Tissue Expander

When surgery was finished, a tissue expander was inserted under my chest muscle. In my mind, it was traumatic enough to wake up after surgery and have a huge scar across my chest....if there was an option to avoid being completely flat, I was going to take it. I explain the tissue expander to my friends as a temporary implant - it is something that holds the shape of your skin until the permanent implant is ready to be put in. In reality it is a lot more involved than that.

First of all, if you are getting a tissue expander inserted at the same time as a mastectomy, your surgeon and plastic surgeon have to coordinate the timing since they will both play a role. This presents challenges if you are having surgery during a busy time of year when people tend to take vacation and they also need to obviously be in the same location. Make sure you decide on a plan a few weeks in advance and follow-up! I would have waited 7 weeks after chemo ended if I would not have insisted the surgery be done sooner. I was told that some women have a mastectomy then a tissue expander put in as a delayed procedure but if at all possible, it seems easiest to do both at the same time.

After 2 weeks, I returned to the hospital to begin the process of having my tissue expander filled with saline. The expander has a fill port that was accessed with a needle through the skin. The needle itself did not hurt as I have lost quite a bit of feeling in that area. The weird part of the experience is seeing your chest growing as the saline goes in. For me, they put in 120 cc's of saline each time until I was at 420 cc's (a C cup on my frame). What they did not warn me about is that this part hurts....a lot. After each injection, I was in more pain than after my surgery. I did not take any Tylenol which is my own fault but beware! After about 2 weeks, the pain went away.

At the advice of my surgeon, I had a skin sparing mastectomy after chemo and decided to wait until reconstruction and do a prophylactic mastectomy on the other side. Now, after talking to other people and getting more information, I wish I would have pushed to have both breasts done at the same time. It would have been nice to just get it over with at once and ascetically they would look better, not to mention the worry I have that a cancer could be growing on my unaffected side. Regardless of what surgery you are having it just shows the need to be educated and be your own advocate. You said it, Sheryl Crow!