I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit....my last post was all about my breast reconstruction surgery. I am still going to write about the big "unveiling" but I need to talk a little bit about my personal meltdown that occurred this week.
This is my current facebook status:
Dear boobies: I know you're new in town, I'm really trying to be your friend, but you're a lot bigger than my previous set. It's taking me a while to warm up to you. I hope you enjoy the Donna Karan bras and forgive me for hating you yesterday.
So you're probably wondering what happened- right? I have no idea, but I'm slowly processing this wave of emotion which took over my life on Wednesday. At some point during the day I starting obsessing about everything listed below:
1. I don't know how I thought I'd look, but this is not it.
2. what happened to my perfectly round and full "Tori Spelling boobs" that I had when the tissue expanders were in.
3. these boobs do not belong to me...they belong to some fatty-bo-batty woman...not me.
4. why are these implants so wide and flat...I think they might be in sideways.
5. I am a gigantic blob of silicone uni-boob.
6. sports bras are not pretty - and I like pretty, lacy underwire bras.
7. these implants are permanent!
8. what now? no more chemo, no more expander fills, no more cancer?
So amid my hysterics, I got an e-mail (promptly followed by a phone call) by a good friend, neighbor and fellow breast cancer survivor. I was lucky enough to be able to swing by her house to have a cry-out session with someone who KNOWS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL, who WEARS MY SHOES EVERYDAY, and who could just listen and assure me that what I was feeling is normal. And I realized several things.
1. it's only been 5 days post-op.
2. it's only been 48 hours since the surgical bandages came off!
3. I'm bruised and swollen, and have sutures across my breasts.
4. my perspective of looking "down" is WAY different than the perspective of someone looking at me, or looking in the mirror.
5. my implants are memory silicone which needs to relax and be massaged to get their "normal" shape...which will take 3 months.
6. I went from being a 34A before cancer, to having a double mastectomy, to having no breasts for 16 months, to having perfectly round tissue expanders which changed shape every week for 3 months, to having FULL 34C "naturally shaped breast" implants.
7. my implants were specifically selected to fill in the gaping space on my side where the lymph node tumor was removed.
8. Donna Karan Intimates made my day.
9. I can wear pretty, lacy bras...in 4 weeks.
10. it's ok to feel this way.
So that's kinda where I'm at with things. I will say this- my boobs look so much better today than they did on Wednesday. The shape is starting to round out and I know that once the sutures come out and the skin can "relax" they will be even better. And they will soften, and the swelling will go away and the scars will (once again) fade, and I will start to feel more like the "new me".
1 comment:
Even five months out, my breasts are still changing. The biggest difference for me -- and the one I'm still surprised by -- is that my nipples are so high they look like they could poke my eye out! It takes a while, but eventually you will just be you again, and these strange new mounds will be a part of you. Give yourself some time to get there.
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