Prior to my bilateral mastectomy/reconstruction I had already decided I was going to take the time to heal. I did not want to take any chances. I took a 3 month medical leave. I had the DMX on September 1, 2015 with reconstruction/expanders. Then November 5, 2015 was implant swap. I am so glad I took the time off to take care of myself. Everyone recovers and heals differently.

I had a Oncoplasty October 06 2016 very similar to skin sparing but did not need implants. I was back to work October 18th and I think drains came out after a week. First few days of work now that I think about it was hard and I was really pushing it , I work in court room it was very hard to do full days work. Look of my breasts are amazing no one can tell it was Mastectomy. I had few lymph removal and one was cancer the removal is much more painful and uncomfortable even after 2 months.Started Chemo today and already have very sharp burning in my thoat and mouth:(

I'm another non-standard reconstruction (1 replacement, 1 removal, 4 additional months of wound healing... LOL!) Another story completely!! Yours is going to go like clockwork... complications like mine are, I'm told, impossible, and they didn't start until I was over a month out of surgery. :-)

So.... in the early days of recovery, I was on narcotics round the clock most of the first week, narcs on occasion at night to sleep during the second week, off them and onto ibuprofen the third week. There were itty bitty improvements every single day, though, so I would tell myself before I went to sleep every night, "Tomorrow will be better than today was."

And I was never wrong about that. (With the exception of Day 2 when the general anethesia wore off--that was a bummer!) :-)

So I was doing much better at the 3 week mark, though not 100% until about the 5 week mark. I took all six of my weeks off for it, and I don't regret it a bit.

I had a bilateral madtectomy in June of 2016. After my surgeon did the skin sparing @mastectomy, my plastic surgeon put in the chest expanders and filled them with 100 cc's of saline. I woke up in recovery in tons of pain. I think most of it was from the chest Expanders. I went in for 4 different fills. I had my drains in for 14 days

Hello Amanda. I had a bilateral as well as reconstruction. Do you have specific concerns? The drains usually come out in a week or 2 depending on the amount of drainage. I had my bilateral and the tissue expanders were placed at that time. After a few weeks I began having my fills. If you would like to talk please call me (Phone number can only be seen by the question and answer creators) or email me (Email address can only be seen by the question and answer creators) I would be happy to talk with you. I am also on Facebook Leanne Murtha.