This very day exactly one year ago in the morning, I had two natural breasts. By the afternoon, I had just one. I said goodbye to the breast I was born with and that had grown with me through puberty. Even though it was riddled with the disease we all know as Cancer, I did like my boob, it has to be said. I was quite happy with my chest area, thank you very much, before Cancer came a-knocking!
“I will never be the same again….EVER!” I cried rivers of tears into my sister’s neck every time I thought about it. With her tender and loving arms around me, I slobbered on her shoulder, the ugly crying (akin to Toni Colette’s character, Muriel, in the film Muriel’s Wedding if you’ve ever seen it), and spit and snot saturating my sister’s lovely new top.
“Why me? What’s happened to my body? Where’s the old me? The pre-Cancer me. I’m scared to be the new ‘me’ post Cancer. Why has the loss of my breast changed me? I don’t know who this person is! Don’t recognise her emotionally or physically. What if I don’t like being the new ‘me’? Will I ever accept who I’ve become? Will I ever get used to the scars ‘the new me’ bears?”
These were my words and thoughts on many an occasion when I looked in the mirror at myself post mastectomy/implant reconstruction surgery. I forced myself to look frequently because I had to if I were to become comfortable with what I saw staring back at me. You may or may not know, I wasn’t given the option of a ‘natural fat tissue’ reconstruction. DIEP they call it….a type of reconstruction that uses a woman’s own tissue to create a new breast after a mastectomy. I didn’t have enough fat on me to go down this route. A good problem to have some might say. Not in this case. A silicone implant reconstruction was my only option. Either that or be left flat on one side. No boob at all. I chose to go with the implant.
“Don’t get stuck on how things used to be”, I tell myself.
I once heard the saying, “Every next level of your life will demand a new you”. And sometimes it takes being broken in order to become that new version of yourself. And this, in turn, can take time to readjust.
I am reminded of the song, ‘This Is Me’ from ‘The Greatest Showman’. The chorus reads:
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, this is me
Look out ’cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me.
The Greatest Showman
So dear readers – THIS IS ME!
This mirror image artist’s impression will show you what I see each day in the mirror before I get dressed in the morning.
The reconstructed breast….what a truly amazing creation it is; it’s not what I was born with though. Why don’t they match? Why aren’t they level? (Radiotherapy after the mastectomy/reconstruction has done that. I was warned of this and chose to proceed with this type of surgery anyway so I’m not complaining but it does take some adjustment in my mind).
And where has my nipple gone? Damn you Cancer, you took away my nipple too! The Cancer was only in one breast so the good one remains in tact but having fed a child, it’s ‘au naturel’ and well, quite frankly, not as pert as the new creation on the opposite side. My surgeon is amazing though, by the way. She built me an incredible boob, she really did. It just doesn’t look like the other side and it was never going to because of the shape of the ones I was given and what they looked like once puberty had kicked in.
A beautiful friend once said to me, “Are you placing beauty on how you’ve always looked?”
It was time to change my view of how I’m looking now. The version of me, before my Cancer journey, is screaming ‘find me, come back!’ But I have had to transition from then to now. I was given no choice, if I was to practice self acceptance.
The fact of the matter is though, behind the scar, it’s still the same heart. I may look different underneath clothes but I am still ‘me’. Just a better version of me, in my opinion. A stronger, braver, more courageous ‘me’. A more resilient ‘me’. There are people in my life who don’t recognise the new ‘me’ and I have to be ok with that. And so do they, however painful it is.
My loving heart hasn’t changed, it’s a heart that’s loved and lost, been broken many times and been put back together again, caused hurt to others on occasion because, let’s face it, nobody’s perfect and I’ve had to learn to be ok with that too. It’s a heart that has done its best to be true. Even if some don’t see it that way.
A heart that, even after all I’ve been through, is still beating.
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Abbie’s Boobie Blog 