Live from Colorado

I had a short talk the other day with another breast cancer survivor. Like me, she had a mastectomy. Unlike me, she opted to get reconstruction. So, she has a different perspective than I do. I liked talking to her. I wish I'd had more time to ask her about why she chose the procedures she did, and how she feels about them now. But, even in our few minutes of candid discussion, I gleaned some interesting tidbits.

1. She chose to have the spacer plus implant surgery instead of the body-salad surgery. I didn't get to ask why she chose one over the other.

2. She's completed the surgery, with the nipple added and everything. This was interesting to me. I haven't had the chance to talk to a lot of other surviviors yet, but two of the stories I've heard were from women who didn't even get the nipples attached. They had the bulk of their breasts rebuilt, but by the time they were healed up enough to get their nipples added they felt like they'd already had enough surgery and having nipples wasn't really worth the effort, pain, risk and expense of going under the knife again. She obviously didn't feel this way.

3. Not only did she have the removed breast replaced, she had it made a size larger than the original one. To go along with that, she had an implant placed in her healthy breast, so that she would have a matched set. I think if I'd done reconstruction, I might have gone up a size too. Surely, after going through the agony of cancer, one deserves the compensation of a new "dream rack," or you could call it a "booby prize!"

4. I found this next bit incredibly interesting. She called the healthy breast, the one that didn't have cancer in it and now has an implant, she called this her "live" breast. She didn't refer to her other, reconstructed breast in the same context, so I don't know what she calls that one. But I can't help wonder, if one is "live" what is the other one?

5. The live breast continues to grow and shrink as she gains or loses weight. The other one doesn't. Here it is, the middle of winter in a cold climate and the holidays just ended. Most of us are carrying a few extra pounds and I guess she is too. Her "live" breast was noticably larger than the other one. I wondered how she felt about that. After all her surgery and healing and trying for a dream rack and everything, she still ends up with a lopsided bosom. Unfortunately, I didn't feel comfortable asking in the limited time we had together.

6. When I told her I hadn't done the reconstruction and didn't plan to, she replied that she probably wouldn't have done it either if she'd been older when it happened. I don't know her age, but my guess is that she's at least a decade older than me.

I've tried to be completely truthful, and respectful in reporting what I learned from my talk with her. I didn't ask her permission to post this. I don't think she even knows I have this blog, so I don't know if she'll ever read this.

But if she does, I hope she can tell that I completely honor and respect her choice. I feel really priveleged to have such intimate information about her body and her health and her personal choices. Talking to her helped me understand better what is going on in this country for other women facing breast cancer treatment decisions, and it helped me understand my own choices and situation better.