Back home

After 4 days in hospital the drains were removed and I was allowed home. I was a gruesome sight, so skip the next few entries if you have a sensitive stomach.

It was already apparent that my breasts were playing their own version of Good Cop Bad Cop. In my case it was Good Boob (GB) on the right, and Bad Boob (BB) on the left. Right from the start, GB was an exemplary patient, healing quickly, quietly and without fuss. As you can see, it was barely bruised, and I was thrilled at the small size that the surgeon had achieved.
I had not expected such a dramatic size reduction, and it is the first time since I was about ten years old that I have not been able to hold a pencil under my breast (this was our childhood gauge for whether or not a bra was necessary).

BB, however, seemed determined to experience every possible problem, with continued wound seepage, extensive bruising, and, most importantly of all, a persistent haematoma. This is one of the most common post-op complications in this sort of surgery, due to the intense vascularity of the breast and the fact that the escaped blood is more or less trapped in a confined space. As you can see from the photo, the blood (bruising) in the breast is unable to travel down the body with gravity, whereas the bruising between the breasts can and does move down. This is because the normal drainage system of lymphatic vessels and tiny blood vessels in the lower part of the breast have all been destroyed or interrupted by the removal of the breast tissue during the operation.

The body is amazing, and it works hard to remove the blood from the breast by dissolving the clot and gradually transporting it away using different channels higher up. This all worked perfectly in GB, but unfortunately the back-up system was unable to cope with the excessive bleeding in the left breast, so the haematoma remained. It wasn’t painful, exactly, just uncomfortable, because the skin was stretched very tightly, which pulled on all the hundreds of tiny stitches along the wound. Also, there is a constant risk of infection with such a large collection of old blood (which bugs love best of all), so I had to stay on high doses of antibiotics.