Forum Discussion
Worries/Questions regarding Mastectomy
Hello, I wasn't sure which section to place my question in so I went with newly diagnosed (hope that was ok). I am 56 and was diagnosed with Stage 3 HER2+ and ER+ breast cancer in July 2019. I had a...
Just to add - the reasons people don’t want to lose a breast (or both) are many and various. As far as I am concerned, none are ‘better’ than others, it’s a really personal thing . Faced with a relatively large and possibly aggressive tumour, I had little problem in accepting a mastectomy. A partial didn’t seem useful and was possibly less effective. I haven’t found adapting (no reconstruction) difficult. But for others, it’s a profound loss of identity, relieved to an extent by reconstruction. For many, as noted by @jintie, surgery is the painless, easy bit physically, but can be hard emotionally. It may help to analyse exactly what you can’t accept and work out how important that is to you longer term.