I always knew 30 would be a big year for me...I just never imagined breast cancer would be the reason.
How I came to this blog
For as long as I can remember I had been so excited about my 30th birthday. It was going to be a big year for me, I could feel it. I had no idea a breast cancer diagnosis would turn out to be the reason. I was actually told I had "early breast cancer" at 29, about three weeks before my 30th birthday. What I had is called Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), which is also considered "stage 0 breast cancer." While it was caught at the earliest possible stage, and my life was never in immediate danger, I still had to undergo mastectomy, including lymph node removal, and reconstruction. My birthday came and went a couple weeks before my mastectomy. More than once I looked down at the "F 30" on my hospital bracelet and wondered, "where did my 30th birthday go?" This will definitely be an interesting year.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Spoke too soon?
Today is Monday, three days post implant surgery. A lot of the swelling has gone down and I've removed the top part of the dressing (as instructed by my doctor). When I first came home from the surgery my new boobs looked pretty similar: high, round & similarly shaped. Today, the right one looks more like it used to: it's sitting a bit lower on my chest than the left boob and it is sort of swaying out to the right side of my chest. My doctor tried to get away without doing the lift because he knew I was really unhappy about it and about having another scar; however, if this is any indication of what the final result is going to be, this just won't do. The two boobs still look really different as of right now. The goal is to get them looking as similar as possible. I'm worried that I'm going to have to get the lift anyway and that this is going to mean a third surgery. Looking at the steri-strips currently covering my stitches I'm also beginning to realize that just because my mastectomy scar didn't bother me the first time around, doesn't mean it's still not going to bother me now. What if it just looks worse now that it's been cut open a second time? So then, if I have an ugly lift scar and an ugly mastectomy scar, do I consider the fake nipple & areola tattoo? A fake nipple & areola would cover up most of the mastectomy scar. But I'm sure they come with their own issues too. I've heard of fake nipples dropping so much that they are hardly there anymore and of areola tattoos fading. All of this is just driving home the point that there is no good way out of this and that these boobs may be a work in progress for a long time. I'm in such a bad mood right now that some Chardonnay may be in order! (Don't worry I haven't taken any pain killers today.) Tomorrow, D and I are going to go try to find me a new bra. I'm still walking around in my zip-up sports bra even though the doctor said I could wear a regular bra as long as it doesn't have underwire, so maybe that will make me feel better.
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