Click the below link for part one of our interview with Andrea Hammer.

Self Asteame -- Nov05

Home | About Us | Self Asteame | Products | Shop | Physicians

Site Use | Privacy Policy | ©2006 Asteame Medical Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.

HOME         SELF ASTEAME

Andrea Hammer is the co-founder of Asteame Medical Devices, Inc. This is the final installment of a two part interview that chronicles Andrea’s personal battle with breast cancer. Andrea’s experiences were the inspiration for Asteame’s “Nipple Guard” device.

We pick up the interview at the point of Andrea’s double mastectomy.

MASTECTOMY

 OK.  So now you’re going in for your mastectomy.  Where are we in the timeline?

April 21st was my mastectomy.  It’s now a little over a month and a half from the time that I first went in to get checked out.  Because I had DCIS, I could afford to spend a little bit of time looking, and scheduling, and making sure I was set with work.  Not everybody has that luxury.

 Your plastic surgeon participated in the mastectomy procedure.   Was it difficult to arrange this?

At that point both my general surgeon and plastic surgeon knew me pretty well.  They knew what I wanted, and were willing to work together.   Neither has a big ego.  They were looking to get me the best result possible.  From what I remember, my plastic surgeon drew the lines to preserve as much skin as possible.   My general surgeon did the mastectomy, and my plastic surgeon sewed me up.

 He sewed you up, but other than that, nothing else?

No, the expanders were put in.  Some people have the mastectomy, get closed up, are totally flat, which is more like concave, and then maybe later, months or years later, do some reconstruction.  But I wanted it done as quickly as possible.  Probably because I felt like I wouldn’t be quite so flat and so unfeminine looking for too long. 

The expanders are temporary implants that are initially just like empty sacs.  The plastic surgeon puts them under the pec muscle, just like you would put a normal implant in if you were getting breast augmentation, and then they close you up.  The reason why they can’t just put a regular implant in is because they have to take too much skin with the nipple.  So, if they put in a regular implant, then it would really stretch the skin – it would be like going from being 1 month pregnant to 9 months pregnant overnight – your body couldn’t handle that kind of stretch and trauma.  So they have to stretch the skin and underlying tissue slowly by pumping up the expander with more and more saline over a period of time.

 How were you feeling before the mastectomy.

The waiting before the surgery was brutal. 

Dr. Steven Struck -- Andrea's reconstructive plastic surgeon will be featured in an upcoming edition of Self Asteame.