Reviews you can trust, from real people like you.      
How it works
  • Our highly-trained Review Moderation team evaluates all reviews before they're published to ensure they're written by people like you and not a member of a doctor's office.
  • This multi-step process takes up to 24 hours from review submission to publication.
  • Doctors can't pay to have reviews removed or hidden.
  • Reviews are only removed at the reviewer's request or if they violate our Terms of Service.

If you have questions or believe we should re-evaluate a published review, let us know.

Sort by:
*Treatment results may vary

4 weeks laytah

Hello again everyone!
As of tomorrow it will have been exactly 4 weeks since surgery. Over the course of these 4 weeks there have been a lot of unexpected healing quirks that my body is doing. I don't know if I've been overly descriptive of what I'm going through, but I figure that maybe ONE person might read this during their recovery and it'll reveal something they didn't realize before. Like the redness problem. I couldn't find anything that didn't suggest infection. In fact, it seems like any little thing could be infection so it's been nerve-wracking.
The redness was the first curve ball. For the most part that's all gone. Then there was the ungodly itchiness. After that it was just figuring out when I was able to go back to work (spoiler: not as quickly as I thought I could). The past week has has been eventful in new ways. A few days ago I discovered that my nipples were pushing out some of the dissolvable stitches in the form of small pockets of yellowish liquid. I'm not going to mince words, because I was just so grossed out by it, but the liquid was very reminiscent of popping a pimple. Except there wasn't a 'head' or anything. Just a hole that I could squeeze that grossness out of. After dealing with that I started soaping everything up with anti bacterial soap, rinsed, dried, applied neosporin, and then carefully bandaged everything up.
You'll see that I included a few pictures of rightie, and that's from today. Nipple has two teeny holes with a sort of yellow clot that I'm just leaving alone. I've been putting neosporin on that, too, and it's smaller than a few days ago so I think it's just doing its own thing, which is fine by me. However, I have been feeling some irritation at the bottom of my 'anchors', but especially on rightie. So yesterday I removed the steri strips on it because I feel like part of my problem is that every kind of goo that came out of those incisions since surgery has been trapped under those strips. By the time I removed these in particular they were covered in a slimy layer of old blood and yellowish-green healing goo (I think it's healing goo, anyways). They were just gross and scary to look at. As I was saying though, under the strips at the bottom of the anchor were some red, irritated incisions. A few spots sting. I cleaned them up last night and put neosporin on it and covered it up with fresh gauze with lots of tape to keep tension in that area. I'm hoping that they'll be able to breathe a little better and the redness and irritation will go away. I'm sure my left side is the same, but it's not feeling as bad as rightie did so I'm waiting on doing anything on that side. This entire time I've been told by a lot of other girls to leave the steri strips on, but they were just so gross and I don't see how that wouldn't just trap bacteria.
I know compared to some I'm definitely not anywhere near having a difficult healing process, but I have to admit I'm a little jealous of the girls that had their steri strips and everything off after 2 weeks and looked like they were 2 months in the healing process instead. I'm really ready to just have everything tightly sealed, no gooey crap, and especially NO MEDICAL TAPE. That stuff is the most annoying and difficult to ignore part of this.
Well, I think that's about it for this update. Until next time!

Mah! >:P

That last update was typo city!

18 dayz laytah

I hath returneth.

Had a bit of a scare the last 10 days. Up until about 3-4 days ago I was terrified that I was infected. You'll see in the pics here that I got pretty red. It was warm to the touch, I was internally itching like crazy, too. It was at least as itchy as chicken pox but on the inside of my boobs. I was taking antihistamines every 12 hours when I'd be allowed to take another one. I put cold packs on them to try to dull the itch, but since I'm also numb in some spots I had to be careful. It was so itchy that I had a hard time falling asleep. I thought that I HAD to be infected, or that I was allergic to the tape I was using to keep gauze on my incisions. Even though I was cleared to let my steri strips fall off and everything I'm still bandaging myself and trying really hard to keep myself aired out. That's been difficult since I live in Michigan which, despite being a northern state, has pretty rotten summers which are humid and have been about 85-95 degrees everyday. And I live in a house with no AC except for my bedroom. I ended up getting so nervous about the tape that I took everything off at one point, removed any loose steri strips/snipping what was curling up, and took a shower where I gingerly soaped up the incisions that were exposed with antibacterial soap. I wanted to eliminate anything that could have been causing a possible itch. I also had tape residue on my skin and it all was just driving me NUTS I tell you!

I had also attempted to come back to work after about 10 days. I felt okay at home. I wasn't taking painkillers anymore and I felt like 2 weeks was excessive. It must certainly isn't, haha. I have a desk job that's very laid back and I discovered that there is a significant difference between sitting reclined in an armchair and adjusting your position up to 90 degrees at a desk. My incisions were NOT happy. Gravity stared pulling down on them and my nips started throbbing after about 5 hours and I had to tell my boss that I needed the rest of the week off as well. I used up the last of my PTO for the year and luckily my management is incredibly laid back and only wanted me to get better so they were fine with me going home. I still felt terrible, but I just haven't ever had a big surgery like this and I never realized how finicky the healing process is. I ended up taking two Norcos when I got home and I was hurting pretty bad until the next morning.

But like I said, since Friday the redness has decreased significantly! I had decided if it didn't start improving by then that I would then make an appointment. Now it's almost all gone. I think it might be possible that I was allergic to the glue on the incisions if that's what he used in tandem with the strips. It's the one thing I could find in my research that was really close to what I was experiencing.

On a much lighter note I had to go shopping in a few places today. I had to walk thrive both the Home Depot and Menard and after that we went to Meijer for groceried. By that point my leftie wad feeling a disturbing pulling sensation so I elected to use the motorized 'amigo' carts. I felt pretty embarrassed actually since I don't look like I'm 'disabled' in any way and I felt like I was being judged. People kept getting in my way even when I was obviously waiting to get through to somewhere and it was a bit frustrating.

But that's the extent of the updates for now. I'm officially back at work. Also, you can actually see visibly a little that my swelling is going down. I feel like my boobs are already starting to 'drop' and they're on their way to being rounder. They look kinda big in my pictures but they're totally not. I feel so flat. It's amazing! I can't wait until I can exercise and get myself back to a healthier size. I'm hoping it'll reduce me further at that point.

TTFN!

Provider Review

Board Certified Plastic Surgeon
245 Cherry St. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Overall rating
Doctor's bedside manner
Answered my questions
After care follow-up
Time spent with me
Phone or email responsiveness
Staff professionalism & courtesy
Payment process
Wait times