Ten Pounds of Jello in a Five Pound Bowl - Ontario, Canada

Thank you all so much for sharing all of your stories so honestly. I am so happy to have found this site. It has helped me so much. My consultation, after a 2 year wait, is this coming Monday, June 25th. Because I am Canadian and hope to have OHIP cover my surgery the wait time was very long. Only two surgeons here in my hometown do OHIP approved BR’s.

My story started out innocently enough. During grade school when the other girls were getting their cute little training bra’s I had nothing. Zip. I was SO jealous, making only small gains up until the end of my second year of high school. Weirdly over that summer I suddenly blossomed into a pretty full 36D cup without any other meaningful weight gain. Although I had longed for bigger breasts, I was unprepared for the amount of attention the “girls” were suddenly attracting. Instead of being proud of them it was then I started my life-long habit of trying to keep them concealed as much as possible.

When I breast fed my two boys people were telling me I would regret it because my breasts would be MUCH smaller when I was done. My youngest is 24 years old now and I am still WAITING for that to happen. In actual fact over the course of my two pregnancies I grew from a D cup to 38DDD. I had a back injury in high school where I fractured and compressed two discs in my lower back. For my first pregnancy I had the epidural and with the weight of my breasts when I was nursing (oh my goodness they were big when they were full of milk) my back went out for the first time and continues to be very problematic if I am not very, very careful.

When I hit menopause I tried the HRT to deal with my hot flashes. Although the HRT worked really well I could not continue on with it because I had a small stroke like issue. The girls, however, had grown into an 38 H cup. Even though I had quit the hormones and despite losing some weight, they remained the same size. My physiotherapist told me that going forward I should always wear two bras at the same time. That helped a little bit with the strain but is miserably uncomfortable AND expensive.

I was now having huge issues with my back as well as shoulders and neck. Just like most of you I have a constant rash, shoulder indentations, headaches, neck pain, back spasms etc. My physiotherapist, because my back was out once again, suggested that I consider a BR so I asked my GP for the referral. At this point no amount of strengthening exercises were helping and it is weight vs. gravity. Sometimes, when I am trying to get to sleep the size of them makes it very hard to breathe as well and my arms and hands fall asleep.

I had not really given much deep thought to my appointment over the two years as it seemed like such a long time in the future. However, in the last 3 weeks it has been the only thing I have been thinking about and my nerves have popped to the surface. I had done some research on the clinical side of a BR but decided to do some more investigation into what happens to real women and that is what led me, thankfully, to this site.

Emotionally though I am all over the place. Alternatively I am worried that OHIP will turn me down I have put on some weight over the last two years and now my girls look like 10lbs of Jello in a 5lb bowl in my current bra’s (one boob is bigger than the other so getting the fit right is near to impossible) so I am afraid my BMI might be too high. I am fretting that I am making a mistake, that I am wasting the surgeon’s time if I go the appointment and then decide to chicken out, that if I go ahead my significant other will not find me desirable any more. Don’t get me wrong – he is very supportive but this is a guy that kisses me goodnight and then kisses the GIRLS goodnight. He has made me feel a lot better about how I feel about myself and my body and to love myself for who I am. He says I need to do whatever I should for my health but I sometimes feel that since 6th grade my entire self image has been tied up with what is going on with my cleavage and that I am going to have nothing but psychological problems going forward. In fact, some of the people who I have told about my appointment actually say that to me. It has unearthed a lot of issues that I thought I had dealt with but clearly I had just pushed down. When I look down at the girls they look full and pretty – when I see photographs of myself I cannot believe how big and overwhelming they are. They are kind of like the iceberg that hit the Titanic – I can only see the very tip when I look down and it doesn’t look like much of a problem but in all other ways they are devastating.

And I am afraid of the surgery itself. I have had my gall bladder out (about 25 years ago) and had a really hard time with the anesthesia. I didn’t know until reading some of your stories that you can speak to the anesthesiologist about that but still worried about a bad reaction. Afraid I won’t be able to handle the pain. Afraid the outcome will not be good. Afraid they will be still too big; more afraid that they will be too small and I will look even more like a freak of nature. More or less just plain afraid.

I have met 3 people now in person who have had this done. Two girls have terrible scarring. Both admit that they did not take particularly good care of themselves post op. One is devastated and sorry she went ahead with it as her breasts are different sizes and the nipples look bizarre. The other hates her scars but loves that she is smaller. Then on vacation just before I asked for my referral I met this great girl at the pool. She was a year post-op from her surgery and she was SO FREAKIN’ HAPPY and she looked like a million dollars in a swimsuit. Since I had spent the previous 3 weeks shopping for a bathing suit that didn’t make me cry in the dressing room that I was going to cover up anyway, looking awesome in a swimsuit seemed like the holy grail of outcomes, pain and suffering notwithstanding. She wasn’t particularly shy about showing them to me either and they looked amazing. I decided to talk to my doctor as soon as I got home.

But so much time has passed since that I am beginning to really second guess all of it. BUT, after reading everything and seeing how supportive you all are I am going to keep my appointment on Monday armed with my list of questions and see how that goes.

Will post my before pictures soon,

Cheers to you all,

Lisa