Hi!

This is what my plastic surgeon has told me....

The largest implant they make is only 800cc's - on some women it's big, and others not so much.  I'm not a thin person, so I wanted to make sure I had a nice full D - but surgeons don't really think in terms of cup size, just cc's.  So he had fully expanded what I had and I was like this is too small.  I brough in a bra and a picture to show him how big I wanted to be.  He took me into surgery and removed my expanders replacing them with larger ones.  Currently my expanders are ar 1050cc's and I have 1 more injection to do before he'll swap them out for the implants.  The reason he is going so much bigger than an 800cc implant is so he'll have the excess skin to make "pockets" to help hold the implants in place and enough room for surtures.  Now yes, radiation does have a huge impact on your skin and chest muscle.  I went through 7 weeks of it over the summer - but I did like he told me to do and I lotioned up many times a day.  My skin has stretched just fine, but the expansion has been very painful on the radiated side.  I feel as though my muscle is ripping and it very well could be since there is little to it after my mastectomy and the surgery to remove my chest wall recurrence.  My surgeon says he can take muscle from my back, if what I have is too thin to hold the implant in place.  A lot of times people think after the skin and chest wall has been radiated that having reconstruction done with implants is not an option, but it truly depends on each person, their body and how it responded or bounced back.  I'm only 35 so my surgeon said my skin was still very young and resilient.  It also helped that I took care of my skin and it wasn't overly burnt.  my surgeon also told me that if I am not happy with my implants that we can re-do them with some flap procedure or use a combo of tissue and implants to help get bigger breasts - but we need to take it all one step at a time. 

Talk with your doctor about the actual size you want and show him a picture or use a bra, but accept that through implants only, your breasts can only be so big, so ask if he can use a combo approach to help you get to the size you want to be.

Good luck!

Angi

my plastic surgeon put 850 cc's in my left side and 900cc's in my right to even them out.  I have saline because I was a 42E before my double mastectomy and the saline could be injected a little more so I look fuller.  I am a little chubby so when I lose my belly I will be pretty good sized.  I am finding it hard to find a bra now because I don't fill in the tip of the bra.  I am very rounded and it is hard to fill anything right.