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Dropping & Fluffing
A Guide to JARGON in Cosmetic Surgery!
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Please Note: I am not a surgeon and I do not profess to offer surgical information. This is a guide to jargon based on my own personal understanding of the healing process.
The decision has been made. You have printed out A Good Consultation Guide and you have had your consultation. You have booked your surgical date. You have paid for your surgery. You have printed out The Well Informed Patient Guide. You have all your emergency phone numbers to hand in case you need them including food delivery numbers. You have plenty of food in the fridge and freezer. You have organized time off work. You have organized child-minding and dog-sitting. You have plenty of food and water at home and you know where all your medicines are. You have charged your phone, iPod, iPad and put some magazines at the side of the bed to read. You have your remote controls to hand so you dont have to move around too much. Everything is in order and under control. The sheets and pillow cases are all lovely and clean and ready to welcome you home to recover from surgery. *Sigh*
Your surgeon says your surgery has gone well and that you are fine and ready to go home. You zip up your jacket ready to go home, you look down at your surgically enhanced breasts and you don’t feel ‘fine’ at all. Uh oh - what is happening?
General Anaesthetic:
General Anaesthetic can create short term depression. The best way to deal with this is to be aware of the havoc that general anaesthetic can create in the mind and the body and try not to allow yourself to become dehydrated. Drinking water is one way to keep hydrated. Coffee, tea, juice or any other soft drink is a perfectly acceptable way to keep hydrated but just be aware of any caffeine or sugar in the products. It is important to get the toxins flushed out as quickly as possible to help with the rest of the healing and to give you a better frame of mind.
My personal favourite healing drinks will be posted up on www.cosmeticsupport.com soon.
So, you’ve drunk lots of water and you’re not feeling tearful, miserable or depressed any more but you are still not happy when you look at yourself. Why not? Has something gone wrong?
Dropping
Dropping and Fluffing are best used to describe what happens after a first breast augmentation surgery as opposed to a re-do or any other type of breast surgery. It is almost specifically related to the first time breast augmentation patient although it can also apply to re-do too.
During breast augmentation surgery, the surgeon will create a pocket (or wound) either sub-mammary or sub-pectoral to place the implant. Creating this surgical pocket creates trauma in the body. The body responds to this trauma with the breast muscles tightening down around the implant causing consequent muscle and/or tissue swelling. *ouch* The implant has been squeezed into a tight space and cannot really settle into place until the muscles relax and all the surrounding swelling has gone down. It is part of the healing process. As a result, the implant may initially look completely different from the patient’s desired results. The implants can look too high or too tight or too shiny or just generally mis-shapen, lopsided or uneven.
It might be better to think of breast augmentation as two surgeries because each breast will have its own rate of healing. Patience is the key during healing. Timeframes for healing are only guidelines as everyone heals differently. Follow the post-surgical guidelines your surgeon will have provided you with. Log on to helpful websites for additional support during this emotional time: www.cosmeticsupport.com
Try to remember that you are experiencing ‘dropping‘. The muscles will relax and the swelling will go down and the implant will settle into place. Having been squeezed into a tight space, the implant cannot really settle into its true place until the muscles relax and all the surrounding swelling has gone down. It is part of the healing process.
Dropping and Fluffing are two pieces of jargon that are useful if you are recovering from breast augmentation surgery. These two words might save you from having a massive panic attack after surgery when you look down at your surgically enhanced breasts and feel worried or disappointed with how you look.
Dropping and Fluffing are great descriptive terms and commonly used as a kind of verbal shorthand when patients are chatting with one another in forums or chatrooms or in person about their surgery.
Fluffing
It takes some time to happen, but the muscles and the breast tissue will stretch and relax and this will allow the implant to settle into the pocket that the surgeon has created. Once the implant has ‘dropped’ into place and the swelling starts to dissipate, the implant can begin to ‘fluff’ out fully after its period of time of being so compressed by the swelling. In other words, the implant that had previously been squeezed into place and constricted by the surrounding swelling is now free to resume the size and shape it was originally created to be.
Bear in mind that once the swelling has gone and the implant has room to ‘fluff’, the swelling can still return if you take risks with your recovery so follow all your post-surgical instructions in order to minimize the time you are suffering from post-operative swelling.
Many women post in discussion boards that their implants seem very high up on their body and that they have no swelling. This is impossible because everyone wakes up after breast augmentation surgery with some swelling. For some patients the swelling will be more than for others but nobody is immune to this process. It is part of the process.
Although it is tempting to believe that the size you are after surgery is the size you will be forever after, do not fall for that idea. The size and shape of your breasts will take about 3 months or so to reveal their final results which brings me to my next point...do not go out straight after surgery and buy everything in Agent Provocateur that is not pinned down as you may find yourself with a massive credit card bill and bras that will not fit 3 months down the line. Wait for your implants to drop and fluff and allow yourself to recover and get used to the new look you have, then go and have fun in Agent Provocateur and Myla and wherever else gorgeous bras are sold!
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