LAST SUMMER, I’M TOLD , is why large breasts for me – a big problem, and that I planned to solve the problem quickly, making the breast reduction. In January, I did just that – four months have passed, the breasts have taken on a finished look, and I am ready to share my experience.
About courage
Many times I have heard surprised and even delighted phrases that I “decided” to undergo breast reduction surgery, despite the pain, inconvenience and limitations. I do not agree – you can decide on something frightening, like jumping from the roof of a burning building. And I just for a number of reasons wanted to reduce my breasts, I planned and did it.
Pain, discomfort and limitations are when you cannot sleep on your stomach; when from any swimsuit you like, your neck hurts even in the fitting room; when all the time irritation on the shoulders from the straps; when for years you have dreamed of a shirt of your own size that does not diverge on the chest, or a leather jacket that will button up; when you cannot do yoga and stretching upside down because your chest blocks your mouth and nose, and you choke; when you wear worn bras for eight years, because finding your size is difficult (and expensive); when you can’t run twenty meters behind a departing bus, because it hurts without sports underwear. This is pain, limitation and inconvenience. And smearing shovchiki with ointment for several weeks is nonsense.
Dr. Darnell
But I’ll start from the beginning. It was fundamentally important for me that the clinic was in the same city as me, so I considered only Barcelona. I know that many fly for operations to Russia (especially outside Moscow and St. Petersburg), Thailand and Latin America, but I have a job and a small child. In the first months after the operation, a hematoma or suture may become inflamed – it is important to be able to rush to your doctor in ten minutes by taxi.
I went to four consultations; prices were about the same for all – from four to five thousand euros, but the approach is different. Three out of four doctors insisted on breast implants – “if you want tall, not drooping breasts with volume and not too small.” My goal was the opposite: the less the better. My ally turned out to be Dr. Darnell – he was praised on the Internet for operations without prosthetics. The doctor immediately said that the breast would be small, but not flat, and implants were completely useless. And then he endured for a long time while I threw him photographs of the desired breast, and calmly replied that the beauty of the breast is not in size, and I will definitely like the result.
EKG, mammogram and chest x-ray showed that I was ready for surgery, so at 7 am on an empty stomach, with a package of documents and clothes, I went to Dr. Darnell. It was he who was entitled to 3 thousand euros of a fee, the remaining one and a half – the cost of the operating room, anesthesia and a day hospital. Hospitalization during commercial operations in Spain is not cheap – up to a thousand euros per night, but my doctor assured that she would not be needed: the patient can take paracetamol and antibiotics after surgery at home.
The attendant (in my case it was my mother) may be there all the time until you are taken to the operating room – the nurse who came to install an intravenous catheter had to interrupt our chatter. A few questions from the anesthesiologist – and finally Dr. Darnell paints my chest with a felt-tip pen. When asked “can you feel your head getting heavier?” I passed out. And after two and a half hours, I was again lying on the couch in my box and talking to my mother.
The room was like a luxury hotel room, with two bathrooms and a luxury cosmetic bag. Three hours later I was allowed to go to the toilet, and generally walk. There were no bandages, the seams were sealed with plaster, and there was an elastic bra on top. At eight in the evening, they brought me dinner, injected an antibiotic through a drip – and let me go home. We wanted to catch a taxi, but I realized that I was lying all day and wanted to take a walk – my mother and I walked home for about an hour, and on the way we drank a glass of champagne.
There are no restrictions – they are allowed to take a shower the very next day after the operation. The patches should be dried with a hair dryer and treated with alcohol or a non-flammable iodine solution. From that moment on, the elastic bra had to be worn around the clock – but the breasts immediately became so beautiful, symmetrical and with small nipples that I unbuttoned it several times a day to admire myself in the mirror.
The first couple of weeks I often went to the doctor, for a quicker elimination of the edema, he recommended lymphatic drainage massage, especially on the left: my left breast was larger than the right one, so I had to cut more. At one of the visits, the doctor suspected a hematoma, brought a giant syringe and pumped out about fifty milliliters of fluid – at that moment we were glad together that the operation was without prosthetics. If this accumulation of blood occurs after the implant has been inserted, the prosthesis must be removed under general anesthesia, otherwise there is a risk of serious infection.
Family matters
The operation had almost no effect on the life of my one-year-old son Christopher. Unless a month before her, we taught the child to sleep in his crib, and not with us – so that, for example, in a dream he would not kick me in the fresh seams. And in kindergarten, I had to pay an additional half hour a day for a month: the child was taken there by dad early so as not to be late for the office. They took me away at the usual time, first my mother and I, and then myself – at first I just asked the teacher to help me put my son in the stroller, of course – he weighed twelve kilograms.
Nothing hurt, I regularly drank antibiotics and anti-inflammatory. And two weeks after the operation, the doctor allowed me to lift the child as needed – but consciously, squatting and straining the muscles of the legs and back. It was still too early to play boldly and toss Christopher, but it was possible, for example, to carefully put him in a stroller. It was very helpful, because my mother flew home.
Dr. Darnell was absolutely right when he said I would feel great. Reduction for the surgeon is a more complicated operation than breast augmentation, but for the patient the opposite is true, after the reduction or tightening there are practically no unpleasant sensations. Sometimes I could, for example, push a heavy door open, feel pain in my chest muscles – like after push-ups – and remember to be careful. After three weeks it was no longer possible to sleep in a surgical bra (and generally replace it with a regular one), all that remained was to take care of the scars and from time to time come to the doctor for an examination.
I started playing sports in five or six weeks. Now, four months after the operation, I continue to wear special polyurethane patches under the breast, where the scars have not yet acquired their final appearance. Vertically and around the nipple, the scars already look like thin white threads, although the redness around has not yet completely disappeared.
Tiny bras
The effect of the operation is immediate – you can sleep on your stomach and wear clothes of your own size. A few days later, for the first time in my life, I confidently bought a shirt that did not come apart on my chest. One of the amazing discoveries is the ability to read lying down, leaning on your elbows, and suddenly realize that your chest does not touch the sofa. When I came for a massage two months after the operation, I lay down and “hung up” – what, really? I do not need to lay out my chest with my hands for another half a minute so that it is comfortable and not painful? My masseur, by the way, immediately noticed that his back was unloaded, but he did not know about the operation and could not guess from my appearance – he was blind.
A new pleasure for me is shopping where you can buy tiny bras. I used to buy lingerie only online and on rare occasions I could find something on the huge linen floor of the El Corte Inglés department store – now not only cheap lingerie brands like Calzedonia or Oysho are available to me , but also shops that do not specialize in lingerie, such as H&M or Urban Outfitters. I buy very soft bras, without underwires, and sizes 80 A or 80 B are suitable for me – although, I suspect, there will be more with underwires, because the base of each gland itself is wide enough (but so far there is no desire to even try on such bras, I have walked too long in “armor”). To be fair, I will say that the choice of soft underwear is somewhat less than with underwire or push-ups – but it seems to me endless, before most brands simply did not exist for me.