Breast Reconstruction Awareness Day

Apparently, that is today. BRA Day, ha, ha, someone has a sense of humor.

I feel like I need to warn you that I'm about to talk about breasts, including mine. I mean, this is a blog about surviving breast cancer, so that seems obvious, but still, I'm about to write about boobs, so... You've been warned, ha.

Breast cancer takes and takes and takes. If I wrote about what all has been taken from me, you'd click off the page cuz it would get real whiney. So I won't.

The most obvious thing that breast cancer takes, is your breasts.

Breasts. Boobs. The Girls. Tatas. I'm sure there's a million more names for them. Most of the time, we think of boobs in a sexual sense, but there's so much more to it than that.

These breasts fed two babies.

My chest is where I pull my boys into a hug to comfort them when they've got a BoBo. In fact, every hug I give involves chest-to-chest contact.

Every article of clothing I have assumes that I have a filled-out and symmetrical chest. Well, except my pants, obviously. But you get my point.

I see the girls every day when I get out of the shower. Heck, I even have some little decorative mirrors and one is positioned Just So, so that when I'm shampooing, I can see them then, too. (Poor planning on my part, woops.)

There's no arguing that breasts are an integral part of any woman's life, and not just her intimate life (not that I'm negating the importance of that part, either, because let's get real, it's preeeetty important too!)

Breast cancer strips all of that away. Sometimes, women go flat - whether by choice or by medical necessity. Sometimes, a medical device is placed to give the look (when dressed) of symmetrical feminity - a prosthesis worn in the bra, or an implant. I had a tissue expander for over a year. This is like a breast implant that starts out flat, and they gradually add saline to it to help the skin stretch until it's the right size. For me, this was a temporary measure, a placeholder until my final reconstruction.

Also for me, it was unsightly and asymmetrical when naked, uncomfortable at best, and sometimes painful. And it could have been life threatening: when they removed my expander during reconstruction, they found that it was becoming infected.

So...what is breast reconstruction?

There are a lot of different methods, but the goal is the same: to replace what was taken. To recreate breasts in a way that has as natural of a look and feel - in and out of clothes - as possible.

The method I chose is called DIEP Flap Reconstruction, often referred to as just DIEP. The short story, if you're not familiar, is this: they remove a section of abdominal tissue, being careful to preserve the arteries that supply it. Then, they connect those arteries to the ones in your chest wall, and use about 47 gazillion micro sutures to put that belly tissue where there used to be boobs. The location where your belly button was, no longer exists on your body, so they make a new belly button in what appears to be the correct location for belly buttons: the lower/middle of your belly. Then, they puuuuuuulllll your belly skin closed. In short, it's a day-long craft project for a highly skilled microsurgeon.

There's this misconception out there that reconstruction is a free boob job.

It's not.

A free tummy tuck?

Nope, it's not that, either.

Breast reconstruction is a complete rearranging of your torso. It comes with a strange combination of pain and numbness. It's a bit mind-blowing when there's a place on your body that you know you're touching, but you can't feel it, and it has one of those painful stinging itches that you must scratch right-this-second. Only, when you touch it, you still can't feel your fingers on your own skin, and so you can't comfort it. And this phenomenon is not just in my new breasts, either, but in my abdomen as well. And that numbness may or may not go away - only time will tell.

Breast reconstruction is a hard surgery, with a hard recovery. I believe I was under for 9 hours. I had 2 surgeons, plus at least one PA, operating on me. Then I had another surgery 2 days later, due to complications, and needed 3 pints of blood. Y'all, the average woman only has 9 pints. So I needed a third of my blood to be replaced. I'm feeling great, but I still have another month of lifting restrictions, and I still have days where doing the normal life things just flat wears me out. And honestly, I've had an easy recovery, compared with some ladies I've talked to!

Is my belly flat? Pretty much. Do my new boobs look nice? They will, as we finish this process and the scars fade. Was all of this free? Hell no.

Some people might say, Well if breast reconstruction is so hard, why would you do that to yourself? Why would you elect to put yourself through such an ordeal?

This is not an ordeal. Cancer was The Ordeal. Surgeries and medications and life changes are The Ordeal.

But this, these reconstructed breasts? This, my friends, is the finish line of a marathon, the celebration at the end of a long journey, the morning sun after a nightmare.

I'm not finished, no, but I'm a heck of a lot closer to the finish line than I was.

Keeping It Real

The other day, a friend was asking how things are going, and I remembered that I hadn't updated the blog in a while. Sorry.

So, things are going pretty good. I've been walking upright for about 10 days now. On my first morning upright, I couldn't do it - there just wasn't enough slack in my abdomen to make it all the way up to straight! By lunchtime, I was pretty much straight. But then we went to lunch at this new place. When we walked out, James said, Stand up straight! And I couldn't because I'd used up all my abdominal slack on that burger, ha! But after a few days, I was fully upright, even with a full belly.

I'm back to sleeping in my bed now, hooray! I still have to prop my knees and sleep with an extra pillow under my head, but it's nice to be back in bed. And this evening, James surprised me by putting our room back in order - no more recliner squeezed next to the bed and blocking my nightstand!

I've started using silicone scar therapy sheets. My abdominal scar is angry and red, but I know it'll chill out eventually. My belly button sort of looks like a craft project gone wrong, so maybe with time (and maybe some help in Phase 2) it'll look better.

My belly is way less swollen, so that's nice. I still can't wear regular pants though, but I found some great jeans with an elastic waist, so I feel really normal now.

I have some tingling in my right hand and arm that is a little unnerving (ha, see what I did there? unNERVE-ing? Get it?) But I'm starting physical therapy this week so hopefully that resolves that issue. Otherwise, I see my oncologist in a couple of weeks and I'll get her to figure out the problem.

Last week I walked a couple of days - once around the block, and once I did half a mile on our neighborhood trail. By the end of it, my belly was feeling extra tight, so I ended up walking a little bent over, but it was still so nice to move.

I still have lots of days where I feel suddenly and totally exhausted. If I'm home, I usually sneak a nap, but sometimes that's just not possible. But I also have lots of days where I'm going and doing all day long, and again, it feels so normal. Normal is a good thing!

I'm having some skin issues - idk if it's a rash like I had a couple weeks after surgery, or if it's more of a breakout type thing from my hormone blocker, but hopefully it clears up soon. Otherwise I might make an appointment with my dermatologist and see if he can straighten me out.

I think that's about all that's going on with me. So when I told my friend all that, she said, You always keep such a positive attitude about it all.

And you know what, I do keep a positive attitude. Keep being the key word, there.

The default is not always positive. Sometimes, my first thought when I look in the mirror is revulsion. Sometimes, my first response to a random pain is fear. Sometimes, my first feeling after a setback is defeat. I'm not going to clarify "sometimes" because it varies from rarely to often and back again. But just know that I do have those feelings. But I keep a positive attitude.

Keep. That is the key.

When you clean house and go through toys and clothes and papers, you toss some and you keep some. You make a choice about which things are important enough, good enough, valuable enough to keep. There is this big decluttering movement about only keeping things that bring you Joy, and you pick up each thing and make a split-second decision about it, based on how it makes you feel - keep or toss, keep or toss.

Emotions are the same way. I have all the emotions. The question is, which ones am I going to keep. Which ones improve my life, make things better, build me up and push me forward - those are the ones to keep.

It's all a choice. So I'll continue choosing to keep a positive attitude.

A merry heart does good like a medicine
But a broken spirit dries the bones. Proverbs 17:22