- it almost gave me something to aim for!
I had a lumpectomy with sentinel node biopsy in March. The underarm wound took more time to heal than the breast one but both were manageable. I think I took 2 weeks off driving but could have done it earlier. I did the exercises 3 times a day and never had any shoulder stiffness. Like you I was in the gym up to the surgery.
I was driving and back in the gym doing incline walking on the treadmill after 10 days. I was doing gentle running after about two weeks and went back to strength training classes (starting very light) after I’d been checked out at my results appointment. My results appointment was four weeks after surgery and, if honest, by the time I went to that I felt physically as if it had never happened (I even went to that appointment in my usual underwire bra). I know it’s individual, and perhaps I have been lucky, but for me it was nowhere near as bad as I had feared.
I think the best thing you can do is keep up your exercise and get back to it as soon as you can. I am convinced exercise is the reason I had a good recovery and have no ongoing issues. Also, I think we are meant to avoid saunas after SLNB but you may want to run that past your team as I may be wrong.
It’s great to hear such positive experiences. I am also waiting for a lumpectomy and have been told that the node removal recovery is the most uncomfortable part.