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.
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