It’s a big day, three years since my double mastectomy. Why is that important? My oncologist uses it as the day I was disease free. Chemo was the clean up crew to follow the removal of malignancy, otherwise known as Felicia and the Herceptin and Perjeta were there to close up the shop, they were the neighborhood toughs, making sure her buddies couldn’t get back. I’m not naïve to think that it’s a guarantee or good health forever but the odds are pretty darn good. I am more than halfway to the 5 year milestone and that’s a big one.
Getting the cancer out of my body was no walk in the park. It wasn’t fun, pink nor pretty. A double mastectomy is nothing remotely similar to a “boob job.” I’ve heard them all…I’ll be permanently perky at the nursing home, free boob job…Let’s be clear about this. It’s an amputation, a castration of the chesticles. We are left indented, not flat. Two sunken caverns remain on our chests. Skin stretches and eventually we get our implants. We are left with something looking nothing like what we had before. Sure, if I stand up in front of you with a sundress or bathing top on, you may not be able to notice. Lemme bend over, I’ve got ripples. Look at them from the side, they’re bumpy. Augmentations are done in such a way to minimize scarring. Not Mastectomies. I assure you, I’ve got some awesome scarring, about four jagged inches across each foob. I prefer to think of the scars are smiles, they’re happy I survived. They not only don’t look the same but they don’t feel the same either. In fact, they don’t feel anything at all. I still bump into things and knock things over, making them really a pair of knockers. Our nerves are cut from the surgery, leaving us with ghost boobs, which is great for the month of October.
My new pair are over the muscle, a fairly recent technique for reconstruction. It has a shorter down time and less discomfort. Much to my amusement, my pair like to take on the ambient temperature, meaning if it is cool, so are they. If it is warm, so are they. Now, since they sit on my chest muscles, I can feel the temperature in the most bizarre and slightly uncomfortable ways. I didn’t like being cold before all of this cancer shit, now, I get built in air conditioning whether or not I like it with my boobscicles.
I opted for the double mastectomy NOT hoping for bigger boobs. I did it to get everything out, as much as possible. I wanted to get rid of the cancer and figured I would deal with the aftermath as I healed. It is an aftermath, don’t kid yourself. Do I love my new pair? Absolutely! Lumps, bumps, dents and ripples? I find them amusing. Do I love these more than the original girls, hell yeah. Lemme say it louder, HELL YEAH! It’s not the actual implants and skin that I love, it’s what they represent.
My new pair represent being rid of the awful disease called cancer, and I am forever grateful. They represent a strength I never imagined I could possess. They are a reminder of how resilient and determined I can be…and that there is beauty in imperfection.
