Once More With Feeling

We went to see my plastic surgeon this morning for him to check me out before I get my tattoo in a few days. I had become concerned about the placement (or lack thereof) of the right breast implant. It has shifted downward somewhat and to the right. Professionally it is called “bottoming out.” The last time we saw Dr. Hodges he asked about it because it had shifted at that time, but it is really noticeable now.

It was funny, he comes in the room and opens my gown and says, “How much weight have you lost?” Proudly, I could say 35 pounds and he then asked how much more do I plan on losing. Another 15 pounds. He looks at the breasts and says that we need to do another surgery to build a pocket inside the right breast to keep the implant in place. He will do that with some internal stitches. He is also going to replace that implant with a smaller one and given that and my weight loss, he’s going to insert another size implant in the left breast so the breasts are more symmetrical. He will also do the tattoo after the surgery for the areola on the right breast.

Fortunately, they just had a cancellation for December 8, so that Monday we’ll have day surgery at 9:30 to get this all corrected. He said I can’t drive for at least 5 days, no playing with Mr. Sandman, no work, no lifting so that those internal stitches have time to heal up. Thankfully I’ve built up some paid time off this year, so it will be paid for. I’m disappointed that this isn’t all going to be all over by the end of 2008, but. . . .

Afterwards I went to Medical City to get another unigram on the left breast that still has breast tissue inside it. That mammogram is clean as a whistle!!! I walked the films upstairs to Dr. Laidley’s office, because we go see her in the morning for a 3 month checkup. And that clean mammogram is excellent.