If you’re about to have a prophylactic double mastectomy without reconstruction or just had it, here’s a bunch of information that applies specifically to you.
The Internet is filled with information about double mastectomies as a treatment for breast cancer, and especially such procedures being followed by breast reconstruction.
But there’s not much out there about the preventive (prophylactic) double mastectomy – minus breast reconstruction.
I’m a former personal trainer who underwent a prophylactic double mastectomy without the reconstruction — after learning my sister had breast cancer.
If you’ve been searching and searching the Internet for information on prophylactic mastectomies in healthy women and have not found what you were looking for, perhaps your questions will be answered by any one of the articles below — based on my personal experience.
CHECK THESE OUT …
How do you prepare your body for a double mastectomy? Here are guidelines for healthy women.
You might have read about pain horror stories post-op the day of surgery, but you should not let these give you anxiety. Here’s how it feels same day.
Restriction of upper body movement means you’ll need to hold off on any upper body workouts you had been doing prior to the surgery.
This can bring on the concern of unwanted weight gain. But there are ways to prevent this undesirable gain of excess fat.
Another big concern for some women is that of concealing a double mastectomy (minus reconstruction) from family members.
This is actually quite doable if you’ve always had small breasts, such as myself.
If your breasts were small, you can employ some tricks to keep family members from ever knowing that you had them removed.
You will need to deal with drainage from the surgical area on a daily basis, and may have questions about this, such as why it’s so warm.
If you’ve always been a strength training enthusiast, you’ll want to know why you must wait up to six weeks before getting back into your favorite exercises such as the bench press, overhead dumbbell press, deadlift, lat pull-down and bent-over dumbbell row. Here’s why this restriction is so long.
When you’re told that you can’t lift weights for six weeks after the mastectomy, you should ask specific questions about this to your surgeon.
After all, why can’t you work the LEGS when the surgery was on the upper body?
Your chest might start twitching after the operation. There’s a reason why you should not let this alarm you.
What if you live alone and don’t have anyone close in your life who can stay with you a while and help with your recovery?
This means you must be a self-caregiver. But don’t panic; here’s how to be an effective caregiver to yourself after a preventive double mastectomy.
You can look forward to getting back into your heavy weight training regimen once the restriction on lifting weights has been lifted.
Shutterstock/Miljan Zivkovic
