holler! i've outgrown my 34B bras today after my very first expansion. i now have 100 cc's (that only 6.7 tablespoons) of saline in each side. most of the bulk you can see in me now is the expander itself. read here about expander to implant reconstruction; don't think i've been over that yet, have i? the short version is that after dr. runi removed all of my breast tissue, dr. bates cut my nipples off and put two tough plastic bags under my pec muscles. he then filled them with 50 cc's of saline. had i not had radiation 14 years ago i might have been able to have implants placed directly. my chest muscles are in apparently in great shape, but my skin (as we've learned below) is well, thin and crappy. to ensure that my blood vessels are able to keep my skin alive dr. bates is expanding me slowly, 50 cc's once a week until i'm as big as i want to be. then they'll be over-filled by 30-50 cc's and left to "mellow" for 3-4 months when i'll have my expanders taken out and my silicone implants are put in.
the expansion process today was completely painless. i still have zero, and i mean NO sensation in my skin. after locating the ports in my expanders using magnets (ha!) he jabbed that big needle in and i felt nothing. laying on my back i could see my chest rising a little at a time as he pushed down the plunger of saline. how cool. the whole thing, both sides, took less than ten minutes. you can see from the picture that the expanders are wide and wonky. you can't see that they're rock hard and impossible to smoosh into cleavage. i'm guessing i'm about a B cup right now but thanks to gravity, they're wide and being filled from the bottom to the top. the crazy awesome thing for me is that for the first time in many many moons they're up at a normal height and roughly the same size - once the ALB drains the excess fluid they should be almost identical. looking down on them i feel cosmetically improved oddly enough. they have some volume up top and don't seem to be making a run for my belly button. needless to say i cannot wait for next week when they're even rounder. this is SO my silver lining. and danny's too if he knows what's good for him. i think he can live with the 'great nippleless wonder' if he gets to help pick the size, shape and feel of the foobs.
