Pea-n-Me
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2004
Posting this with DD's permission in the hopes it can help someone.
The size you wind up with depends a lot on your anatomy and whether you wish to leave breast feeding as an option in the future, which necessitates leaving inside ductal structures intact. My DD had one in her mid teens and wished to be a C, but wound up as a D. Four pounds of excess breast tissue came off, though. She was still very pleased as immediately her back and neck pain and cracking were gone, as well as a lot of other negatives like clothes not fitting right and unwanted negative attention, among other things.
In teens it's considered corrective surgery, like a deformity, so it was relatively straightforward to be approved by insurance. Thankfully we have an astute pediatrician who suggested she just go for a consult, and a surgeon who understands that in young women, negative body image can be associated with psychological issues such as eating disorders; he even launched a long term study about this, of which DD now takes part. We had always heard that you should wait till you're at least 19 or so, but learned that's not necessarily true. Some breast tissue can come back if there is weight gain or after children, but the surgeon explained it's relatively easy to go in and fix that later on if need be, so when you weigh the pros and cons of waiting, the positives outweigh the negatives.
The hardest parts of the process for DD were having pictures taken to submit to insurance, and the surgeon drawing on her bare chest in pre-op. But she got through those parts ok because the surgeon and his team were really sensitive and kind. To her, the rest was relatively easy, although from my perspective as a nurse, a four hour surgery that had me pacing a bit in the waiting room, and seeing her vomiting in the PACU post-op with her entire chest bandaged up, as well as her painful recovery and long term follow up, I can perhaps more appreciate that it really was a major chest surgery, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried about it initially. But she was completely gung ho from the start, and she has no regrets at all about doing it. The scars are barely noticeable now (six years out), and her body shape is normal. She does have a little numbness in some incisional areas, but she considers that a small price to pay for what she got in return. Her surgeon said she has a high likelihood of being able to breast feed if she wants to, too.
Good luck to anyone considering doing this, and you, OP. As a pp mentioned, it is life changing.
The size you wind up with depends a lot on your anatomy and whether you wish to leave breast feeding as an option in the future, which necessitates leaving inside ductal structures intact. My DD had one in her mid teens and wished to be a C, but wound up as a D. Four pounds of excess breast tissue came off, though. She was still very pleased as immediately her back and neck pain and cracking were gone, as well as a lot of other negatives like clothes not fitting right and unwanted negative attention, among other things.
In teens it's considered corrective surgery, like a deformity, so it was relatively straightforward to be approved by insurance. Thankfully we have an astute pediatrician who suggested she just go for a consult, and a surgeon who understands that in young women, negative body image can be associated with psychological issues such as eating disorders; he even launched a long term study about this, of which DD now takes part. We had always heard that you should wait till you're at least 19 or so, but learned that's not necessarily true. Some breast tissue can come back if there is weight gain or after children, but the surgeon explained it's relatively easy to go in and fix that later on if need be, so when you weigh the pros and cons of waiting, the positives outweigh the negatives.
The hardest parts of the process for DD were having pictures taken to submit to insurance, and the surgeon drawing on her bare chest in pre-op. But she got through those parts ok because the surgeon and his team were really sensitive and kind. To her, the rest was relatively easy, although from my perspective as a nurse, a four hour surgery that had me pacing a bit in the waiting room, and seeing her vomiting in the PACU post-op with her entire chest bandaged up, as well as her painful recovery and long term follow up, I can perhaps more appreciate that it really was a major chest surgery, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried about it initially. But she was completely gung ho from the start, and she has no regrets at all about doing it. The scars are barely noticeable now (six years out), and her body shape is normal. She does have a little numbness in some incisional areas, but she considers that a small price to pay for what she got in return. Her surgeon said she has a high likelihood of being able to breast feed if she wants to, too.
Good luck to anyone considering doing this, and you, OP. As a pp mentioned, it is life changing.
