From Decision to Actuality

Yes, I'm back. It's two days before my surgery, and the end of a hell of a year (let's hope the beginning of another hell of a year -- in a good way, for once.)

I thought I had reached a good compromise: I'll go for removing the breast, but I'll also go for an implant --- not as complicated and painful as tissue transplant, which I understand would look and feel better, but at least something there, so I don't have to deal quite so much with the loss of a body part. But a consult with the plastic surgeon scheduled to do the implant changed my mind. I knew that the rate of complications and outright "failure" of the implant (meaning it would have to be removed because of problems like infection, leakage, encapsulization) is higher in a woman who had been previously radiated like me. But having learned more about it from a former patient I was hooked up with by Sloan-Kettering, and from the surgeon, I was dismayed to realize that the rate was higher than I'd realized. Not very unlikely, I could go through the pain and suffering of the implant surgery for nothing. I think if I had the normal odds of success (95%), I would do it, but 50-70%, with a 40% rate of infection, seemed too high to be worth it. So reluctantly, I decided not to bother, and just to go naked, so to speak, on one side.

This is going to take some getting used to, that's for sure. I'm going to try to track the psychological changes here on this blog, partly for my own mental health, and also in case anyone in my position happens to wander over here, as I've wandered into other women's experiences online.

I wonder how I will handle the difference between having the disfigured breast I have now, and having none at all, starting the day after tomorrow. Already the "good" breast ("Good girl," I want to tell it) looks more and more beautiful to me, though it's definitely not the boob of a youngster of 30 or 40 or even 50. But it's whole and substantial and points the right way, and has the right curve at the bottom. I look at women around me and wonder if they appreciate how lovely and intact they are, and not just the young ones. The surgeons were eager to tell me that after an implant they can match the size of the breasts, real and artificial, by reducing the natural breast ("just a cut around the nipple and in the crease, take out some tissue, and you're evened out"). No thanks! No one is taking a knife to this beauty unless it's to save my life again.

This surgery is going to cause me grief, I know. At the same time, I'm more afraid of physical suffering (not to mention death) than I am of psychological pain and stress, except where my children are concerned. I always have been more of a risk taker emotionally than physically, maybe because I have had a difficult time in some ways in my life and feel like I can tough that sort of thing out. We'll see, won't we?