My new breast: How I did the operation to reduce it
Last summer I told you why a big breast for me is a big problem, and that I was planning to resolve the issue quickly, having performed a breast reduction operation. In January, I did just that - four months passed, my chest took on a finished look, and I am ready to share my experience.
About courage
Many times I heard surprised and even admiring phrases that I "decided" on breast reduction surgery, despite the pain, inconvenience and limitations. I do not agree - you can decide on something frightening, like a jump from the roof of a burning building. And I just wanted to reduce the breast for a number of reasons, I planned it and did it.
Pain, inconvenience, and limitations are when you cannot sleep on your stomach; when from any favorite swimsuit neck hurts even in the dressing room; when all the time irritation on the shoulders of the straps; when for years you dream of a shirt of your size that does not diverge at the chest, or a leather jacket that will fasten; when you can’t do yoga and stretching upside down because your chest is blocking your mouth and nose and you are choking; when wearing worn bras for eight years, because finding your size is difficult (and expensive); when you can’t run twenty meters behind the departing bus, because without sports underwear it hurts. Here is the pain, limitations and inconvenience. To smear ointment on shovchiki for several weeks is nonsense.
Dr. Darnell
But I'll start from the beginning. It was fundamentally important for me that the clinic was in the same city as me, therefore I considered only Barcelona. I know that many fly to operations in Russia (especially outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg), Thailand and Latin America, but I have a job and a small child. In the first months after surgery, a hematoma may occur or a suture may be inflamed - it is important to be able to reach your doctor within ten minutes by taxi.
I went to four consultations; prices were all about the same - from four to five thousand euros, but the approach is different. Three of the four doctors insisted on breast implants - "if you want a high, not hanging chest with a volume and not too small." My goal was the opposite: the smaller the better. Dr. Darnell turned out to be my ally - he was praised on the Internet for operations without prosthetics. The doctor immediately said that the breast would be small, but not flat, and the implants are completely useless. And then I put up with it for a long time, while I threw photos of my desired breast over it, and calmly replied that the beauty of the breast was not in size, and I would definitely like the result.
The ECG, mammography and chest radiograph showed that I was ready for surgery, so at seven in the morning on an empty stomach, with a packet of documents and clothes, I went to see Dr. Darnell. It was he who was supposed to be paid 3,000 euros of the fee, the remaining one and a half - the cost of the operating room, anesthesia and day hospital. Hospitalization during commercial operations in Spain is not cheap - up to a thousand euros per night, but my doctor assured that she would not need it: the patient can take paracetamol and antibiotics after the operation at home.
The accompanying person (in my case, it was the mother) could be there all the time until you were taken to the operating room - the nurse, who came to install an intravenous catheter, had to interrupt our chatter. A few questions from the anesthesiologist - and finally Dr. Darnell paints my chest with a felt-tip pen. On the question "do you feel how your head gets heavier?" I turned off. And after two and a half hours, she lay on the couch in her box again and talked to her mother.
The chamber looked like a luxury hotel room, with two bathrooms and a luxurious cosmetic bag. Three hours later I was allowed to go to the toilet, and generally walk. There were no bandages, the seams are sealed with a plaster, on top is an elastic bra. At eight o'clock in the evening, they brought me dinner, introduced an antibiotic through an IV line, and let me go home. We wanted to catch a taxi, but I realized that I was lying all day and I want to take a walk - my mother and I walked home for about an hour, and on the way we drank a glass of champagne.
There are no restrictions - the next day after the operation they are allowed to take a shower. Plasters should be dried with a hairdryer and treated with alcohol or a non-burning iodine solution. From now on, an elastic bra had to be worn around the clock - but the chest immediately became so beautiful, symmetrical and with small nipples, that I unbuckled it several times a day to admire myself in the mirror.
The first couple of weeks I often went to the doctor, for a quicker removal of the edema, he recommended lymphatic drainage massage, especially on the left: my left breast was bigger than the right one, so I had to cut more. On one of the visits, the doctor suspected a hematoma, brought a giant syringe and pumped out about fifty milliliters of fluid - at this moment we were glad that the operation was without prosthetics. If this accumulation of blood occurs after installing the implant, you need to remove the prosthesis under anesthesia, otherwise there is a risk of serious infection.
Family matters
The operation had almost no effect on the life of my one year old son Christopher. Is that a month before her, we taught the child to sleep in his crib, and not with us - so that he, for example, in a dream did not kick me with his foot along the fresh seams. And in kindergarten, I had to pay an extra half hour per day during the month: my father took the child there early so as not to be late for the office. They took me at the usual time, first my mom and I, and then myself — at first I just asked the teacher to help me put my son in the carriage, why not, he weighed twelve kilograms.
Nothing hurt, I regularly drank antibiotics and anti-inflammatory. And two weeks after the operation, the doctor allowed me to raise the child as needed - but consciously, squatting and straining the muscles of the legs and back. It was still a bit early to play Christopher and throw up Christopher, but you could, for example, carefully put him in a wheelchair. It was very useful, because my mother flew home.
Dr. Darnell was absolutely right when he said that I would feel great. The reduction for the surgeon is more difficult than breast augmentation, but for the patient it is the other way around, after the reduction or tightening, there are almost no discomfort. Sometimes I could, for example, push a heavy door, feel pain in the chest muscles - like after push-ups - and remember that you have to be careful. After three weeks it was possible not to sleep in a surgical bra (and generally replace it with a regular one), all that remained was to care for the scars and from time to time to go to the doctor for a checkup.
I started playing sports in five or six weeks. Now, four months after the operation, I continue to wear special polyurethane patches under the breast - where the scars have not yet acquired the final look. Vertically and around the nipple, the scars already look like thin white strings, although the redness around has not yet completely disappeared.
Tiny Bras
The effect of the operation is instant - you can sleep on your stomach and wear things of your size. A few days later, for the first time in my life, I confidently bought a shirt that was not sold on my chest. Of the amazing discoveries - the ability to read lying, leaning on your elbows, and suddenly realize that the chest does not touch the sofa. When I came for a massage a month or two after the operation, I lay down and "hung" - what, really? I do not need more than half a minute to lay out his chest with his hands so that it was comfortable and not painful? My masseur, by the way, immediately noticed that my back was unloaded, but he did not know about the operation and, in my mind, could not guess - he was blind.
A new pleasure for me is stores where you can buy tiny bras. I used to buy only online underwear and in rare cases I could find something on the huge underwear floor of the El Corte Inglés department store - now not only cheap underwear brands like Calzedonia or Oysho are available to me, but also stores that do not specialize in underwear, for example H & M or Urban Outfitters. I buy absolutely soft bras, without stones, and I can fit 80 A or 80 V - although I suspect there will be more bones, because the very basis of each gland is wide enough (but so far there is no desire to even measure such bras, I went too long in the "armor"). In fairness, I will say that the choice of soft linen is somewhat less than with bones or pushup - but it seems to me endless, before most brands simply did not exist for me.
Swimwear is another discovery. First, it turned out that they can be cheap. Secondly, do not take half a box, and fit into the palm - and dry out in a few hours, not in two days. I could not even imagine that “throwing a swimsuit in a bag just in case,” going on a weekend, is a really possible action, and not a strange turn of speech. Moreover, now I can put it on under clothes at home, going, for example, to the pool with a baby - and earlier this option was not even considered, because it hurts. Over the past couple of months I have been in the pool, at the spa and on the beach many times - and I begin to understand that I didn’t like all this because of the discomfort and difficulties with bathing suits.
Clothes, of course, began to sit better; I love oversight, and now it looks like it should be on me - things hang on the shoulders, and do not stick forward with a bell. It has become easier to train, I’m getting used to a new center of gravity, I can crouch lower and push up better. Stopped gazes on the streets. I can not wear a bra, and I don’t wear it with pleasure at home - but I usually wear it on the street: I walk for a long time and don’t want to feel my chest with gravity. According to many friends, the external effect is as if I lost 15 kilograms; large breasts gave visual massiveness. I like that it happened because I am a very sporty person, and now my appearance does not disagree with the internal state.
Many people ask about the sensitivity of the nipples; I answer - in my opinion, she has become a little better. True, we may have in mind different concepts - I just recently learned (literally from the Internet) that the breast can be sensitive as an erogenous zone, when touching the nipples causes sexual arousal. Apparently, because of the clamped nerve fibers, I didn’t have any sensitivity at all - that is, if I touched the nipple with my finger, the sensation of touch was only in the finger. Now the chest feels when it is touched - that is, the sensitivity has become much higher. How visible are the scars? While visible, but there is a clear tendency for them to become as thin and light as possible - with proper care after a year they will be almost invisible.
