My Double Mastectomy with Reconstruction

 Friday April 8, 2022 I started double mastectomy with reconstruction. My day started at 3:15am. I was sent a bottle of electrolytes to drink 2hrs before my check in time at 5:15. It took around 2hrs for set up and didn’t start heading to the surgery room till 7:30am. It was a dual surgery. First, my breast surgeon goes in and removes all my breast tissues. Then he switches out with my plastic surgeon. She went in and put tissue expanders and filled them with 70cc of saline in me. The surgery lasted about 5hrs. I don’t remember when or how long I was in the recovery room. While in the recovery room, I found out I’m very sensitive to medication. I stopped breathing a couple times while I was under. I heard it’s common so they have to just wake me up and keep adjusting. Even in the recovery room, my eyes were shaking and I remembered every time I felt tired, my heart rate would be super low. So the monitor would make a beeping noise and a nurse would run in. This happened maybe 3x? And every time they ran in I would snap out of it. Interestedly, I remember right before that would happen, I would tell myself “man, I’m really tired, let me rest for a second…” So weird when I think about it now. But yeah, I stayed there till I was more stable and didn’t get home until 5:30/6pm. I left with four drains in me, I’m not sure why. Normally it’s two but I’ll find out why on Friday April 15 during my follow up. Hopefully I get to take them out by then and have the results back from pathology.

This is what the tissue expanders initially look like. In a couple weeks they’ll start the expansion, slowly adding more saline up to at least 3 months. Then I’ll go back under so they can replace them with implants. They feel like rocks and are uncomfortable. They’re placed above the muscle, under the skin with nipple sparing. It’s hard to for me to look at them but the main goal is for a healthier me