Pucker Up!

I've been unhappy with my chest ever since we took the bandages off. Initially, Sheer horror kept me from being able to look directly at it. Until the pain subsided, viewing my naked chest felt like a traumatic incident. With the pain signals flooding my brain every minute, my eyes weren't able to open their own channel. All the information they fed to my brain ended up twisted with the bias of my big loud OUCH. My afferent nerves told me I was in pain. My eyes told me I'd been mauled.

After a week of pain killers and mid-day naps I started to be able to look at my chest without wincing or covering my face with my hand. When it finally stopped hurting so much, I could see it for what it was; healthy, healing, cancer-free skin.

I should have been thrilled, right? I should have gotten on my knees and thanked my excellent surgeon for saving my life.

I did feel grateful to my surgeon. She had been absolutely wondeful throughout my month of probes and procedures. She had explained every outcome and probablitity to me patiently and thoroughly. She and her staff had made Mom and me feel loved and supported. I am still deeply grateful to Dr. Rocco for all her expertise, skill and most of all, compassion.

But I've been unhappy with the result of her work.

Supposedly, after my beautiful, talented and beloved surgeon finished chopping and stitching my torso, she came out to visit my mom in the waiting area. This was really sweet of her to do. She told Mom that the surgery had gone very well. She also said how pleased she was that she'd been able to save a little extra skin and tissue, and that this would make it easier to have reconstruction down the road. This was really sweet of her too, except that I didn't plan on having a boob built later.

I didn't want any more surgery. The chest that she was making for me was going to be my forever-chest. Maybe we should have talked about this more. When I first told her I didn't want any reconstruction, she'd seemed shocked. The conversation only moved forward after she shrugged off her dazed look to suggest I could always have it done later. If I'd known there was a difference between how she'd perform the surgery for a future reconstruction, and how she'd perform the surgery for a final result, I would have pressed the issue. I would have insisted she understand how serious I was about not having additional surgery. I would have made sure she planned on giving me the best looking chest she could manage, since I would be wearing it for the rest of my life.

But I didn't know.

One survivor at my support group said yesterday, "No matter how many questions you ask, there's always one more question." You're always going to wish you had asked it.

Because I didn't know to ask whether or not she would leave extra skin and tissue, I now have a flabby, poochy, pouchy, puffy, wrinkly place where my breast used to be. Without my prosthesis, I don't look like a mastectomy patient. I look like I have a deformed, deflated breast tucked up under my bra.

I ran into an old friend at a dance a few weeks ago. I pulled down my sweater to show her my chest. "So that's what a lumpectomy looks like," she mused. "No!" I said, "They took my whole breast off." She looked puzzled, and I understand why. If my whole breast is gone, then what's that puffy fatty area?

Friends who've seem me topless, point to the gathered, pointed, ridgy place at far left edge of my incision and call it "the place where your nipple used to be." This drives me nuts. The wrinkly gathered skin is almost in the very center of my chest. My nipple wasn't any where near there. My nipple was at the front of my breast, which is now gone. Just because my skin is textured now doesn't mean it has anything to do with my dear departed nipple!!!

There's no real reason for me to get excited and snarky about it, but I do anyway.

Dr. R, angel that she really and truly is, said she'd be happy to clean it up for me. A little corrective cosmetic surgery wouldn't take long, would be perfectly safe, and would probably be totally covered under my insurance. I've been considering it, but I really don't want more surgery. That was the whole point of not having reconstruction in the first place; no unecessary surgery performed just to make me feel better about how I look.