Preparing for reconstruction - weighing options re: fat grafting
Hello community~
I had a bilateral mastectomy in October 2024 and am preparing for the second phase surgery, removal of the awful tissue expanders and placement of the final implants.
The plastic surgeon usually recommends fat grafting, and did initially until we discussed how painful and difficult the mastectomy was for me. I’m unsure how it wasn’t this way for all women, but he warned that the fat graft site (which would be my inner thigh) is more tender than the breast so to take some time to weigh the risks vs’ benefits. It’s also just an outpatient procedure, but they billed the mastectomy as a one-night stay and I ended up having to stay for three nights and the pain was atrocious.
I’m curious what other women who have been in this situation decided to do and why, what their experiences were in relation to aesthetics, comfort, and pain, and what they would recommend given those experiences.
Thank you very much.
Comments
-
Hello, @dolldancer!
We hope others will chime in with their experiences to help you weigh your options. In the meantime, here’s a helpful section from our site called that might give you some useful info as you decide what feels right for you.
Hope this helps. Let us know how you're doing!
The Mods0 -
@dolldancer I had a BMX with immediate DIEP flap recon, no expanders, which is of course a different surgery than you had but I did have a lot of pain and took a long time to heal than a number of other women who had same surgery as me and were able to go off pain meds within days and be back to normal-ish life in around 6 weeks. So we have 'more pain than average' in common at least. I had fat grafting twice - once from inner thighs and once from the flanks. In both cases I had some bruising with a little more sensitivity when fat was taken from the thigh but I wouldn't classify either grafting as serious pain in any way comparable to what I'd experienced with my surgery (and subsequent procedure to address some wound healing issues which tightened my abdominal skin, leading to hyper-sensitivity but that's a story for another day…). I didn't need prescription pain killers following either fat graft procedure, ,was able to control pain fine with a combo of acetaminophen (paracetamol) and ibuprofen. Hopefully you'll have same experience with the grafting.
0
