Turning Into the Homestretch

12 Weeks Post-op
This past week I had my pre-op appointment with Dr. Doezie - outpatient surgery to get my silicone implants will be on June 15th.

The big (ha, ha) question is: what size? It's not as straightforward as one might think. Should I stay exactly the same as I was before? I don't think they make implants that small ;)

So here's a confession: I am going to be a bit bigger. But just a bit. My previous bra size was 36B, but I didn't fill it out (in reality I was probably a 37A). So I decided I wanted to look the same way I did when I was wearing the 36B, only without the bra. Because the implant is under muscle, not just skin, and because I'll still be a relatively small size, I won't have to wear a bra anymore (yippee).

The implants come in set sizes and are measured in milliliters. So I can have a 304 ml or 339 ml but not, for example, a 325 ml. I know of one woman whose implants are in the region of 800 ml (definitely not for me). The tissue expansion process I've been going through has helped me judge size, but it's still a guessing game because the shape of the tissue expanders is different from the shape of the implants. The expanders are designed to push straight out because their function, after all, is to stretch muscle and skin. And the implants have a little droop because their function, after all, is to mimic a breast. So 300 ml in the tissue expander sticks out a lot farther than 300 ml in a silicone implant. And then there's the fact that implants have narrow, medium and wide bases, and high, medium, and low profiles. So the same volume looks vastly different from one model to the next.

And then there's the me factor: I'm built with a broad ribcage and a wide sternum, which means that where I should have cleavage, I in fact have a valley big enough to land a jet plane.

I read a suggestion on the internet to fill a plastic bag with an equivalent amount of rice (or in my case, cous-cous) to judge your implant size. So I measured out 339 ml of cous-cous... but then what? It's comical, really, only if I choose the wrong size, it's not like I can exchange them (well, I could, but that would mean another surgery and I doubt insurance would consider "oops" a medically necessary justification).