I just had my surgery on 9/18 and am still recovering. I think I would have been fine if I had just done mastectomies without reconstruction. I did flap reconstructions and it has been a disaster. One of them failed and I ended up with nothing on the left side anyway. Right now I'm saying no to any more cosmetic surgery, just the necessary ones of which there have been 2 so far and will have at least one more. I am really angry with myself for being so vain. I wanted the flaps done because they use fat and muscle from your stomach to create the new breasts and I was all too willing to get rid of that fat. But now I'd rather be getting back to my life rather than sitting at home popping pain pills all day and waiting for more surgeries. With that said though, I had complications that most people do not and having perky new breasts is not important to me at all.

As for more info about what to expect, I can offer some insight from someone who had surgery 3 weeks ago. The side that is just a mastectomy now is healing relatively quickly. The nerves are mostly dead, there is just a lot of tenderness around the outside of the breast area. The site is hideous though. It will probably look better after some more swelling goes down and plastic surgery is recommended to make it look better. The swelling and tenderness near the underarm is the worst.

The breast that had flap reconstruction feels about the same. I needed a 2nd surgery for some debridement but again, most of the nerves are dead so there isn't much feeling. The underarm is the most tender on that side too. My sternum hurts quite a bit too.

The part that is causing me the most problems is my stomach. From what I understand, stomach flap reconstruction is the most difficult to recover from. My skin feels really tight and it hurts to do pretty much anything. I use a walker for anything other than walking around the house. I was very happy to have a catheter for the first few days after surgery because I do not know if I could have gotten out of bed for the first few days.

I am also extremely tired all of the time. I have tapered off my pain meds a bit so I'm not so doped up and am still exhausted with any amount of activity.

I am bound and determined to be back to work in a couple of weeks though. I cannot sit still much longer without losing my mind.

I hope that helps. Sorry if there wasn't much positivity in my response. My surgery was particularly rough and I'm still going through a lot. I also didn't want to sugar coat anything because I feel like I get a lot of that and I'd much rather have honesty. I'm sure everything will be fine too but that's not the only thing I ever want to hear.

Good luck with your surgery and I hope everything goes smoothly.

This Post is probably to late but I had a double mastectomy 11-10-17, Direct to implant, meaning no expanders. Went really smoothly pain was very manageable and now 5 weeks out barely taking anything. The mastectomy was easy the chemo is going to be a really long journey.