Day 22 of top surgery recovery: We slept without our compression vest for the first time last night, wearing only a button up pajama shirt. We did this partially because we stayed up very late and didn’t apply fresh ointment to our incisions/nipple grafts and as such didn’t need to put fresh gauze pads on top of it, and partially because the nightly temperatures where we are are starting to push 75°F/24°C and we sleep with several layers of blankets, including two weighted blankets, and we didn’t want to risk getting sweat into our incisions.
At this point in the recovery process, the main reason we wear a compression vest is to keep the gauze pads covering our incisions in place, because even though we have them taped to our skin with cloth tape, we move around a lot and it is liable to come loose. We were slightly worried that by exposing the incisions directly to our pajama shirt we might irritate them or cause them to open, especially because we sleep on our side, but I checked them this morning when we woke up and everything looked fine.
We have been able to do most daily tasks, such as household chores and laundry, without any issue or additional exhaustion for around a week now, and yesterday we helped our mother cook dinner.
It will be difficult to accurately gauge the overall changes to our mental state that top surgery has brought until we recover our full range of motion and ability to be fully submerged in water, but I have already been able to tell that we feel very positively about the operation and are euphoric about being far more comfortable in our own skin, which has made us more open to and comfortable with leaving the house and going places with our family.
Although our other underlying mental health issues are still very much present, getting top surgery seems to have removed a significant barrier towards participating more actively and feeling more immediately present in our own life, which has already done wonders for our mental and emotional wellbeing.
