All that...for this????!!

Its been 4 days since the big surgery. I feel pretty good, only a bit sore on the right side and really sore on the left, but good overall. I was able to take the bandage off yesterday.

Not good.

Not good at all.

I dont know exactly what I was expecting, but what I saw wasnt even close. Its horrible. I know im sounding way over dramatic, but I just figured it would look somewhat close to normal. The right side had been overstretched and now the skin is saggy. He had to put in smaller implants because of the left sides refusal to stretch, but I had no idea how much smaller. I dont mean to sound ungrateful, they are only boobs afterall, but all that pain to be right back where I started. I think I am a big A or small B-somewhere in that area. With the expanders in, I was at least a small C. Im not sure why they are so small, I havent yet been to the Dr, but I sure plan on speaking my mind. I went through over 3 months of pure hell and pain like I have never known and I assumed I would be a nice size. I am still lopsided and I dont match. He said that he had to cut down fartther to make more room so the implant wouldnt expand under my arm. It kind of looks like a ramp of some sort. I guess it all came down to waiting to do the reconstruction until after radiation. That radiation ruined my skin and made it into leather and there is no give whatsoever.
I am grateful to still be alive and even if I knew I would look like this at the end, I still would have had the mastectomy, but I guess I had false hope. I guessed that I would have nice, perky girls as a result of all this crap I had gone through. Not so.

When I first saw how they looked, I cant even tell you how I felt. I started bawling and I couldnt stop for hours. I got myself dressed and jumped back in bed and pulled the covers over my head. Bill came in a while later to check on me and found me crying. I wouldnt show him at first, I was so embarressed. It took a few minutes before I would show him, but he told me they looked fine and we knew that the left side would look different. He calmed me down a bit, but it took most of the day for me to calm down and stop crying. I had never cried, really, from the mastectomy. I knew that it was only temporary and that soon, I would look like a woman again. Even with the expanders in, I knew that it was only temporary. Now, this is permanent. This is how they will look forever. This is the final product. I just couldnt handle it. I still am in shock and this will take a while to get used to. Im not sure if I will ever feel comfortable in a swim suit and I will have to get a bra that will make me look even. I wasnt expecting this.

I am supposed to meet with the Doctors office in the next couple days, so hopefully he can help me, but im sure if there was something he could do, then he would have done it.

But on the bright side, my chest feels a hundred times lighter and I can breathe again. I plan on being up and around in the next few days and back to normal things. I will feel sorry for myself for a while, but it will pass, it always does.