How Much Discomfort Will I Have After Surgery?

Everyone expects some degree of discomfort after surgery. Even though I have been performing breast augmentation offering a recovery within 24 hours since 2004, and despite numerous videos and testimonials online supporting this, patients are still skeptical about how much pain they will have after surgery. Those patients who are referred to me by other patients whom I have performed breast augmentation on do not seem to have these concerns because they have already witnessed the recovery in person.

While it is normal to have some pain immediately after surgery in the recovery room, it is just about always very short lived. Part of the recovery instructions ask you to take 800 mg of ibuprofen followed by a two hour nap. For those patients who still have pain when they arrive home, once awakening from that 2 hour nap, it is remarkable how much better they feel. I hear this time and time again.

I call all my surgical patients several hours after surgery to check on them. Most of them tell me that their discomfort level is mild. In some cases it is none. Very rarely is it more severe than this. The way they describe the discomfort is very interesting, as my patients almost always use the same terms. For those patients who have borne children, they describe the discomfort as a feeling similar to when their milk came in. For those patients who have not had children, they describe the discomfort as a sense of “tightness.” It is very interesting that I cannot recall the last time a patient actually stated that they had pain.

The bottom line: My expectation for you after surgery is that overall you will have minimal discomfort and be up and around, ready to leave your house to go shopping or to dinner or visit friends and family later that same day.

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