4 weeks since top surgery

There are a lot of things that I read about, but couldn't know about since it has to be experienced. One of those things is "dog-ears". In my case, I was quite a bit over weight and lost 20 lbs right before surgery and I continue to lose weight. The incisions under my arms, (in my lower arm pits), are now the only part of my body that actually jiggles if I jump up and down. I don't like this, it is not a good thing. There is a bunch of loose flesh there and immediately after surgery it was mostly numb. After a couple weeks the nerves woke up and it was just painful..all of the time. It hurt when I raised my arms, it hurt when I lowered my arms. It hurt when I was laying down, it hurt when I was standing up. It was maddening because there was no position that I could be in that would make that low level pain go away. As a sleep aid I took CBD/THC pills rather than than the opioids that I was prescribed. An addiction to pain meds is not something that I wanted to deal with on top of having to wear a really uncomfortable compression vest and nagging pain and itching, healing flesh.

I want to mention the compression vest. It was cleverly designed to be able to hook the drain reservoirs to, but it was so tight that it bruised me in areas that I didn't already have bruising from the surgery. Yes, bruising is a result of the surgery. I imagine that when the skin is pulled together it has already been roughed up when it is moved from its original position to a new one. The reasoning for the compression is to keep the skin and nipples in close contact with the blood vessels so they will grow into the grafts, and the skin that was moved is almost like a graft. The nipples take about 3 weeks to be out of danger of being easily "sheared" off by normal activities like putting on a shirt or washing. I am past that milestone and I am very happy to report that my nipples stayed where they were sewn. My wife was their guardian, making sure that I didn't brush them off, scratch them, or do any damage to them accidentally.

My pain levels are at about 0-1 unless I stretch something that hasn't healed up quite yet. The places where the drain tubes went into my chest seem to be pretty deep and are healing inside slower than the outside. My biggest irritation is the tightness I feel in the areas of the incisions. My upper chest is very tight and if I try to stretch it feels like something might split. I don't know if that is actually true but I don't want to find out. I stretch until it feels uncomfortable, then I stop. I had thought originally that there would be a little slack because I was losing weight but the surgeon cut all of the excess skin off. It's strange, (more like ridiculous), because my chest is muscular from the 5 weeks of upper body building I did before surgery, but I have a big belly below it. Sigh..eventually I can lift weight again. In the meantime I go for walks, but I get tired easily. Healing takes a lot of energy.