19 years old, 5'4", 107lbs, size 30i very saggy/deflated breasts.

Hey guys, this is a 3 year post-op update. I’m 22 now by the way. And I’m very disappointed. I know my breasts definitely look better than before, but nowhere near $15,000 worth, and not worth all the pain and mental anguish of the surgery either. They are still saggy and they are still huge, just not AS saggy and maybe slightly (can’t even really tell?) less huge. I probably mentioned in my earlier posts that I told the doctor I just wanted to be able to go into a normal store and buy normal swimsuits, clothes, and lingerie without having to specially order them. I wanted to have NORMAL sized boobs for my frame! I think I told him I wanted about a C cup. I am wearing a 30G (got professionally sized again). After my surgery, my doctor bragged to me that he “barely took out any tissue” and mainly removed skin. I told him my boobs still looked very big, and he said “they look great”. He clearly just didn’t think I should have smaller boobs, despite that being what I wanted. Aside from the size, I also don’t like that my nipples are still somewhat large and stretched, and most importantly: THE BOOBS ARE SAGGY AS HELL FOR A 22 Y/O! Half of what I paid for was to have normal sized boobs, and half of what I paid for was to have perky ones. I didn’t get either. Obviously if he had taken out more tissue/weight, they wouldn’t be sagging so much only 3 years post-op.
Another thing I’m extremely upset about is how my doctor convinced me it would be impossible to get insurance to pay for this (forgot whether I already posted about this). He basically made it seem like there was no point in looking because in order for insurance to cover it, you’d have to get 500g tissue removed from each breast. After my surgery, I did some research and found that United Healthcare (my provider at the time) goes off height and weight, and I would have only needed 166g taken from each breast. I didn’t have that much taken, because my doctor apparently ignored the fact that I wanted smaller boobs, but I know I easily could’ve had that much taken and therefore could have SAVED $15,000!
Overall, I am and angry and frustrated. I went back to my doctor about 1 year post op and explained some of this, and he said he could waive his surgeon’s fee to fix it but I’d still have to pay many thousands (I can’t remember how many, but not anything affordable, at least $5000) in anaesthesiologist fees and hospital fees. Even if I could get everything done for free, I’d be hesitant to go through the horrible experience of surgery and recovery again and to have even more scarring.

My original plan was to update chronologically, as if in real time, with separate posts. But since I have been bad at updating, I'm just going to write all about my post-surgery stuff in this one post!
Let me just say that every single part of surgery grosses me out and freaks me out. I have a phobia of not being in control of my mind (I don't drink alcohol solely because of that), so being put to sleep gives me SO much anxiety. I also hate veins/circulation stuff, so the pre-op blood drawing was pretty awful for me (lotssss of crying), and the IV was the worst. I even hated the leg massaging things they put on me before surgery to help with circulation. What I'm trying to get at is: literally almost every part of surgery is traumatizing to me.
I woke up in recovery very confused (which made me very anxious, of course). I had a lot of pain waking up, and I remember drifting in and out of sleep for many hours. The most frustrating thing was not being able to move around in the chair on my own, because any slight movement brought a lot of pain. Something weird that happened was, my IV came out at some point, and from listening to the nurses' conversation (I think they thought I was asleep), they hadn't realized for quite some time that it had come unattached. So I'm not sure if that had anything to do with how bad I felt in the recovery room. The worst part might've been that they had to do the whole IV process AGAIN.
Day 2 of recovery was by far my most painful/miserable, and it may be the most pain I've ever felt in my life (which I am thankful for, since it wasn't technically a dangerous pain). I remember just lying in my recliner chair and basically wailing/screaming every few minutes because I couldn't stand the pain. I remember taking a percocet, waiting an hour, still being in immense pain, taking another percocet, waiting another 45 minutes, and STILL being in immense pain. There were a few times, both in the hospital's recovery room and at home during my recovery, where I thought to myself "who would willingly put themselves through this?! I can't believe people put themselves through this unless there's an absolutely glaring problem!"
After day 2, I don't remember any particularly bad days! The most frustrating thing about the first four days or so was not being able to sit up on my own without a lot of pain. It felt like such a simple thing to be able to do, but it took me either 10 minutes to sit up by myself, or I had to get someone to support my back to help me. This was really frustrating. But I think I stopped taking the percocet on either day 3 or 4. After that, I had very little pain and discomfort!
At first, I felt like I was going to be happy with my new breasts. I now realize that this was because I always had gauze around them, so I couldn't see the true size yet. The first time I took all the gauze off and took a photo, I was quite horrified. They looked absolutely HUGE still, they were insanely wide-looking, and they pointed sideways! I took a photo where my entire body was pointing perfectly sideways, it was a perfect profile view from my nose to my butt to everything else, yet my nipple still pointed at the camera. I'll attach it below. But what was way more disappointing than that was how freaking huge and wide they still were.
I was so incredibly angry. As I mentioned a few times, surgery and parts of the recovery process were traumatizing for me, and the fact that I had been through all that and still had the same problem as before was unfathomable to me. Not to mention the $15,000 it cost me!!! It made me so frustrated and angry. I kept thinking how that was the only chance in my life to fix this problem (because I wouldn't put myself through the surgery again), and it didn't even really get fixed. It was the only opportunity. Everyone kept telling me not to judge my new breasts yet, as they were still very bruised and swollen. But I knew they were too big and wide, and that no amount of recovery time would change that. I had read that boobs look even BIGGER as the swelling goes down, as some doctors say they "drop and fluff". So no one could tell me anything. I knew they were way too big and that my feelings would not change.
The weird thing is, all of my pre-surgery predictions were wrong! That means that everything I was worried about in relation to my results did not come true, but things I had never worried about DID come true. Before surgery (as I mentioned in a previous post), I was worried about three things: they'd still look deflated and saggy afterwards rather than full and youthful, that they'd still hang low and wouldn't even come close to passing the "pencil test", and that they'd be too small (because my doctor told me he was going to take me down to a C cup, which meant going down 6 cup sizes). As I also mentioned in my other post, when I expressed the concerns about the appearance to my surgeon, he said that realistically, I couldn't expect to have full, youthful breasts, and that I needed to accept that I'd have to wear a bra at all times for the rest of my life. So I was extremely surprised and happy to see that my new breasts actually DID look full and that they... *drum roll*... passed the pencil test afterwards!!! I wasn't expecting that at all, so that was a lovely surprise. Things I was not worried about in relation to my results were: breasts pointing sideways, my nipples being too low and too far out, my breasts being too wide, and them being way too big. Weirdly enough, those were the only things that I SHOULD have been concerned about.
At 16 days post op, I got the tape off that had been covering my incisions. There was also a lot of purple marker under there, so with the tape and marker removed, my breasts looked different than they had a few days ago. The tape and marker had been giving the illusion that the crease of my breasts (like where they meet in the middle of my chest, the cleavage area) was much lower than it was. So when the tape came off, that crease seemed to start much higher up, which made my breasts seem taller and more proportional to their width. They also looked a little less monstrously huge without those purple lines accentuating their shape/size. So I was happier with them from then on, especially because they passed the pencil test! But I still felt like (and still do now) they were way too big. I actually think they are bigger, if not the same size, as the photos I gave my surgeon for what was "too big". He had those photos hung up on the wall in front of him during my surgery (he showed me that before I went to sleep), and he was the one who stressed how important it was for me to bring clear photos so that he could go off of them during surgery... so I have no idea how he basically disregarded the photos and made me match the "too big" ones. He even told me at one of my post op appointments that he "mainly took out skin and not much tissue". Why would he do that if one of my main motivations for surgery was how big they were?
I do like my new breasts. Now, they are like nice, but still very big (for my frame), breasts. That's not the worst thing in the world, since I was used to having the ugliest breasts ever. But it is frustrating how one of my biggest goals with this surgery was to have a normally proportioned body, so that I could wear normal clothes/swimsuits/bras, and not have to constantly think about my breasts. I have bought one wireless bra from Nordstrom, and it's a 30DDD. So I've been wearing that, and my old wireless sports bras. I used to squeeze into them (they are 30E, 30F, and 28H), but they now fit me quite well. But it is discouraging how I am wearing the same bras as before. I still cringe when wearing a tight top at how incredibly big I look in the chest area.
Another awful realization that came after surgery... I had beed told by multiple doctors that there was no possibility of me getting insurance to cover this, because I'd need to have 500g taken out, and for me that would mean basically all my breast tissue. Even though my breasts were huge for my size, they might be normal on an average sized person, so 500g just wasn't possible for me. I was told by my surgeon too that there was no chance of insurance, and that I should forget about it. Post surgery, I was browsing RealSelf when I saw someone mention the Schnur Scale. I looked it up, and was like "oh my god! Other insurance companies take into account your height and weight for breast reductions, how unfair!" So I randomly looked up my insurance company, and realized that they use the Schnur Scale too! And that I would only need 152g (my lower 5th percentile number) taken out to qualify as "either reconstructive or cosmetic" and be considered for insurance coverage, and 238g (my lower 22nd percentile number) taken out to qualify as really medically necessary! That is nothing compared to 500g per breast, so I might've been able to save $15,000! I think I had 140g or something taken out, but my breasts are way bigger than I wanted them, so I could've easily had MUCH more than that taken out. The most frustrating part is, if I had known this, I would've saved money AND my surgeon would have actually made my breasts smaller. It would've been a win win.
While I am annoyed about a lot of things, I still am pretty happy with my new breasts. And I guess I am glad I did it, despite being left with big boobs still. If you disregard what I had asked of my surgeon and just look at my before and after, you can tell that he did do a good job with them!

Note: I actually had my surgery on August 1, but I'm posting in chronological order so that it makes more sense and I don't just have one long post. So I'm writing this as if it was the day it happened.

I settled on a doctor! I think he's very professional and good, but I thought he seemed very expensive. For a mastopexy/reduction, it came to $15,000! But that includes all the extra costs such as the anesthesiologist fee, the hospital fee, the post-surgery bra that they provide, all that. But I still thought it was crazy since nobody else on here lists a cost even close to that! So are you guys including all the fees in your cost? Because my surgeon's fee alone was only like $8,000 or something like that, but it all added up quickly.

Anyway, after talking to the doctor and looking at his before and after pictures, I became scared of three things:
1. That my breasts would look deflated/not full and youthful afterwards.
2. That my breasts would still hang quite low and not even get close to passing the "pencil test".
3. That they'd be too small.
I had these fears because all of his before and after pictures made me think "okay... well these ladies' breasts look better, but they still look like candidates for a breast lift afterwards too." I can't think of a nice way to say this so I apologize, but all of the ladies in his portfolio seemed to be quite old and/or wrinkly, and mostly overweight. So I factored that in, but it still scared me that with 5 pages of photo examples, none of the "afters" looked appealing to me. The after photos still looked pretty droopy and deflated (I'll attach an example pic). So I asked him about this, and he said "yeah yours are going to droop afterwards still, and I can't make them very full/round either, because the tissue you have isn't very dense, so there's only so much I can do". So I was feeling very discouraged, because it wasn't worth it in my opinion to go through all this pain and spend all this money just to have LESS gross (but still gross) breasts, even if they would be more comfortable because they'd be smaller. I knew my doctor was good, but I was worried this surgery might not be right for me

I was scared they'd be too small because he said "I'm gonna make you a C or maybe a D", and since I was a 30I (so that's a 30DDDDDD... 6 D's on there!), that'd be a HUGE reduction. 30DDDDDD to 30C/D would mean I'd go down 5 to 6 cup sizes, which is the same amount of reduction as going from a DDD to an A. That's a lot! Also, if I was a 30C, that'd be the same cup size as a 32B or 34A, which sounded very small to me. So I asked him "do you mean a 30C? Or like an average C, like a 34C?" And he seemed to say he meant a 30C (probably because I was a 30 band). But 99% of people don't understand that a 30C/D is actually very small because of the small band size. I'm guessing he didn't understand this either, and that he actually had in mind an average C/D (like 34C/D), which is much larger than a 30C/D. I hope all that made sense lol. Basically, the breast size alone of a 30C = 32B = 34A = not very big at all. My goal size was just to be something normal. I wanted to be able to go into any store and be able to find swimsuits, bras, and clothes. I think the biggest "normal" size would be 32DD (which would fit a 30DDD), so that's kinda what I was aiming for I guess.

Anyway, since it's hard to give a goal size, he said I should print out pictures of breasts that I thought were too small, too big, and just right for him to go off of during the surgery. And he said they should be nude, forwards facing pictures of women with similar height/weight/body types to me. That was obviously a hard mission, because I didn't want to go on [RS bleep] sites lol, and how was I supposed to know whose are real and whose are fake?! But I searched forever and found some pretty good pictures that I will attach. I decided that Emily Ratajkowski had my ideal breasts, and that goes for both shape and size. I'm 95% sure they're natural, and I think she is supposedly a 32D. I knew the pictures were very important to him understanding the size I wanted, so I made sure to find perfect photos. I also made sure that the "small", "just right", and "too big" pictures were somewhat close to each other in size and not too drastically different from one another. I aimed for the "too big" ones to be just a step above the "just right" ones, and the "too small" ones to be just a step below them, so as to be the most helpful and clear for him as to what I wanted and didn't want.