The completely true and uncensored story of my gruesome ordeal

***DISCLAIMER***
This story is not for the faint of heart. I'm not shy about this, and when I say the story is uncensored and gruesome, well, I mean it.

Because this post is so long, I've broken the story down into a few parts. I'll BOLD the heading of each section for those of you who would prefer to just skim this large amount of text.

BACKGROUND
**I am including this section because I have received a surprising amount of negative feedback toward my decision to have this surgery. My hope in exposing these feelings and experiences is to help those who have disapproved of my decision to understand why I chose to do this. I am offering a chance to put yourself in my shoes and witness the emotional turmoil that has led up to this decision. Not that I need to explain myself or justify my actions to those around me; this surgery is the best thing I've ever done for myself. Of that I have no doubt.


With all of that said, this story begins when I was born. I got some genes I really am not fond of. At all. I don't remember exactly when it was I started developing a chest, (i suppose i could go look at pictures from years past, but i don't have access to them at the moment.) but I know that I definitely had one by 4th grade. (i also had braces and headgear. so great.)

By the time I hit 7th grade, I was a DD. Now, Jr. High is difficult enough without adding immature peers and a large chest to the mix. Unfortunately for me, I also had some not-the-greatest of friends. "Friends". The kind of friends who constantly tear you down to make themselves feel better... Don't ask me why I spent my time with them; I don't know.

Anyway, back to the point of this post, Jr. High was terrible and wore my self-confidence and self-esteem down to little nubbins of practically nothing. I was unbelievably uncomfortable in my own skin. I hated everything I saw when I looked in the mirror, so I avoided them. Not the greatest time in my life, and the main cause of this continued to get bigger.

Now, I need to clarify that the reason for my buxom figure is not 100% retarded genes. Granted, genes were the start of the problem, but it's a physiological thing as well. My fronts got pretty full, pretty fast and as any curvy girl out there can testify: running, jumping, moving rapidly, basically exercise of any kind is pretty much the last thing you want to be doing. Not only is it embarrassing, but it's painful as all get-out.

Ha. I don't understand women who get implants. They have no idea what they're getting themselves into and I pity them.

To each her own, I suppose.

Onward to high school. Not much different here than my previous public school experiences. Well, besides even bigger problems. And unbelievably amazing friends for the last half of my schooling.

I don't really know how I ended up so lucky in the friend department. There are a few reasons why I say this. Because my self-esteem was so low, I became somewhat of an introverted person. To this day I'm still very shy. I also began to hate those around me. I know hate is a strong word, nevertheless, it's accurate.

I am very similar in attitude to that of a dog. Let me explain why: dogs are pretty forgiving animals. With the typical dog, you can yell at or punish them and five minutes later they're wagging their tail when they see you. I am much the same way. Granted, I don't come running back with my tongue hanging out when someone wrongs me, but I don't hold grudges. I don't like drama. I tend to just avoid the people and situations resulting in either of those. I seriously dislike confrontation. I don't typically lash back at people; I'm not easily stirred to anger. With all that said, what happens to a dog when it is abused, beaten down and broken in its adolescence? It becomes mean and mistrustful. Even towards those with the very best of intentions. Again, I was much the same way. In my experience, my peers were awful. Cruel. Judgmental. Not to be trusted. The cause of many tears. In one way or another, everyone was out to get me. In response, I kept to myself. I was guarded. Sarcastic. Just plain mean.

I've changed much over the years, but in high school very few people knew me. The real me. I hid behind the acerbic personality I had developed in my early adolescence. That was the easy route. Somehow, a few choice people were strategically placed in my classes and my life. I know our Heavenly Father looks out for us and knows what we need because of this. As I began to see the good in these people and, for whatever reason, they reached out to me, I opened myself up to them and made what I know will be life-long friends. They have no idea how much they've meant to me over the years or the difference they have made for me. Actually, they probably know that much because I am a completely different person now than I was. I hope they know it's all to do with them and their examples to me. I love them with everything in my little heart.

Seeing that these friends loved me for who I was, made me want to love myself. To be myself. My self-esteem and self-confidence began to grow. I was happy. Joyous, even.

I am in no way an extroverted or gregarious person now, but I am well on my way. This may be superficial or prideful of me, but I want my outside to match my inside. I want to be 100% myself. This surgery was the first step and I'm taking more every day. They may be small, but they are sure.

In order to have the best results for this surgery, it is recommended for the individual to wait until they are done growing. After high school was over, things stayed pretty much the same. It is now three years later and they hadn't changed much. Now was as good a time as any. Actually, it was perfect. Better now than later. So much better.

THE SEARCH

Now we're into the juicy part. In order to have surgery, one must first have a surgeon. Because of the nature of this surgery, this part was a HUGE deal. I wasn't going to have just anybody slicing open and cutting away at my lady parts. Oh no! I was going to have the very best.

After much pestering on my part and many phone calls to various people within our insurance company on the part of my parents, we found out my insurance would indeed cover the procedure. Basically, that was the best news I have ever received in my short lifetime.

With that, the search was on. My first step was to get on the insurance company's website and figure out just which surgeons participated on my plan and were going to be covered. There were a lot. It was a bit daunting at first, and I quantified my search through them many times and many different ways. I was dissatisfied with my results and didn't feel as though I had been thorough enough. Finally, I only felt good about things after I had gone through the candidates one by one.

The first way I narrowed them down was to find surgeons who included breast reductions as one of their practice focuses. You could be the greatest plastic surgeon in the world, but if your main focus is hand reconstruction I'm not going to pick you. Sorry.

After I had a list of the, oh, seven or eight surgeons with the right focus, I did more extensive research on each one. I visited each one's practice websites. I looked at their work. I read patient reviews. I looked at certifications and affiliations. I also dismissed all the old ones. I decided more recent education and hurdle jumping was a little more important to me than a boat load of experience. Especially since after a doctor has passed certifications so many times, eventually it's just permanent and they don't have to learn about new procedures and such. No thank you, that's not what I want.

Eventually I found a surgeon I was happy with. He was a little far away, but he had all of the certifications I was interested in, his patient reviews were great and I really liked his work. I made an appointment.

PRE-OP

Never having done anything like this before, I had no idea what to expect. I knew there would be paperwork. I knew that eventually, at some point during the visit there would be the removing of clothes and the examining of the girls and, being LDS and unmarried, I was a little nervous about that part. To my relief, the doctor was great; I liked him. He made me feel right at ease and we had a good chat about why I was there.

Then came the discussion of things that could go wrong. Holy crap.

Ladies, prepare yourselves. Gents, you may just want to skip this next part.

We'll start with the tame stuff and go from there. First of them all was my girls could end up asymmetrical. Whatevs. They already kind of were. I wasn't too worried; better asymmetrical than so friggin' huge.
Next up on the list, the scars could end up kind of rope-like and gross looking. Who the heck cares? It's not like everyone and their dog are going to be seeing them. Better big, ugly scars than so friggin' huge.
Moving right along, there is the chance I will not be able to breastfeed my children. Now, I was previously aware of this risk. At first mention, my reaction was basically who the heck cares? kids? that's 10 years down the road. Then I started to really think about it. Now, I may not be interested in getting married or having kids any time soon, but I do want that eventually. And yes, when I have kids I do want to be able to nurse them. So it was cause for pause when the doctor told me there was absolutely no way to guarantee that would be a possibility. Ultimately I decided if worse comes to worse, there's always formula. I need this surgery.
Now we get into the freaky stuff.
Because of the nature and placement of the incisions, there's a chance I could loose sensitivity and feeling in certain areas. Um, that's an unpleasant thought. Very unpleasant. For anyone to really appreciate this and the previous risk with the scars, you need to understand where the incisions are. Basically, the scars look like an anchor. They go around the nipple, straight down to the bottom and out to both sides. 'Nuff said.
So now we're going to have a little anatomy lesson here. There is a column of milk ducts, nerves, and blood vessels that runs from the inside of the chest cavity to the nipple. This is true for all women (and men, minus the milk duct part...). This column stretches and grows, obviously, with the breast.
Ok, so when a surgeon goes in and makes the breast smaller, he can't really shrink that column to fit, so he has to just put it all back in there as best he can. If it is too long, when he puts it all back, it can get kinks that cut off the blood supply to the nipple. The resulting tissue with no blood supply dies. And by dies, I mean turns black and falls off.
Oh my goodness, I just about died and fell off my chair when I heard that. If I wasn't freaked out about the surgery before, I was now.
The solution surgeons have come up with for this problem is to just cut everything off, tie the blood vessels and such off and then graft the nipple back on when they're done. This of course means absolutely no sensitivity and absolutely no breast feeding. Great. Fantastic.

Better cut everything off than be so friggin' huge...?

As you know, after much extensive consideration, I decided the pros outweighed the cons. I am tired of a back, shoulders and neck that hurt all the time.

I scheduled the surgery and the surgeon requested the pre-authorization required for insurance. During the course of my visit, the surgeon told me my insurance company had requirements based on height and weight as to how much tissue needs to be removed during surgery to be deemed medically necessary. According to his formulary, I needed to have 1100 grams removed from each side. He tried to pull out his silicon implant examples to show me how much that would be, but he didn't have any big enough. Go figure. So he told me it was about the size of two large grapefruit. Well, this made me a little nervous. I didn't want to end up going from one end of the spectrum to the other. But if that's what it took, okay. Pictures were taken and I was sent on my way to wait for the insurance company's approval.

Two days later I got a call. Insurance had approved the surgery. Better yet, they were only going to require 600 grams from each side be removed. This was a relief. That meant the surgeon would have a little bit more flexibility to make them the size I wanted. (which was a C)

A few days later, I get another call. It was the facility the doctor's office had scheduled the surgery at wanting to verify some information and give me some instructions. As it turned out, for some reason they wanted me to go somewhere that was NOT in-network with my insurance and if I wanted a facility that was, I was going to have to wait until April as opposed to February 2nd. I did not want that. I was not happy.

To make an already extremely long story a little shorter, I cancelled with that doctor and my mom found a new one. I appreciated what she had done because I work for many hours every day and I didn't have the time to go over everything again.

This new doctor's main practice focus is breast reconstruction for cancer patients. This was a great thing I hadn't considered before, but what he does is try to save as much tissue as possible. This significantly raised my chances of being able to breast feed my kids.

Another tender mercy provided by my loving Heavenly Father; I know things didn't work out with the first doctor so I would see Dr. Robert Ferguson. I felt SO much better with this surgeon than the previous one. He was amazing. Much more reassuring, less doom and gloom as far as the risks went (a welcome change), and he took the time to really explain what would happen during the surgery. I had to wait until the end of February because he had some cancer patient surgeries and then he went on a medical mission for something for a couple of weeks, but it was so worth the wait.

The Surgery

All the typical stuff happened at the hospital the day of. I checked in at 9:30 with my mom. I had my vitals checked, and I.V. put in (by the way, the nurse totally sucked at putting it in my hand and I just about died. so painful. but i didn't hit her, so it was all good.) Dr. Ferguson came in to mark where the incisions would be and then the anesthesiologist came and walked me to the operating room. I laid down on the operating table, he shot me up with the meds and 5 hours later I woke up with smaller boobs and a big, fat lip. (i still don't know how that happened)

The pain was intense. I made the post-op nurse shoot me up with meds about 5 times before I even felt a dent in the pain, but about a minute after that fifth shot, the relief was intense. My pain levels went from an 8 to a 3. It was amazing. During that time, my mother came in and told me Dr. Ferguson had said he did NOT want me to lay around in bed, but he wanted me up and moving.

I don't know what it is about anesthesia, but every time I've had it, I end up getting really pissed off at something. That announcement from my mom was the kicker; I was not happy about it.

The pain meds were great, but they also made me not want to breathe. Ha. I was hooked up to a really irritating machine monitoring my blood-oxygen levels and it kept beeping every time I started to drift off to sleep because my levels would drop to about 85%. Which apparently isn't good. I was appreciative that they cared so much, but I hated the dang machine.

I was really thirsty and drank about 3 cups of water, a cup of apple juice and a cup of sprite. Then the nurse decided that the time for me to go home was drawing near and decided it was time to take the catheter out. SURPRISE! Glad I was out of it for the insertion.. But she just lifted the blankets up and pulled that sucker right out of there. Talk about uncomfortable. Haha and about a minute after she took it out, I told her I needed to pee. She told me it was just irritation from the removal, but I was insistent. I wasn't trying to be annoying, I really felt like I had to pee. So she helps me hobble the twenty feet to the bathroom, I sit down and nothing happens.
"I guess you were right; I don't need to go."
"*sigh*"
But the bed I was on was SO warm and the bathroom was cold and felt so good that I kind of just sat there for a few minutes enjoying not being under a million blankets. It was delightful.

When I got back to my little recovery area, I sat on the recliner instead of getting back on the bed. Rested for about ten more minutes and then proceeded to get dressed. I was then put in a wheelchair and wheeled out to the waiting suburban. It was about 7:30, I think. We were there for 10 hours.

My poor mother. She had to stay in the hospital the whole time we were there in case something happened. She gave up her day for me and I love her very much for being willing to do that for me.

We got home and I walked from the car through the garage into the house and promptly threw up all the liquid I had consumed. I was okay with it though cause it just tasted like watered down sprite. No nasty stomach acid taste, for which I was grateful.

A couple of friends came over that night and were just as delighted as I was with the results. And just as grossed out at the drains the surgeon had put in. The incisions were under my arms on both sides; a tube came out of them and was connected to little clear, plastic containers the size of hand grenades and collected the blood and other bodily fluids that drained from the surgery site. Better out than in, even though it was super gross.

POST-OP

The surgery went great. There weren't really any complications. As it turned out, 1339 grams were removed from the right side and 1427 grams from the left. A grand total of 5.5 lbs. Imagine having that weighing down on your front for so many years. Needless to say, the relief was instant. My back, shoulders and neck don't hurt anymore.

Everyone has been impressed with the results. My friends have a hard time not staring. I don't mind; ha once I jokingly told a friend "my eyes are up here". Her response? "Whatever" as she continued to stare. It was great.

Nobody has been as happy with the results as I am. I was off my percocet, and all pain medication for that matter, after one week and back to work after two.

Everything is healing beautifully, nothing is dead or falling off and I am ecstatic with the results.


I still have no idea what size I am though. I'll let you know when I figure that out.