Bye bye boobs
Five days to go until I farewell my breasts. I am comfortable with my decision but nervous about the emotional impact of the outcome. How can you anticipate an amputation of this nature, physically...
Forum Discussion
Kmakm, I don’t know if this helps and I know I don’t know you at all, but this is what I experienced.
Backstory. I had a WLE and axillary clearance, left boob only. Chemo shrunk tumour tiny enough that mastectomy wasn’t a physical necessity so I said no to it. My surgeon put me back together a lot smaller but it’s all natural and I kept my nipple. If you could see me you wouldn’t know I’d had breast cancer except if I was topless.
However. I grieved intensely for the death of my whole, unbroken, uncut breasts as a concept, as if a person had died. I still do. You never get that body back. It is a loss that is fundamental and profound and nobody has the right to tell you it isn’t. After surgery I treated my boob like a medical clinical thing for many many months after surgery. It lost its sexual sensual feminine identity totally. All I cared about was whether there was any infection or complications. And when it healed and settled after a long time I thought of it as a labrador puppy or a little sister in need of love and care. Then I started to dig the new shape and size. It’s much perkier! Bonus! I hate my lumpiness. I am not sure how I feel about my scar except that it hurts. Still. I don’t feel sexy again yet and I don’t know that I ever will. But I’ve finally landed on a feeling of having said goodbye and really loving the old but being fiercely protective and loving of the new. Now I have almost forgotten what the old boob even felt like. I never thought I’d be able to say this stuff without crying but I can.
Re: saying goodbye, before surgery I would strongly recommend finding an hour all to yourself if you can, be somewhere you feel peaceful at (I love forests), hold your breasts in your hands, close your eyes and just commit the whole moment to memory. The sensation, size, weight, warmth. All of it. Just have a moment of neutral memorising. And say to them literally Goodbye. Blow them a kiss. Smile. Savour it. This is what you’ll want to come back to in your memory someday but with a happy, loving view. Not a mournful one. It also gives you closure and I think that’s very important. It helped me a lot to know I said goodbye on purpose no matter how painful it was. You don’t get that chance often in life so I made myself do it.
Rambling a bit but I say all this to highlight that it’s a long long process from pre-op to acceptance. Everyone says goodbye in their own way. You will get through it. x
Backstory. I had a WLE and axillary clearance, left boob only. Chemo shrunk tumour tiny enough that mastectomy wasn’t a physical necessity so I said no to it. My surgeon put me back together a lot smaller but it’s all natural and I kept my nipple. If you could see me you wouldn’t know I’d had breast cancer except if I was topless.
However. I grieved intensely for the death of my whole, unbroken, uncut breasts as a concept, as if a person had died. I still do. You never get that body back. It is a loss that is fundamental and profound and nobody has the right to tell you it isn’t. After surgery I treated my boob like a medical clinical thing for many many months after surgery. It lost its sexual sensual feminine identity totally. All I cared about was whether there was any infection or complications. And when it healed and settled after a long time I thought of it as a labrador puppy or a little sister in need of love and care. Then I started to dig the new shape and size. It’s much perkier! Bonus! I hate my lumpiness. I am not sure how I feel about my scar except that it hurts. Still. I don’t feel sexy again yet and I don’t know that I ever will. But I’ve finally landed on a feeling of having said goodbye and really loving the old but being fiercely protective and loving of the new. Now I have almost forgotten what the old boob even felt like. I never thought I’d be able to say this stuff without crying but I can.
Re: saying goodbye, before surgery I would strongly recommend finding an hour all to yourself if you can, be somewhere you feel peaceful at (I love forests), hold your breasts in your hands, close your eyes and just commit the whole moment to memory. The sensation, size, weight, warmth. All of it. Just have a moment of neutral memorising. And say to them literally Goodbye. Blow them a kiss. Smile. Savour it. This is what you’ll want to come back to in your memory someday but with a happy, loving view. Not a mournful one. It also gives you closure and I think that’s very important. It helped me a lot to know I said goodbye on purpose no matter how painful it was. You don’t get that chance often in life so I made myself do it.
Rambling a bit but I say all this to highlight that it’s a long long process from pre-op to acceptance. Everyone says goodbye in their own way. You will get through it. x