Team ChemoHawk: Tissue Expanders.....Gulp? Big Gulp? or Double Gulp?

And I am living proof of bending, stretching and not breaking! EI was pretty grateful to come out of surgery with expanders in. I was a DD going in. Coming out looking like my 9 year old son would have made me feel damaged. And I'm not damaged.

Expanders are like temporary implants. They can be filled over time to the size your permanent implants are going to be. They slowly stretch your skin and then keep it that way until your final reconstruction begins. But they sure don't feel like breasts. They are like walking around with big hard softballs in your chest. But I needed them before radiation since radiated skin doesn't stretch. More on those rays of love later.

They go in like an empty ziploc. lol okay not quite like a ziploc but you get what I mean. A little bag.

It is inserted under the muscle after all of the breast tissue has been removed. You get that breasts are just fat and ducts right? No big. Unless your 20 and still want to have kids and nurse. But for me?shmeh.

So see the silver disk looking thing? That is the port. You can feel it through your skin a bit. Don't confuse it with my chemo port that went into my heart. This is just an access to fill the expander. It is metal though, so you can't have an MRI etc...

To fill it, I just went into my plastic surgeons office, he would clean my girls, find the port, pop a big needle in with a syringe of saline and fill it. Most people can't do very much at a time, but I could 75-100 cc's in one sitting. Told ya I'm tough. It really didn't hurt me at all. But I have known a few people that said it was one of the most painful things for them.

See? Big needle. Big syringe.

But basically this is what it looks like when it is all filled.

I am so grateful my plastic surgeon did this at the same time as mastectomy. It saved me a surgery to put them in later. It allowed me to receive radiation very quickly after mastectomy. And trust me, you just want to get done with treatment and get on with life.

I didn't mind the expanders at all. I actually appreciate them because I didn't lose identity with my body as much. <Note I said "as much." I still didn't have nipples. In my head I would laugh because when I looked down my boobs looked like a babies butt. Bwahahahaha! I felt like with clothes on, no one could tell. Which was nice. It seemed like once someone saw my bald head they would immediately look down at my boobs anyway.