Nine days in and I am not struggling with the surgery, I am struggling with the vest.
I know from this forum that it goes on day and night for weeks and I am not trying to get out of it. What I cannot work out is the mechanics. I am a side sleeper and I cannot side sleep, so I am propped up on a pile of cushions getting about four hours a night. The vest is damp by the evening. And washing is a farce, because taking it off feels like undoing the only thing holding my chest together, and I have no idea how long I am allowed to be out of it to shower.
So: how did you actually live in one of these for six weeks. Practicalities please, I have read the theory.
Two vests. Genuinely that is the whole answer to the damp problem. One on, one drying, swap them. I do not know why this is not the first line of every leaflet.
Seconding two vests, and get the second one at the same time as the first because you will not enjoy shopping for one at day nine.
Sleeping, the wedge of cushions is right and it does get better. I was upright for about two weeks, half propped for another two, then back to normal. Four hours a night at day nine is rough but it is not permanent, and the second week was the turning point for me.
On how long out of it for a shower, ask your clinic, that varies. Mine said off for the shower and straight back on and do not sit around in a dressing gown admiring it, which I thought was fair.
#4August 7, 2026, 9:21 am Surgeon here, and since the practical answers above are sound I will explain what the vest is doing, because men stick with it much better when they know why.
The garment is worn day and night, commonly for around four to six weeks, and it is doing two jobs. It limits swelling and fluid gathering in the space where tissue has been removed, and it holds the skin against the chest wall while everything sticks back down in the right position. That second job is the one that gets underestimated. The final contour is partly decided by how the skin settles over the first weeks, so the vest is contributing to the result rather than just to your comfort. Ours sets that out in the compression garment guide.
On the specific questions. Short periods out of it for washing are ordinarily fine, but how long and from what day is genuinely surgeon dependent and depends on your wounds and whether you have had a drain, so follow the instructions you were given rather than an average from a forum. Sleeping propped up is standard early advice and most men are back to something like their normal position within a couple of weeks. Two garments so one can be washed is sensible and I suggest it routinely.
Two things I would not do. Do not loosen it because it is uncomfortable at night, since intermittent compression does not achieve what continuous compression does. And do not keep wearing one that has stretched out and no longer grips, because a slack vest is doing very little; if it has gone loose, say so at follow up.
Where the vest itself is causing a problem, rather than just being unpleasant, that is worth reporting rather than enduring: skin breaking down under a seam, numbness or pins and needles in the arm, or a sharply increasing pain under the garment are all reasons to be seen rather than to grit your teeth.
The seam point is worth repeating. Mine rubbed a raw patch under one arm around week three and I put up with it for a fortnight like an idiot. Mentioned it at follow up, they had a different cut of garment, problem gone in a day.
Also nobody warned me that taking it off at the end feels weird rather than triumphant. Chest felt oddly exposed and wobbly for about two days and then normalised.
Three weeks and change now. Ordered the second vest the morning after this thread, sleeping in something close to my normal position since about day sixteen, and the whole thing has gone from unbearable to merely annoying.
Understanding that it is holding the skin down while it settles rather than just squashing swelling was what made me stop negotiating with it at 3am. Still counting down to week six but I am not dreading it any more.
