Hello - I wanted to share some things and ask some things.
The first thing is that I’m 4 weeks post mastectomy and suddenly after a very tough first week and pretty severe cording for weeks 2, 3 and 4 I am now in a lot less pain and suddenly have more mobility. Having the stitches out was a similar lift in pain and movement for me to having the drains out - hope this gives hope to someone who needs it. I wish I’d known it might improve so soon.
So I wanted to ask whether anyone who had a temporary expander could advise how long they had waited between ops (ie initial mastectomy/ies and insertion of permanent implants), and how the pain and recovery time for permanent implant compared to the initial op?
I’m expecting the op to be shorter as tissue isn’t removed and they’re not messing about with the arm, but the pain to potentially be more as it’ll be heavier and reopening a wound but have no idea. Any advise/experiences gratefully received!
Details in case important: I had a nipple sparing single mastectomy in with temporary expander and sentinel node check; it was a longer than expected op and recovery and I was in hospital for 5 days then been recovering at home since but tried to be active though pushing to get back to normal too fast (life can’t stop if you have young kids) and failing to do my exercises is not helping my recovery speed I expect… It hasn’t been inflated since the op but they put in quite a lot of saline at the time - but from reading other threads I understand inflation isn’t too painful.
Wish I had had a single stage op but they suspected they might have to remove the nipple too in which case the skin envelope would’ve been too small. Thank the gods it came back clear. But it still worries me.
Hi @ldn, it’s great to read you’re in a lot less pain. I hope any remaining discomfort has eased off since you wrote your message.
It may be that other people on the forum haven’t experienced the same procedure you did; in which case I wonder if you thought about speaking to our team of breast care nurses… you can reach our team on freephone 0808 800 6000 (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm; Sat 9am-1pm), or you can leave a message right here on the forum, in this board: Latest Ask our Nurses your questions topics - Breast Cancer Now forum
I’ll try to answer your questions one by one but just drop me a message if you need anything else!
Re the wait between ops: I understand that it fully depends on how you are healing and how fast the tissue is growing. Your surgeon would be best placed to give you an indication, but typically it would be between 3-6 months or even longer if you wish. There is no harm in having the expanders longer.
In my case we waited less than 3 months, because I’ve healed extremely quickly and my skin was doing really good. We could have postponed it but I was really keen to finish everything cancer-related in 2024 and have a fresh start into 2025.
I have just had the second op (literally yesterday) and so far it has been much less painful. I went for a walk already and am pretty mobile. I can feel the stitches under my breast but they are rather uncomfortable than painful. I can also feel the stitches in my belly where the fat was coming from for the fat grafting but it’s also not too bad. I’ve just been taking some paracetamol so far.
My op lasted about 4.5 hours (exchange, fat grafting and port removal), which was similar to the first one (I had two surgeons working simultaneously thus reducing the surgery time).
Getting the expander filled with saline is not painful at all, as your breast is now completely numb. I didn’t feel a thing.