The Winner Is...

To everyone who entered my contest to name my new prosthesis, thank you! Your creativity and playfullness delighted me. I especially enjoyed all the double meanings and insider jokes. But, I could only choose one winner and she is....

Kass Flaig!

Kass is my wonderfully generous and thoughtful friend whom I met after reading her brochure at GH sports in San Luis Obispo. She's a personal trainer; specializing in running, cycling and swimming. I'm no triathalete, but I had lost my motivation for running last year, and thought working with her might help. It really did. She is so smart and funny and caring and fun to be around. I looked forward to our sessions just to spend time with her. She is exactly the right amount of tough to make you do things you might not exactly want to do (like run faster for longer!) and exactly the right amount of sweet so that you don't resent her for it. She also has an incredible store of technical knowledge that helped me understand my body better, use it more efficiently and find my running workouts vastly more interesting. She's great at what she does, and she's a wonderful person. I was already glad to have her in my life, but now I am even more grateful...because I finally have the perfect name for my artificial breast.

Phyllis.

It's perfect! It's descriptive...she "fills" in the empty place in my bra. It's undercover. I can say out loud in public..."Oh, I forgot to bring Phyllis!" or "Does this shirt look ok without Phyllis?" or even, "Have you met Phyllis?" It's old-fashioned, and thus sounds respectable yet slightly ironic. It's feminine, a must. It can be "Filly" for short and makes me feel like I have a pet pony. "Come on, Filly, let's go for a ride!"

These are all things Kass may have thought of, but there are other things that make this name perfect; details from my life that she couldn't have known.

My great aunt was named Phyllis. At first this was a detraction in my mind. I didn't want to name my prosthetic after someone I knew. But, Phyllis lived far away in Florida while I was growing up and I only met her once or twice. She passed away a few years ago and, while I was sad for my Grandma, I didn't feel sad for myself at all. Since I obviously don't have a very strong association with her or with that name...I decided there was room in my psyche for a new meaning to the word.

Mom pointed out how ideal the name really is when she reminded me that Phyllis wasn't just my Grandmother's sister, she was her twin. Just like my breasts, they used to be a matched set...and now one of them is gone forever. So, thanks to Kass and my Mom, I don't just have a cool new name for my prosthetic, I now have a name for my left breast too. I am naming it after my beautiful, talented, patient and loving grandmother, Doris.