“How long is the recovery from a mastectomy? ”
I am going to have a mastectomy for my breast cancer, and the surgery is scheduled in two weeks. I'm not nervous for the surgery, but I'm more nervous for the recovery. How long will the recovery be, and is the recovery painful?
4 Answers
Depends on your pain threshold. I send all my patients home after mastectomy in one and at most two days without reconstruction or with implant reconstruction.
-Single-sided or bilateral
-Flap reconstruction is usually three days before discharge
-There will be drains needed to be emptied that remain @ 2 sometimes 3 weeks
-The healing time for all surgery is about six weeks
-You will probably feel better many days before that
-The most common complaint I get is the sensation loss
-Your surgeon will have a timeline for you as to when you can return to normal activity
-I tell my patients @ 4 weeks let your body talk to you
-If you try to do something and it hurts a lot, back off a bit
-Use your better judgment
-If your not allergic, Extra strength Tylenol is great 2 pills every 6 hrs
Best off luck!!!
-Single-sided or bilateral
-Flap reconstruction is usually three days before discharge
-There will be drains needed to be emptied that remain @ 2 sometimes 3 weeks
-The healing time for all surgery is about six weeks
-You will probably feel better many days before that
-The most common complaint I get is the sensation loss
-Your surgeon will have a timeline for you as to when you can return to normal activity
-I tell my patients @ 4 weeks let your body talk to you
-If you try to do something and it hurts a lot, back off a bit
-Use your better judgment
-If your not allergic, Extra strength Tylenol is great 2 pills every 6 hrs
Best off luck!!!
Recovering from mastectomy surgery is 2-6 weeks. You will be up and walking around. Just sore around the chest. No heavy lifting.
Recovery from mastectomy is not too difficult. That said, everyone has different responses to surgical pain. If your surgeon is only taking a sentinel node biopsy rather than all of the lymph nodes in the axilla, you can expect less pain. Most patients have good pain control with oral pain medications. Expect most of the pain in the inner arm and armpit which will get better every day. Some surgeons inject local anesthesia that lasts several days and this helps with pain as well. Some patients report using very little pilas for pain.
It depends on whether you are having reconstruction or not. In general with reconstruction the recovery is 2 to 3 weeks before you return to normal. There will be several drains that need to be removed after surgery but you should be able to move around freely within a very short period of time. One option that we provide our patients is to perform what is called a PEC block prior to surgery. This is done by injecting an anesthetic into the sensory nerves that go to the breast prior to the operation and the amount of pain that the patient experiences afterwards is substantially decreased in magnitude and length.
