I’ll write casually!
It’s been 3 years since I had surgery with Mentor Extra. I’m pretty satisfied with my hospital choice and implants, and I haven’t had any side effects! I’ll share a few tips I used when choosing, so I hope they help with choosing a hospital and implants.
1. Operating room When I was young, I had surgery on another body part for treatment purposes at a university hospital, so I’m sensitive about operating rooms. So I narrowed down a list through apps and communities, then went to each hospital’s website and checked all the operating room photos. If you look closely, a lot of operating rooms aren’t sealed rooms; they have windows and instruments piled up, like some dermatology procedure room. Breast surgery is a really major surgery. There are various causes of breast capsular contracture, but some papers say part of it is infection from external factors during surgery. That’s why a sterilization system and cleanliness on the level of a university hospital operating room are absolutely necessary.
2. Anesthesiologist This is the most basic of basics.
3. The doctor’s past record Everyone will probably be curious about the record of the doctor they choose. I researched various doctors for about a year, and if you search the doctor’s name on Google and dig a little deeper, you can find out which hospitals those doctors were previously at, what papers they wrote, and what reviews they have. Try searching with the initials of the doctor’s name, or changing the keywords like breast ㅇㅇㅇ, mammary/breast ㅇㅇㅇ, and so on. That way, I found a few doctors who had caused incidents in the past and put them on my blacklist.
4. Consultant/director In a way, this is the next most important factor after the surgeon. The person you contact a lot before and after surgery is the consultant/director. The consultant/director absolutely has to be kind for you to feel at ease. In my case, the consultant in charge had received so much praise from people who had surgery at that hospital, so I went in with expectations. After my consultation, I really liked the consultant from the start, and she seriously listened to my concerns with me like a real older sister, encouraged me, and even on the day of surgery she came into my hospital room several times to check if I was okay. Even after surgery, she messaged me on KakaoTalk really often to ask if I was okay and how I was doing. I think we stayed really close for about a year and a half after surgery.
+One tip: when I go to nail salons, hair salons, or semi-permanent makeup shops, if I get a little close to the staff, I’m the type to buy them coffee and get treated better. Here too, on the day of surgery, I bought simple fruit drinks from Starbucks for the staff and the director and handed them out, you know? I made that one gesture of sincerity and said please take good care of my surgery, and the staff and even the doctors really treated me so well. I feel like I received 3 times more aftercare than others, and every time I went, all the staff knew me, so they welcomed me so warmly. Everyone felt like friends and it was so nice for a year and a half hahaha
Don’t think, “Why should I do this when I’m paying my own money?” Just try it haha
5. Implants Three years ago, microsoft suddenly became popular. They advertised it as microtexture, combining only the advantages of textured and soft implants, but I was really shocked when I saw photos of the manufacturing factory..^^ If you search the community in detail, it’ll all come up.... I won’t bother mentioning here which place is what. What if I get sued hahaha
I chose Mentor Extra because the company has been around a long time, there is plenty of research data, and I thought it had come out as the most improved option.
6. Size When someone with no breasts decides to have surgery, it’s hard to get a sense of size. As someone 3 years post-op, what I really, really want to advise is,,, if your rib cage is small, don’t force yourself to go big.. A pretty proportion that fits your body size is not necessarily a full C or D cup. Even with the same cup size, breast size differs completely depending on the rib cage. In the early period after surgery, the tissue hasn’t softened yet, so the size looks small. But after just 2-3 years, the tissue loosens up a lot and they get bigger.. Right now my rib cage is 69 and I’m a D cup (started as AA), and in summer, if I wear tight clothes, it feels slightly burdensome. In winter, whatever I wear, my build looks really big.
At the time of surgery, I thought, “Ah, I should go big!! I should at least get a full C!” and went with 335, but now I regret it a little... I should’ve followed the director’s advice and gone with 325 or lower... I often feel like it’s a bit big compared to my rib cage..... not to the point of looking like a cow... but it feels a bit too much for me.
For people who had no breasts at all, I recommend 300-325. Honestly, if you go above that, it looks unnatural.. If you’re about a full A cup, unless you want to become Mrs. Cow, I really recommend putting in a moderate amount, around 285-300. Even just that much can give you a C cup once the tissue softens. (Of course, it varies case by case depending on individual tissue characteristics.)
7. Scars Sometimes on apps or communities, there are photos going around where the scars have been edited so they almost look invisible. Of course, some may truly have faded because they managed them really well. Scars are really case by case. I managed my scars really diligently for a year, and I still do whenever I can, but my incision scars remain white. The director really stitched me up well, you know?? From the beginning, there weren’t any needle marks visible on the outside at all. They stitched from the inside. But scars remain no matter what... Take that into account before doing it haha
8. Blacklist. This really requires a lot of manual research. In my case, during lunch breaks, after work, and before bed, I constantly went into apps and communities, and whenever posts came up from people complaining that their surgery was ruined, I immediately left comments asking for information and put them all on my blacklist. For posts like that, you need to ask the writer to share information as soon as they go up. Hospitals somehow find out and delete everything like ghosts. For 6 months? I really did a huge amount of manual research, saw all kinds of incidents and all kinds of shapes, and it helped me filter out a lot for my blacklist.
I just wrote this as it came to mind, but everyone may already know this stuff, so I’m not sure how helpful it was!!
Let’s all become prettier safely and gain confidence><
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