PLASTIC SURGERY

Hurray, Hurrah, Yippee.  I am this side of the operation and I am so, so happy!

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Nervous Nellie awaits the 9am roll call at Concord Hospital for the op!!! Can't believe the 2 year wait and am finally here - on the cusp! Yikes!!!!

This is the operation you wonder whether you have to have.  Is it worth spending all the money!!  After all it is plastic surgery and you do not NEED to be in hospital.  You are subjecting yourself to all the risks associated with a hospital and anaesthetic. 

Should I do that!   I decided that the answer was ‘yes’. 

I am wondering if you have the same blight as I had!   (Ha, the joys to be talking about all of this in the past tense!)  But what I am hoping is, I don’t make you get paranoid or overly concerned with your own anatomy when you find out what I had done.

The operation I have had was called bilateral removal of auxiliary breast tail.  I have lived with ever increasing breast tissue under my arms for years.  In fact, I thought it was fat!  But when I ended up with a golf ball bunch under my right arm and the left was going the same way the time had come for action. 

It was dead ugly and it was kept under wraps: and sleeves, and jumpers and coats…….

  But did I need it!!  Ummmmm…….I think so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sleeveless tops…..I don’t own any!  Even figure hugging materials were given the flick.  Swimming costumes were the hardest thing to buy.  Try finding one that comes up under your armpits.  Oh yes…… they do exist but have you seen them?  Well, you wouldn’t be seen dead in one – except for people like me more worried about covering their armpits than glamor!  Freedom now awaits!!!!

I finally went to see a Plastic Surgeon, Dr Harvey Stern, who specialises in breast surgery of every sort. He told me that I had breast tissue that was growing under my armpits and that it could be removed.   Scary stuff, I thought, when you are digging around near lymph nodes, sweat glands and in breast tissue!!!  But the man is an expert in such things so it was all systems go. 

And so the story of my ‘surgery wait’ unfolds.  I am put off the list so many times for emergency breast cancer cases which I am happy to vacate under the circumstances.  I would like to think that speedy surgery was available for me if I needed it. I have now waited two years for this…….

The day arrives. 

Mr G takes me to the hospital and drops me off.  I make my way to the Day Surgery clinic area at Concord Hospital.  I wait for an hour or so until I am called through to begin the repeat, repeat and repeat again of my name, age and address and what is to be done.  It is a wonder the cleaner doesn’t ask me too!! 

I am gowned up and taken to my bed where I put on white pressure stockings and red ‘shower’ cap.  The anaesthetics nurse starts hauling my bed down the corridor, smiling as she pushes me past all the operating theatres.  It was then I started giggling.

I felt like I was in a TV show – only because of what was happening behind the Nurse.  Out of the doors running off the corridor, nurses and doctors appeared.  They would walk behind the bed and then disappear out another door, just like it was all staged.  If only I could have been an extra on ‘All Saints’…but no – this is the real deal.

We finally reach Theatre 6.

I am pushed into a little waiting room.  I look around.  The walls are covered in all sorts of interesting looking things.   Above the double doors to the entrance of the theatre are the words “Do not enter”.   I am wondering if this is an omen! 

Out comes the anaesthetist assistant and puts a cannular in my wrist.  He disappears.  In comes the Nurse and straps on leg compression covers that blow up and down to stop me getting thrombosis.  She sticks a brainwave contraption to my forehead (what in the heck is that for – were they going to read my dreams) and a blood pressure cuff to my arm. 

A doctor comes in and chats.  He asks if I am related to a certain cricketer.  I said no, it was my husbands surname anyhow.  I tell him my maiden surname.  ‘Oh, do you know Ted’. 

‘He’s my cousin’ I say.  - Look isn’t it a small world!!!! 

‘Oh’ he says, ‘there is a Prof here with the same surname too’

‘That’s my brother’ I say.

I can hear music coming from the theatre. 

‘Oh that is Dr Sterns; he likes all this mod stuff” the Dr says and disappears.  Then in and out of the door come nurses and Doctors, looking for things in the waiting room area. The nurses are wearing a variety of interesting patterned head caps.

‘It looks like there’s a right old party going on in there’, I laugh nervously.

Then in comes Dr Stern.  I knew he had been away so I say “You are looking nice and relaxed’ and thankfully he says he is! 

‘OK I’m here to draw you up.’  I sit on the edge of the bed while he draws purple lines under my arms.  He explains that he did not want to leave a ‘hollow’ under my armpits and that he would most likely use dissolving stitches.  This would be a choice decision as if I get back there after a week and I have a weeks worth of underarm hair there will be know way he’ll be able to find black spiky stitches for remove!

I lie back on the bed, top rolled down under the blankets and am wheeled into the theatre.  It is crowded with people.  How could so many fit in this small room!!  I have to swing onto the operating bed – not easy when so many things hanging from my body.

‘I’ll just put something in here to make you drowsy.’  I am OK as my eyes dart around the room. 

‘Now this one will make you drift off.’  I clamp my eyes shut as I remember from the past that bizarre moment of going under with eyes open.    

Next minute I wake up in recovery. 

Hey I am feeling OK. The leg compressors are revving up and down and the blood pressure monitor hissing away. 

Yes, yes, yes, I am back. I am feeling good, thank goodness it’s over. 

I am offered food or drink.  Yes to both.  ‘Green tea please’.  The nurse goes to own supplies to get me Green Tea and Mint. Yum.  I am propped up surrounded by ailing recoveries eating my cheese sandwiches and drinking my drinks.

My fourth toe though, it is in excruciating pain.  I summon the nurse for a peek.  She takes a look and the elastic stocking has carved into the side of my toe probably cutting off the circulation!!!  That is the only pain I have – easily fixed.

 ‘Wow, you are having an amazing recovery’ the nurses say.  Finally after an hour or so I am wheeled back to my ‘space’ in the overnight ward. I am next to reception and beside the entrance door.  Ummmm, could be in for a bad night’s sleep!

I am bright as a button and while away the day reading magazines and being monitored. 

(Now I forgot to tell you about the new blood pressure pills I have been on for a week.  My pressure had been up quite high and since I was coming into hospital I visited my local doctor who put me something new.  My gracious!!!  I feel fabulous.  The lowest pressures I have ever had in my life and I can even ‘see’ better!!!  The whole time I am in hospital my pressures are beyond excellent and I keep getting complimented on them!!!  So whacky do! I have found a whole new unpressured me.)

The meal comes around and because I have spent many hours shovelling what I deemed to be unpalatable food into my late father’s mouth while he recuperated in this  hospital - I was afraid. I take the vegetarian option and it was wise. It tastes terrific so I assume the cook is Indian.

Strapped to drains but feeling 'A OK' 

My brother visits with a lovely card and then later on Mr G turns up with a bunch of beautiful yellow roses.  You could have knocked me down with a feather!!! What a sweetheart.  Spoke with all my kids and settle down for a sleep!!!!! 

Now during the day I had been topped up with two drips and I had drunk about 4 jugs of water plus other teas and juices and boy oh boy, the toilet becomes my second home during the twilight hours. 

I spend a lot of time juggling my drain bags.  These ‘three feet of thick plastic tube with drink bottle contraptions at the end’ had been sutured into each under arm and lets the bloody slag ooze out.    These drains, plus the cannular in my left hand make things almost impossible getting in and out of bed and in the bathroom.  I survive – the only incidence being putting on my morning underpants sideways!!!  Yes, all things are possible!!!

I have 4 hours sleep.  I wake up, not too sore really but on a never ending supply of chalky panadol which keep getting stuck in my neck when I try to swallow them.

I speak to the woman diagonally opposite.  She has been in pain and I ask if she is OK.  She had had her stomach banded.  She doesn’t look that obese to me but she wants kids she says and she needs to lose weight.   She says she has to be on a diet of fluids and puree for 6 weeks!!! 

‘You should lose weight immediately on that diet,” I say.

The Plastics Registrar comes in. ‘All went well and how am I’!.  He says they had taken two golf ball amounts of flesh from each armpit and an extra slither from my right one!!!

My friends from work come up to see me as I am having the drains removed.  Mari has kindly offered to drive me home later as Mr G is stuck in court most of the day. 

Finally ready to go home. 

I dress and get my instructions.  I am not to lift anything heavier than a bottle of milk and to take antibiotics for the full course. 

My brother pops in and carries my case down to Mari’s car.  I am homeward bound and looking forward to some sleep. 

I can’t pick up heavy things….and you know….in day to day living – you do – so it is like dodging bullets as you ‘almost’ make the pickup!!  So I am very careful and Mr G has been hovering over me like I am precious glass!!!  This is a new experience for me! 

                         Taped up for a whole week

I can’t see my newly created armpits because they are covered up with large white bandages.  There is the very odd sting type pain that happens if I stretch too much and because I have big wads of bandage under my arms, it’s a bit uncomfortable.  But apart from that I am fine. 

I am dog bored though.  Strapped to the computer all day is not good but about the only thing I can do.  I am driving my Facebook friends mad with all my comments and Paulo Coelho must wonder why I have so much time on my hands as I reply to nearly everyone of his blogs!!!

The day has come for the big unveil.  I catch the bus to the Dr’s surgery – parking around there is horrible.  I have my week old bandages still stuck on under my arms and I am a bit nervous about their removal.

‘Hi Sandra, I am here.’ I say.  Within minutes I am called into the surgery by Dr Stern. Strip off to my bra and the nurse will remove the bandages.  I am scared.  As I lie with my arms up the bandage tape is removed swiftly.  Ouch, ouch, and ouch again.  I try not to flinch but with my eyes firmly shut, my face I know is turning inside out.  The Dr comes in and surveys the job. 


  Exposed but now the bumps are swelling 

‘Before you look, I just want to remind you that there is swelling and this will go down and the skin will sink into the armpits.  You will be thinking I did not take enough tissue, but I assure you within three months it will look exactly how it should’.   I take a sneaky glance down and I am happy if this is the best it is! 

I am told that I have to rub moisturising cream under my arms pits to reduce the stiffness.  I am looking forward to standing under the shower as lap baths have completely worn thin.

So there it is – my journey into plastic surgery of a different kind.  And it’s not something that will change the way I look so much as change the way I feel about myself.  I am one happy girl.

In November I will post the final photo - the 'normal' look and then I will put my armpits back under wraps again.  

            Now almost perfect!!!!

It has not been easy for me to reveal my previously ugly armpits for this article - but never know maybe I have helped just one person make a decision about their own......good luck......

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