Hi, my name is Sarah Crimmins. At age 28, when my daughter was only 11 months old (in December 2008), I was diagnosed with Grade 3 Invasive Breast Cancer.

Since then I have had a mastectomy of my left breast, gone through IVF, 4 months of Chemotherapy, 5 weeks of radiotherapy, hospitalised with meningitis and just recently in December 2009, I underwent a prophylactic mastectomy of my right breast with immediate reconstruction and a reconstruction of my left breast using the latissimus dorsi.

At the start of my cancer journey I spent hours on the internet searching for similar stories to my own and in particular, photographs of those women so I could gain an understanding of what I was about to go through and although I found some, I didn't find many.

This is the main reason for my blog. I wanted to be able to share my experience and photographs of my journey in the hope that it will help someone else with the decisions that they are about to face.

This is the story of the worst year of my life, from finding the lump all the way to my reconstruction surgery and beyond.........

Please feel free to post some comments, actually i would absolutely love it if you would xo

January 10' - Infills

I was actually pretty excited about the infills to be honest. I was nervous about whether it would hurt or not but still excited to be getting bigger boobs. The expanders have a 'port' in them which the dr uses to pushes a thick needle through to inflate the expanders with saline. It didn't hurt at all because my boobs are completely numb anyway so for once it was a 'nice' appointment where although i was still getting a needle (i've started to develope a bit of a fear of needles) it didn't hurt, and i got bigger boobs. What more could you ask for!

Here is a photo before the first infil. My surgeon put a little bit of saline into my expanders during the surgery so i would have some shape from the beginning which i was excited about because initally he told me he wasn't going to put any in.

These are after the first infil of 100cc's. As you can see my right side is smaller than my left because he didn't put as much saline into this side originally because i had a larger lat-flap on that side but it wasn't really noticable until after this infil.
All up I had 3 infills a week apart. My dr fixed the asymmetry at the second infil. Although the actual procedure of the infil doesn't hurt, the skin is still very stretched and feels really tight for about 2 days after each infil but nothing major. I think at worst i took panadol once after my second infil but otherwise it wasn't too bad.
These photos were taken after my last infil and shows the size i am at the moment. They're definately not the nicest shape at the moment, but as my dr said it's just to get the skin stretched to the size i want to be, and we'll worry about the shape etc at the exhange surgery which is on the 27th of May. I'm quite excited about it actually as i know it's going to feel a lot more confortable then they do now which will be great. Also he is going to fix my cleavage for me as well (all i've ever wanted is a nice cleavage!) because the expanders are too far apart so when he puts the implants in he's going to bring them closer. You can see the scar on my back in the side on shot as well.
Posted by Sarah Crimmins

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