8 paths to scar healing
After having gone through the last two years with several major and minor surgeries there are a few tricks and tips I have picked up along that way that can hopefully help your recovery move ahead full speed.
1) Castor oil is your friend. it is slightly gross and sticky but it is amazing at healing scar tissue. Make sure to have a special covering as castor oil is very good at leaving huge oil marks on clothes or bed sheets. You could also walk around without clothes and let the oil absorb but don’t go in sunlight or you will burn up.
2) Facial suction cups are your friend. No one would have ever told me this but my acupuncturist is a super smart lady and she suggested using facial cups on my beast scar tissue to help stop the pulling and ouchy sensations. I will add a link to amazon at the bottom. I have passed this wisdom onto both of my surgeons and they were super delighted to know this. (why didn’t they already think of this in med school I ask you)
3) Get some bodywork. Move that surgery trauma, and medicines out of your body and go to an appointment that actually makes you feel amazing afterward. I did acupuncture and cranial sacral. I was really sensitive to anyone touching me partway through radiation so I really needed more energetic work. I now have added back in a regular massage, breast massage and lots of yoga.
4) Get Physical Therapy. Ask for physical Therapy! any treatment which cuts into your body you can ask for PT to help relearn and regain range of motion. I waited maybe a bit too long after my breast surgery (almost a year) but I am sort of glad I gave my recovery some space. My first session in the PT was like so you know some of this could be flair ups form radiation as any time in the first year your skin/tissue.sesations could revert back to the worst part of your treatment. Once a year has passed these flair ups decrease in occurrence and terribleness. WHAT! I mean somebody at some point possibly mentioned this but FUUUCK they should call you 3 months later and remind you of all the things you didn’t hear the first time because you were busy MURDERING CANCER.
But get some Physical Therapy- a few sessions at least from a specialist in post-surgical shite. Then you can continue with a more general person. It’s super helpful and my range of motion in just two sessions has totally increased, plus she puts my shoulder back on correctly which is amazing.
5) Massage the site daily when everything has closed up and your surgeon says it’s ok. This doesn’t have to be huge massage, or deep, or long in fact at first just take 1 minute to apply castor oil to the scar and be done. A few months later apply castor oil, massage a few minutes, use the suction cups for 2 minutes and you will notice a huge and immediate decrease in scar redness. A few months later you will notice much less thick and ugly scars. HOWEVER, you can use massage and the cupping on old ugly scars and get a ton of benefits and healing.
Learn where the closest lymph nodes to your scar are and push the massage strokes towards the lymph nodes to help your body get rid of scar tissue waste and heal faster.
6) Move. As soon as you can as big or as small as you can just move. Every day will be different and it’s ok to make huge leaps forward and then lose it all and have to start again. This is good. Movement is life.
7) Protein is fuel for healing, as is magnesium, potassium, and vitamins. Make sure you are eating your veggies and add some protein powder to your smoothies, oatmeal and everything you can stick it in, especially directly after surgery. I had an interesting healing crisis on my right breast where the tissue, eventually turned black and fell off (it was horrible and I called it my zombie cancer boob). My surgeon was making me put protein powder in every damn thing I ate. And I was bad at it and it possibly made my zombie boob fester longer than it needed.
8) Be patient with yourself, be patient with your healing, be patient with all of it. There are going to be weeks you do nothing. There will be days where it seems like there is no point and you already have a billion other things to do. It’s ok to quit over and over. When you stumble across the castor oil forgotten in a drawer start the routine up again. I mix my castor oil 1/2 castor oil, 1/2 avocado oil and I have started adding some essential oils to it to make it nicer and more like something I look forward to massaging into my scars and I’ve started continuing the massage up into my neck (old lady neck prevention is a side bonus)
Life is hard, making the choice to do any of these things takes time from something else.
