don't know what to do

Wow that is some family history, lucky for you you have advances in medicine and diagnostics on your side. And I did not know that about dense breasts and losing weight. Makes sense i guess.

With breast reconstruction its important to see it as a long term goal. Yes there is lots of scaring for some women but we are all different and some ladies have very minimal scaring. It depends on what procedures are performed and which might depend on the stage the women is at in her treatment/surgery. Personally i have increased scars on my breasts due to two previousl lumpectomies then the decision to incorporate those scars into the mastectomy scar. I have found i am healing really well an in no time the scars will fade.

The same is for the levels of discomfort. Every procedure has its challanges and each person has individual recovery times and discomfort. It does look and sound quite scary though.

I hope there will be more ladies sharing their stories with photos on the breast reconstruction blog especially those who have been complete, so we can get a good idea of what it might be like further down the track and a bit more of a balanced view.

Good luck with your plans XXXLouie

Chris,

Like you, my breast tissue is dense - very little or no fat tissue - which, when I found out, explained that whenever I lost weight, the boobs stayed the same. I will now be asking about the monitoring of the remaining breast. What I have also remembered is that although I had a paternal aunt who had breast cancer twice, she did live till she was 86, there is a lot of cancer in my family, maternal grandmother died from bowel cancer at only 24, another paternal aunt had lung cancer but lived till she was 83, father died of some weird blood cancer, mother as a result of melanoma. so it is all around me, even my paternal grandparents had cancer of some sort - not sure what now and those who would know are no longr with us - so I do worry.  a friend who had a double mastectomy earlier this year has urged me to have both done as I am not small breasted and she feels i would be so out of balance. i dread the thought of reconstruction as from the pics there's lots of scarring, not to mention the discomfort. In my case, i would probably also end up having a breast reduction of the remaining breast.  I really don't know what to do, i have 3 weeks to make the decision surgery is on 27/11/13 but I just don't know what to do.

Thank you for taking the time to respond nd for your thoughts

regards

Ranveig

I elected to have a double mastectomy, as it turned out there was early neoplasm in the unaffected breast despite negative MRI,ultrasound and mammogram.  Obviously for me double mastectomy was the right decision, however, having now been through the double mastectomy I would encourage anyone facing the decision to consider, initially,  just doing what's necessary on the affected side.  As has been said you can alway decide to have the other breast off when you are considering your reconstruction options.  We're so fortunate to have this site to have frank discussions about options.  Who else would understand.

All the best

I feel like im in the minority here on this site but unless there was compelling medical reasons for double mascetomy i find myself wondering about this and i hear women still worry about cancer reoccuring somewhere else; plus the surgical times and times off recovering and re doing etc; i know a small group of women it makes great sense and good psychological sense to remove both but i like that i have only a small scar and only radiation therapy-- my life is intact, i can work, mainly function and have time when i have more well being back.  i might be missing something but if i had cancer in one leg and there was no medical reason to indicate that cancer would spread to the other --why would i have that one removed too?  not looking forward to hormonal treatment --in part because of what i hear on this website though--but will cross that bridge when it comes and hope for the best!