44 Years Old, Explant with No Lift, After Almost 5 Years of Bother - Chicago, IL

So I finally looked at them 3 days after the explant procedure. That morning I had slipped out of the Ace bandage and into a front-closure sports bra with my eyes glued to the ceiling the whole time. Other than tenderness at the incision sites, I felt really good -- I wanted to just enjoy that and not spoil it in case they didn't look that pretty.

Well, when I finally looked that evening, I was pleasantly surprised. If they had looked like that in the first place, I wouldn't be typing this review right now. Take a look at my pre-BA photos -- I had NOTHING. I was also about 10 pounds lighter, but even when I was not underweight I still had a flat, bony space between two tiny sacs of breast tissue. Three days after explant, I felt like I had normal, though smallish, but REAL breasts. Turns out most of the volume I felt was post-surgical swelling, but I don't even mind. I couldn't be happier with them today, 9 days post-explant, even though leftie is pointing a little off-center! I'll take my leftist breast! I'm wearing these comfy little bralettes by Shimera, which are wire-and-padding free. They are the same ones I had been wearing when I was -- let's face it -- a 32D, only now they actually fit! What kind of denial could I have been in to be wearing a bra that small? Maybe it was because they only come in S, M, L, and even though I probably needed at least a medium at least I didn't have to put on a D-cup bra every day, which was just silly on my bony frame.

These little bralettes, to me, are my Wonderbra. Maybe it's the relief of carrying less weight on my chest; maybe it's the wisdom of experience. All I know is I wore this little bralette with a form-fitting t-shirt today to a graduation party -- something I would NEVER have done as my former flat self. I've learned the hard (and painful and expensive) way that teacups are more my style than jugs.

My scar is still a bit puckered, which apparently is to be expected. Dr. Mustoe (who I would HIGHLY recommend if you are in the Chicago area) expects this to resolve over the next 8 weeks. Honestly, the scars look better than they did in the early days after my first and second surgeries. Dr. Mustoe's lovely assistant, Beth, recommended a product called Kelo Cote for treatment of the scar. It is not cheap, and something similar and a bit less expensive called ScarGuard is available. I used Mederma the first two times, to little effect, and it is not a product that Dr. Mustoe recommends. I got the Kelo Cote from Amazon -- a tiny tube was about $25.

So, despite some lingering soreness and leftie's wandering gaze, I couldn't be happier with my results. Going forward, other than intending no surgeries except those to save my life, I am hoping to mine this entire experience for some short story material, as tiny (pun intended) compensation for the thousands of dollars and body-and-soul pain incurred. But I suppose wisdom -- and an appreciation for your natural self -- unfortunately doesn't come cheap.
xo

First of all, I really respect RealSelf's policy not to allow reviews to be edited once they've been posted. Our feelings about our bodies and about the decisions we make about them can fluctuate wildly. And it IS our lived experience, in all its quandaries and contradictions, that make a site like this so valuable. BUT, for an English teacher like myself, I'm sort of mortified by the typo-laden incoherence of the final few paragraphs of my post last night. And of course I'm going to blame it on the meds. Anyway, here's what I think I meant:

Once Dr. Mustoe was in and the implant out, he was able to determine that my capsule was healthy and so didn't need to be removed (which I think I've said before makes the procedure -- and therefore the recovery -- much more involved. So, he began closing the internal incision with so-called "quilting" sutures, which seal up any space where fluid might potentially collect, making the drains unnecessary.

I honestly have no idea what "three procedures" I was talking about in that second-to-last paragraph. But I do know that the allusion to the Dark Ages has to do with the violence done to a body during surgery. The instruments that go into your body to do what they are supposed to do can appear quite medieval. And if you're a quilter or if you sew, you know what we can do to fabric in order to get that perfect, invisible slip stitch. And by "encore performance," I guess I meant the same procedure on the other breast?

Note to self: Don't blog while medicated!

Today was my explant procedure. As i begin this review, I (unfortunately) can't help but clearly remember the conversation I had with my original surgeon when I saw him after the first BA about either replacing the 296cc with something smaller or just explanting altogether. His advice was that I would most likely not be happy with the appearance of my breasts after a full explant, considering that I had gone to him in the first place about being unhappy with the appearance of my breasts. He (Dr. Scott Thellman of Lawrence, KS) and his entire office staff were more accommodating than almost any physician I've ever experienced in Chicago, so I do believe he had my best interests in mind, and I will maintain that he did an excellent job on me. I also believe he was probably right. I understand the pointlessness of woulda, coulda, shoulda, but I do believe (or maybe I just must do so) that an explant at that time, less than two years after the first BA, would not have truly resolved my body-mage issue.

So, I arrived at Dr. Thomas Mustoe's office 1.5 hours in advance of the procedure so that they could administer sedative medication. They gave me a valium/xanax cocktail which after about 20 minutes brought on a lovely twilight state. However, because I was still able to read my book, the nurse thought another (smaller) dose was in order before we started.

I don't remember many specifics of the conversation after that, but I do vividly remember 2 other aspects of my tactile and auditory experience during the 45 minutes I was on the table:
1. After the incision is made and the implant is slipped out (which I could feel happening but not in a painful way), then the cautery began. Have you read Misery by Stephen King? Well, the crude method is to take a blow torch to any of the bleeding areas of the incision, but Dr. Mustoe's much more refined method still felt like someone was taking a blow torch to an open wound that had just been inflicted on the fold beneath my breast. Mercifully there was no smell, but it felt like nothing more or less than it actually was: the use of what is essentially a blowtorch to destroy tissue. My only consolation was that the tissue being destroyed was scar tissue from the incision site of my previous surgeries, whose removal would increase the chances for an aesthetically more pleasing outcome.

Speaking of scar tissue, ie the capsule that forms around the implant when your body recognizes it as a foreign object, based on the volume of information on this site about this question, surgeons don't all agree about whether the capsule should be removed (unless there is capsular contracture, which sometimes does not reveal itself until the surgeon can view the implant during the surgery.) My surgeon told me that at that time he would have to make a judgment as to whether to remove the capsule, which can further complicate the surgery to the extent that he prefers to avoid it. If it's a healthy capsule, your body will naturally reabsorb it. Still, though, leaving the capsule in brings about potential other complications, mainly (from what this [fairly bright] layperson cold surmise, due to the potential for fluid buildup, which increases the risk of seroma and infection.

To make a long story even longer, Dr. Mustoe's plan was to examine the condition of my capsules and check for rupture. He went on to say, though, that even if the capsules were intact, he still might need to install drains. But here the plot thickens, especially for local anesthetic girls: As he begins to suture the incision, he prefers to use something called a quilting suture, which apparently eliminates the need for drains. However, this particular suturing technique involves a great deal of manipulation, including Dr. Mustoe tugging at and reaching into the skin to be sure these very strong and multilayered sutures could be placed properly.But I also knew that if I could "tolerate" the placement of this type of stitching, then I could avoid drains. So I called upon my Ujaayi breathing as well as thoughts of drain-free breasts, which were already going to have their own problems with deflation and scarring. Have you seen my pre-BA photos?

But honestly, I care only a tiny bit about how they look cosmetically. The fact that I am no longer carrying two sacks of silicone two sacks of silicone, and even the fact of scars that will remind me of my earlier weakness and confusion, to me are far more beautiful for representing the experience and wisdom I gained from my (I hope) temporary surrender to ideals of beauty that I don't truly believe in.

i intend to post photos after a few days. I'm not supposed to even remove the Ace bandage until Sunday. (That's another thing -- so surgical bra!) I'll have to ask him at my follow up is this advice is just because I have to little to support so it's why bother? ;)

Until next time ...
Lucky for me I did not have that. I'm not exactly sure how these next three procedures are related, but here's what my doctor decided once he was in:.

When that DarkAges-esque part of the program was over, we got to do it all over again in an encore performance.