@colely @rach1009 @boathouse @zolamiller7
Hello ladies, I am new here... joined due to the conversation on post mastectomy pain. I truly did not expect this much! I was told most women feel numb /completely numb and some pain. My chest feels like it has the worst sunburn imaginable. There is a deep aching beneath the implants (my surgeon went direct to implant instead of expanders).

I am trying to figure out if this is because they removed my pectoral fascia. My understanding is about half of surgeons remove it while the other half keep it depending upon location of tumor. My tumor was nowhere near my pectoral fascia and had I known it would be removed, I would have signed any waiver to keep it. My background is health education and I was a former personal trainer. The fascia is rich with nerves, particularly proprioceptive nerves. I understand scar tissue will eventually form, but it will never be as flexible and will lack the nerves the fascia had contained.

My question to those ladies experiencing bad pain (please specify short-term or long-term depending on how far out you are from surgery)... can you please check your surgical report or ask your surgeon if they removed the pectoral fascia. Just within the past 5 years there is a movement for more surgeons to keep the fascia as long as it will not be unsafe to do so with respect to the tumor location. They are realizing it helps with pain and cosmetic outcomes and actually results in the less blood loss and shorter operative time too.

So far, the women I have spoken with who are doing the best post surgery (both short term and long term) had kept their pectoral fascia.

Thank you so much for looking into this!