TE TROUBLE
Comments
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Hi School Counselor. It's nice to hear from you again, but not because of TE trouble. So sorry. The redness is not good news, is it? Have you had any fills in the new TE? Sounds like the antibiotic is trying to fix the problem, but not quite making it. Without a culture, your doctor is probably going to change you to a heavier antibiotic, hoping he can find the right one, probably via IV. I went through several antibiotics until I found one that would do the trick. I always get IV vancomycin now via a PICC line because I don't have a port. Works fine at home. I've done it three times now.0 -
thanks Moon and Sandra. I've been around just lurking. I had a picc line off chemo which is since out. Maybe they will let me put one in again. Thanks for your suggestions I will talk to my dr about them. This process is a beast!!!!!
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Thanks for the good thoughts. I wrap it at work and ice soon as I get home. As far as the meds, if they would get Rx'd it would help.
Surgery has been scheduled .to replace the left TE for June 12th
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I had my surgery on may 9th and got 2 oft drains removed in 5 days. I got my 3rd drain taken out today. I still have one drain in. I also had my first fill today and I am in a lot of pain. It's the side that is still draining that has a lot of pain. The other side isn't hurting at all. Just wondering if the pain is due to that side still draining. I had 30ml draining in a 12 hour period. I usually have a good tolerance for pain. But this really hurts. He only filled 60cc on each side. Is this normal. Please help! I feel so bad just thinking I have so many fills left. There was no fill during surgery. Thanks!
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septmom - I PM'ed you but will say the same here. IMHO you are filling too soon, I personally don't think anyone with a drain still in place should have a fill. Having a drain provides an avenue for infection - either of the drain site, or around the expander. Also, I believe in the low and slow approach - 60 is not a huge fill, but it is when you consider how recently you had surgery. That is why it hurts so much. I would call your PS and ask for some saline to be removed and not get another fill until you have been without drains for at least a couple of weeks. Remember that YOU are in charge of when and how much you are filled, not your PS. There is no reason to be in pain - TE are not comfortable, but should not really be painful. If you have muscle relaxers (Soma, Skelaxin, Valium or Flexiril) take them with your pain meds to relax the pectoral muscles.
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Thanks SpecialK! I got your msg. I agree I will wait for next fill.
Hugs!
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My P'S did not do any fills til 6 weeks. I started with 300 in though. I was having trouble with my drain and my P'S did use a fill to try to stop the drainage. This was 3 weeks after the TE was replaced so no other healing going on and my drainage was over 100cc per day. That's the only time during 3 TE tries that he ever filled with a drain in.
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Hi girls! This thread has been marked as one of my favs for a few years now. I feel all of your pain. As if having BC is not enough but to deal with the illusion that we will all have "beautiful breasts" in a year is just BS. I have concluded that we are the majority and not the minority here. TE trouble was just the beginning of my journey. I am nearing a guiness record for surgeries. I recently listed them all on my profile, then I vomited. Then I drank and said OH WHO CARES, boobs are over rated anyway.
Just my two cents. Thanks for listening.
~Erin aka Dorothy, from Kansas (yes I am still here)
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erin - eeesh, just read your surgery list, and I feel ya!
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erin! LOL. So you had a few, um, "Scenic Detours" too? LOL sounds like you need to tell us the story. Someday take the time to write it down. When I got upset over how long it was taking for me to even begin to feel normal I went back to my list of detours and it helped me realize that there were some d*mn good reasons for the slow recovery! LOL.
Much love.
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aww, thanks girls. PM me if you want and I can try to fill you in. and in return, I feel your pain too!
I love you bwest fwends I do
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I am still in pain from my 60cc fill yesterday. Any idea how long the pain lasts. I am fine if I am really still. But certain amount of movement causes muscles pain/spasm. I did take Valium yesterday when I got home an hour after taking norco when I got home from the fill. The meds didn't seem to help but made me feel crappy- I felt a bit nauseous and loopy. At night I could just eat some toast and took advil and went to bed. I woke up this morning with no nausea but still in pain. I just took two advil. I didn't feel much relief from the norco so thought I would try advil. My one drain that is left drained 30cc during the 12h period yesterday and this morning I had about 15 so it's gone down. My PS said the fill would help the drain fill less and come out soon. I don't know what to do. Will the pain go away soon? The nurse said I would be in the pain 24 to 48 hours. I have only 60cc fills so far in each breast and I am dreading getting my next fill. I am petite and am a 34B regular size but this first fill has been dreadful so far.
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Most of us don't have pain with a small 60cc fill at the beginning. It's normal to have tightness several hours after all of the fills and you can be uncomfortable enough to take a Tylenol, but since you are taking a narcotic plus valium, it shouldn't be painful. Call your doctor back. They can remove some of the saline. There is NO reason to suffer. I'm certainly no doctor, but it seems to me you've gotten a fill WAY too early, especially since you still have a drain. You are 12 days post op! Many of us have at least some of our drains in, if not most of them. Having a drain three weeks is not unusual. Why is your doctor in so much of a rush? If you are getting muscle spasms, one or two valium or another of the muscle relaxers can help a lot. I wonder why you have had no relief with valium?
CALL the doc. Don't let them do whatever they want to you. It's your body. This fill was too early and you are paying a big price.
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Septmom, I feel your pain. I generally have pain for 3 to 4 days after a fill. I started with 120 cc's and dropped down to 60 cc's which was better but still painful. My doctor said he doesn't have other women that have that kind of pain but after 5 fills he gave me a month off. We start back up again on Weds. He said we would go slower. Everyone is different. I have a friend that had to do her fills in 10 and 20 cc increments. Remember you are in charge. And some people say it gets easier as the fills go on. I am hoping this is the case for me. I hope this helps. You are certainly not alone!0 -
Thanks Ladies. I am going to see my doctor tomorrow. My still have pain today but a little less than yesterday. Did you ladies have a fill every week? I plan on taking next week off. I need a break. Also did you ladies start wearing a bra sometime during the TE process. With only 60cc on each side I am very flat . I am wondering if I will be able to wear a bra with inserts anytime soon to give me some volume.
This is such a tough process. I thought getting through chemo and then surgery was tough and now the worst was behind me. I had no idea TE fills would be so bad. I can't wait for this to be over. Thanks so much for your help.
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Septmom - I, too, had pain during the TE process. I only had 50 ccs every other week, but it was painful. It would hurt for four or five days after each fill (sometimes more, sometimes less) and then subside for a week before we started again. It's not uncommon if you were a small breasted woman to start with, that you have some pain - it all depends on how much skin they left after the BMX. In my case, they were supposed to do an NSBMX, but with all of the things they discovered once they got in there they (as my BS likes to say) scraped me down to the bone. I was literally concave after BMX and had no extra skin. Thus every time the PS did a fill, it hurt because it was also expanding and stretching what little skin was there since we were virtually starting over. (However, I must say that my PS told me time and again that we could stop and take a week or two off, but I made the decision to forge ahead.) The fill process is up to YOU, not the PS. Tell him / her that you want to slow it down. There's no shame in that. Low and slow is the safest way to do this. Good luck to you!
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Septmom, I get my fills every other week with 50cc a fill. Although I'm anxious to get this over with, every other week seems to be working great. As everyone keeps saying, you are in charge. It's not a race. :-) I hope you are feeling better.
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Thanks ladies, I will have it every other week. I see my doctor tomorrow. I will speak to him about my schedule going forward. My only concern is that I am on leave for another 6 weeks from work. It's hard to keep taking time off work if I am back at work. How many fills will I need for a 34B?
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I did 50cc every other week except once when I did 100cc. I regretted that 100cc because it was very painful. I returned to work 4 weeks after mastectomy surgery and was mostly able to schedule my fills at ridiculous times like 7 or 7:30 in the morning so i didn't have to disrupt work much.
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I am glad you will do every other week. That should help. Much love.
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Septmom - I went every other week also & got from 30-50 depending on MY mood. No matter how fast you fill, most docs will make you wait at least a month before exchange surgery. Mine had me wait 8 weeks. And then you'll likely have a couple of weeks to heal from that surgery. Can you go back to work while you're filling & waiting and save some of your time off for the exchange surgery? If you get control of the pain, maybe have fills on Friday and by Monday you'll be able to function.
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Juliecc - how much did you get I'm terms of fills until you were done? What bra did you wear since you were back at work and still doing fills?
Minus two - I was thinking of going back to work a little early if possible to give me time off for exchange surgery. My PS has told me my exchange surgery would likely be in October. How long will I need to be off for the exchange surgery? I was thinking 2 wks. Is that enough?
This is such a long process. I really didn't think fills would be so painful. Naive me! Hoping it's more painful due to my drain and it being only 12 days since my surgery.
Thanks ladies! Hugs!
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Septmom - as most everyone else has said - stop the fills until the pain subsides. And until the drains are out. Or if you can't get the pain under control, have them take out some of the saline. Then go for small fills every other week.
Of course we're all different and it depends on your physical shape going into the whole program & the complications, but from what I've read MOST people are fine going back to work by two weeks. Some in one week. Some not for a month or more.
I'm going to throw in my 2 cents about the bra too. I did buy a couple of bras at Nordstrom's when I had my TEs but ended up mostly wearing sports bras from WalMart and camis w/shelf bras. There is bra thread that's not particularly active but very informative.
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Stepmom - I started fills about a month or 5 weeks after Mx and I have stopped at 450cc. My last one was last week and my exchange is scheduled 8/8. My PS likes to wait 3 months after the last fill so I am 1 week short of that. My pain actually got better as I got my fills. You probably still have a lot of pain because of your surgery. Each week you will have less! I usually wear camis or really stretchy bra's like Genie bras. Genie bras have foam inserts that were useful in the beginning of fills. My "mounds" have a good shape now and I can go braless. TEs definitely don't require support. I hope your pain gets better soon.
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Hi Gals,
Had my bmx a little over a month ago. My skin started dying off from lack of blood flow and stretch from the very minimal fill I got during bmx.
I am now 2 weeks shy of starting chemo and still have huge nasty scabs (the left is over the size of a half dollar) on my bumps. My plastic surgeon will not do fills until the scabs are gone and skin has healed. He now tells me due to my healing issues, he will not fill me during chemo. Chemo will last 4 months and the ps tells me I will probably need to lower my expectations on final breast size because the tissue will be much harder to expand after so much time.
I was a full a-cup before surgery...I was hoping for full b. I also have no idea how long te' s can be left in... any thoughts or experiences that might shed light on my situation?
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radical - I also had necrosis that was severe enough to cause the loss of my left expander prior to chemo. I did not fill during chemo because I only had one expander. I had that expander replaced about six weeks after my last chemo and we filled very slowly, starting about a month after that surgery. I was a 34B before surgery, and filled to 650ccs on the right, 600ccs on the left (this was symmetrical) and visually looked like a full C, measured a 34DD in an underwire bra. I had weekly 25cc fills. You can stretch damaged skin but you need to go super slow. My right expander was in for 17 months, left was in for 3 months, out for 7, back in for 7.
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radical, I had my right TE in for 24 months. My left was in for 1 month, out for 6 In again for 1 month, out for 13 months in for 3 til my exchange. So they last.
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I had bilateral mastectomy on April 30th. I was just starting to feel better and had a camping trip planned for this weekend before my chemo starts June 2nd. On Monday night I had high fever, chills headache. I called ps Tuesday morning and was told she wasn't available but sounds like the common flu. Laid around taking Tylenol all day Tuesday and felt better yesterday but had some pain on right side . This morning got up had a lot of pain and right breast red and hot. I called my GS who got me right in and said it is infection , try antibiotics and if that doesn't work will have to remove expander . Putting the port in will have to be delayed. I had a meltdown in my car in the parking lot , so discouraged with this. Of course the camping trip is off and I was so looking forward to a little normalcy since this all began. Does anyone have any advice ?
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Sherty. Hugs. So sorry. Keep a watch on your temp and the redness. If the abx don't work that will get worse. This stuff always happens on holiday weekends! Chemo will have to be delayed til you are off abx. Sorry. I do know what you are going through. Hugs again. If you don't feel better with the abx call your doc again. Any P'S can take it out if needed so if it goes downhill don't think you need your own PS. Much muscle damage can happen if the infection gets out of hand. Sandra has experience with that. I'm so sorry. . Some P'S try to save the TES mi e never did. He took it out right away.
Hugs. Much love
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thank you for the hugs and reassurance. This all pretty new to me and has been pretty scary. I have been given so much information that I can't even process it all. My first reaction to being told that they might take the expander out was that I would not have it put back in ! I don't know if I could actually do that though. Anyway, I'm glad that I found a place to talk to people who actually have gone through these same things. My biggest problem has been accepting that I can't just do all the things that I did before the surgery and letting people do them for me. I am going to try to sleep and hopefully maybe will feel better in the morning .
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