Melissa is an amazing person that had a double mastectomy surgery on August 20th, 2025. She was in a lot of excruciating pain; the pain didn’t get any better. She was going in for checkups, going to a pain management doctor, and things still weren’t getting better. She then decided to seek out a second opinion, and when she did, she found out it was a botched surgery that looked like it was done by a first-year surgeon. Not going to get into a lot of details, but what I have been told is when they do a mastectomy, they typically remove a lot of breast tissue and put things called expanders in, then stitch you up and wait for the healing process. When you are healed and free of a possibility of infection, they take the expanders out and put in implants. Well, she had a lot of tissue removed, and rather than putting the expanders in under the muscle, they put it over the muscle, and then things went sideways. She was always in pain. After seeing the new surgeon, they scheduled a new surgery for April 2026 to fix everything and get her on the right path.

One day, she went to an appointment, and they noticed a part of the expander pressing against her skin, looking like it was about to puncture through her skin. She then called her surgeon, and in 2 days, she was in for an emergency surgery to take them out and put new ones in under the muscle. She was out of work for 3 months after the first surgery. She did get short-term disability, but that was just enough to get by. She just had the emergency surgery and now will be out of work for 6-8 weeks again. This second surgery happened sooner than expected. With medical bills and just everyday bills, things are tough.