Category: Medical Procedures

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When you thought it was over…Burning your reconstructed breast…

Breast reconstruction is just the beginning. Once your breast cancer treatment is over, and most of the anxiety that goes with it. You then face new challenges!

Just over a week ago, I burned my reconstructed breast. Four months after immediate reconstructed and 7 weeks after finishing radiation.

The only thing I will emphasize, is do not have any heat around your breast at all!

This means, hair dryers, lamps, heating pads, hot water bottles, boiling water, cooking items… I hope you get the point!

I am not the first to do this but I hope I am the last.

When you loose all sensation after breast reconstruction you must be aware at all times of what is near you! Heat, knives, sharp objects, or ice all of these and more can completely destroy the tissue over your implant.

I am writing this post from the hospital bed I was admitted to several days ago. I burned my reconstructed breast using a heat lamp. Before you ask why? I was getting ready to start rehabilitation for my arm post-mastectomy.

This is also not the most ideal time to be in hospital. The world is currently on lock down due to the COVID-19 pandemic!

I had to have a nasal swab before I could be admitted for surgery to ensure I didn’t have COVID-19. This means being in the isolation ward for about 24 hours, with other people like you and also suspected COVID-cases! Once cleared your moved to the ward with many other people who all past the test. All private rooms are saved for COVID-19 patients!

After just finishing Cancer treatments this is the last place you would want to be.

The good:

I don’t feel a thing.

The bad:

I am “on the board” waiting for a surgery slot. I am not sure what will happen but my surgeon hopes to save as much as he can. After having a nipple-sparing mastectomy I may loose my nipple areola complex along with skin.

One week post-operative:

Luckily, the surgeon was able to save my nipple with most of the skin. My breast is now much smaller and looks very badly scarred. I am just praying something can be done to fix it later or it heals miraculously.

This experience has made me wonder why they don’t warn women about this!

Another aspect that I wasn’t prepared for, was nerve pain after removal of the tissue expander. It feels as though the entire breast area is on fire.

Homeopathy is amazing, for general pain arnica and nerve pain hypericum perforatum.

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Biopsies: The good, the bad and the ugly.

After having two biopsies: one with ultrasound, to confirm my diagnosis; and the other with MRI to implant surgical clips – all I can say is BIG ouch.

A regular biopsy is painful yes, but the MR biopsy is not exactly humane.

What got me through the MR biopsy was the wonderful radiologist and technologist. This is when your health team really matters.

They took turns hold my hand and consoling me during the entire procedure.

  • First hooking me up to IV
  • Laying face-down on my stomach and squeezing my breast in a grid-like vice
  • Putting me in and out of the MRI, 5 times or more
  • Injecting me with contrast dye
  • Injecting 3 sets freezing in my breast
  • Using their state-of-the-art DRILL to both take tissue samples and inject titanium clips in my breast

I don’t think I need to say how difficult or painful it was. It also takes some days to recover. It was definitely worse than surgery.

Are biopsies good to do?

All in all. I don’t know how I feel about biopsies. I know in some cases they can cause cancer to spread or risk infection – as with biopsies of the eye and difficult to reach areas as the prostate.

With breast biopsies, I am just not sure.

My first biopsy, was to confirm diagnosis of my breast cancer. It feels like a necessary procedure.

The second biopsy was required to mark out my surgical area, which was only visible on MRI.

You see, now after 14 months, I have had 5 breast MRI’s and 2 lumpectomies. And we can finally see margins lighting up on the MRI.

You might think this is bad, but after positive margins on my second surgery this was good news! We now had a road map to guide the surgeon on where to cut.

The other big part here is, this is all to save my breast. To me if we can get clear margins with a lumpectomy or three, then I can keep my breast.

And honestly after going through all this, I wish that I was open to mastectomy.

If I was I would have opted for that from day one, this whole thing would have been over… mastectomy just didn’t feel right for me at all.

I would say that depending on what you want your outcome to be, biopsies can be very necessary! In my case, to save my breast, it is totally my choice and worth it.

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