The Growing of a Boob

Today was my first meeting with the plastic surgeon.  It still boggles my mind as to how many steps and possibilities there are!  So many things I never knew and never cared about.  I really wish I didn't have to care about them now!  I was very happy in my cocoon of ignorance. But, care I must...

First of all, it's TWO surgeries after the mastectomy.  Sometimes with a mastectomy, they will put in expanders at the time of your mastectomy, but with someone with a large cancer or more than one cancers (me!), they don't.  Too much chance of infection - too much chance for something to go wrong. Darn.

An expander is like a little deflated balloon boob with a port hole.  The port hole is magnetic (MAGNETIC! HA!  Cool!) so that once the expander is in your body, they can find the port hole easily with a magnet (still think that's hilarious!) and then fill it.  So, this expander goes behind your chest muscle.  They put it in during a surgery that lasts about an hour and then you recover from surgery for about a month.  Then, every week you go in and they USE A MAGNET (Haha - I can't help myself) to find the port hole and then take a needle to fill the expander.  They just put in a little each week so it stretches the area in preparation for the implant.  So, each week you go in and you basically watch it grow!  (Kind of reminds me of those toys that I bought for my kids at the dollar store where you put them in water and they grow...but I digress...)  Then, when you have the size breast you want - you go in for another short surgery and they switch out the expander for the implant.  So, each week, you decide - bigger or big enough.

I am a little concerned about the port being magnetic.  Can I expect magnetic items to start flying at my body?  Will all of my refrigerator magnets come hurtling at me when I walk in the door?  Thank goodness my braces aren't magnetic, that could really be a disaster!  Imagine walking around with your mouth "magneted" to your boob.  (Yes, I made up the word "magneted" - I have that power)

I got to hold an implant too.  It was a gel type.  There are two types, gel and saline.  There are pros and cons to both and I'll need to research them to get a better idea of which I think is better for me.  I asked about failure rates for both and they are both about 1% a year.  The saline type - if it bursts, your body absorbs the saline and you instantly know that it has burst because your boob DEFLATS!  Aahhahha!  So, you can just be out somewhere - for instance, singing on stage on TV (because I do that all the time you know) and SPLOOSH, boob gone!  Oh, I had a good laugh over that visual.  The other gel type doesn't burst like the saline ones, they crack and you might not know until you have an MRI or something feels a little off.  So far I'm thinking that I like the sounds of the gel ones, though walking around with the possibility of an instant deflating boob would add excitement to my life. Tempting.

A major concern for me, according to my plastic surgeon, is that I have underarm fat.  Nice.  He put it very nicely but that's what it is. It's not part of the boobage and it's just fat under the arm.  There's nothing that can be done about it and right now it's not something you would even notice because my large boobs are more, uh, "prominent."  But, once I have no boobs and they are filling things up to decide how big I want them, it's possible that I may look like I just have one uni-boob.  Just one long rectangular boob from underarm to underarm.  That's really not the look I was going for.

I think that the most upsetting thing is that I'll lose most of the feeling in my breasts.  They'll be pretty much numb.  It's an advantage for getting the port fills on the expander because you really don't feel the needle but it kind of just sucks for daily life.  It's a good thing they can't make them too big.  Since there is no feeling in them, I wouldn't want to get them caught in a door or something and not even know it.  That would be awkward.

People Outside My Family Who've Seen My Boob = 16
Boob Count = 89