Expander fills and radiation

Just in case I have never expressed this in the past, I hate these tissue expander implants. Friday I will have my 4th "fill", it is a very weird experience to go into a doctors office and watch your chest get bigger. I have had 3 fills since surgery and have 2 maybe 3 left. I have been instructed to take Percocet prior to each fill so I am relaxed during the process and obviously to help with any after expansion pain (there is a lot of discomfort). When I go into the plastic surgeons office I change into a beautiful pink paper shirt and lay down on the table, the doc takes his stud finder and locates the access port in the implant. After he locates this area he marks me up with more purple marker, I have so many purple dots and lines on my chest I look like I have purple skin disorder, once he cleans the area he gets his magical needle and IV tube out. The first time he stuck the needle in my chest he said I may feel a sting from the insertion and then a spasm and burn as the needle goes through the muscle and into the implant, I felt nothing, everything in the area of the surgery is completely numb. However, now that the implant has been expanded out of the surgery area, I get the pleasure of feeling the needle go through my skin and muscle and into the implant, lovely.  Once the needle is in the implant he fills his big ole syringe up with saline and injects it into the IV tube which goes directly in the implant, I feel nothing as this is being done. As he fills I can slowly start to feel my chest getting tight so he fills until I say it is tight enough for now. He removes his needle and repeats this process on the other side. Once I stand up the tightness eases up a bit and then once the Percocet wears off the tightness and muscle cramps are back for about 24 hours until the muscle is stretched. Now, when I  got filled last Monday, I made the decision going into the office that I wanted to get 90cc's in each side. The first time I got filled was the day of surgery and he initially put in 240cc's (per my request, I did not want to wake up flat chested). The first out patient fill he was able to get 80cc's per side, the next fill only 60 due to it being extremely tight. I normally get filled 1 week apart, this last time I was filled on a Friday and then again on Monday. Monday I went in and had him fill 90cc's, BIG MISTAKE! I felt like an elephant was sitting on  my chest as he filled them but I was determined to get 90 in there. About an hour after that fill I was regretting that choice and wanting some taken out. My chest was so tight I could not breathe and the pain and muscle cramps were worse then after the big surgery. I was living on round the clock pain meds. I went to physical therapy almost unable to move, the therapist asked why I would have gotten 150cc's put in all in a 3 day span. Well, radiation starts November 11th and I have to be fully expanded by then. It has been a week and a half since my "big" fill and things have calmed down. I am no longer having muscle cramps and not taking any pain meds. I get filled again this Friday and I will only do 60cc's per side. I am currently at 470cc implants, with the 3 fills I have remaining if I am able to get 60 in each time I will be left with 650cc implants. How big will that make me? I am not sure, currently I am a C so we shall see what happens. The bad thing is I have to keep these implants in until February, then I can get the exchange surgery and have soft normal implants. These rocks make sleeping very difficult, I can not lay flat because I can feel the edges of the implants poking me and when I lay down it just feels like two heavy objects are places on my chest and I can not breathe or move. I am looking forward to the day these things are out of my body.

I met with my radiation oncologist, Dr. Strasser, about 2 weeks ago. We discussed when radiation is a necessary step in someones care. He explained to us that with breast cancer the patients that qualify for radiation are those whose chose to have a lumpectomy, are not going to be needing chemotherapy, those with metastatic (cancer that has spread to other parts of the body) disease, those who have more than 3 lymph nodes involved, and those whose primary tumor was bigger than 5 cms. In my case I chose to have the double mastectomy so normally I would not get radiation but because there is no way for them to determine the actual size my tumor was , I had chemo first so everything was shrunk down to a millimeter and MRI's just give an estimate, and the fact that my pathology report showed extensive lymphatic invasion, meaning the cancer cells were starting to invade the lymphatic system in my body, and one lymph node was active at time of surgery he feels I should go ahead with radiation. I was skeptical about agreeing to this, I really wanted surgery to be the end of cancer treatment but once the doc told me that right now my recurrence rate is at 30% and after radiation it will drop down to 10% I was on board. As I said previously I have to be fully expanded before I can begin radiation. With radiation your skin becomes irritated and not able to stretch, therefore I would not be able to get filled. I will go in on November 11th and have my "mapping" done. I am told I will have a CT scan and the nurse will place more purple dots (these will be permanent tattoo dots, wonder if my tattoo count now jumps up from 4?) and I will get "molded". After that every week day for the next 6 weeks I will go into the radiation department of the cancer center and lay in the exact same position and get radiation beamed into my chest, arm pit, and upper chest (heading towards my neck) area. I am told that radiation kills all the cells and tissues in that area so, my skin will likely be irritated and I have very sensitive skin. I am just really ready to get radiation started and over with. I should be done radiation the week of Christmas, I want to end all major cancer treatments in 2011, I want 2012 to have no major cancer treatments in it.