My surgery for breast implants was nine days ago. Already I have been back to Little Rock. It was supposed to be twice actually--my geneticist appointment fell through due to him having a meeting. My dad will take me to Little Rock on Monday where I again have to bare my breasts (or what used to be my breasts--not sure what you say after you have a masectomy and reconstruction is mostly done) and hear about how they won't look like this in the end--thank you Jesus. I have ripples starting to form in one of them and I don't like it. However, I look at how it was fifty years ago when women couldn't have recontruction at all and feel blessed.
On each of these trips to and from Little Rock, I find myself lying down in the backseat wondering when it will end and looking up the backseat window at what has been big fluffy clouds each trip since coming home from the surgery. I have seen every thing you can imagine in those clouds. Mostly good things--butterflies and angels but when the pain comes in it turns more into bats and demons until the pain meds take away most of the pain and I fall asleep.
As Shawn and I sat waiting on Dr H for my first post-op appointment this past week, I told him if I had back all the time waiting on doctors, going through surgery and recovery time, time spent worrying over whether or not I would survive cancer and now Cowden's; I would be about 19 years old again. Would I want that time back? That's something I've been wondering. Always before I would have said yes but now I'm not so sure.
I've read some interesting things lately that make so much sense. If I had back that time--if my life had been normal as far as most people's lives are--where would I be? I read a quote that God has to break us down to build us back up again. If this is so, I am hoping that I am as broken down as it gets and I'm ready to be built back up again.
The psychological effects of the masectomy have started. This past surgery also involved the removal of my nipples because back in Feb when it was done we didn't realize cancer was being removed--we thought it was preventative. Two weeks later we found out it saved my life. It explained the nagging feeling I had for two years to get looked at because things were not normal in any way in there though I was being told fibrocystic was the issue. That was a whole other issue. Things had went bad in there and I was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ in both breasts--affecting 70% of one and 60% of the other.
In situ meant the masectomy would have been recommended treatment anyway. If reconstruction hadn't been an option then I don't know if I would have had the "preventative" treatment. Because of all the cysts, they likely wouldn't have found the cancer until it had became invasive and my kids could have lost their mom before either of them even reached the age of 10.
I've had my thyroid gland removed, a kidney, an ovary, etc but those were different. Though I could see the scar on the outside the missing organs were from the inside and maybe in a way I have been trying to pretend I haven't lost them? Seeing my implants and myself without nipples brought it home to me that I have lost a lot more than just my breasts. I worry now about my extreme risk of other cancers but I'm trying to keep it under control. There's not a lot more of me that can be lost before that's it for this body. All due to a genetic fluke that happened some time in the fall of 1976 when I was conceived. A condition that approximately 1 in 250,000 people have and almost none of them have it affect them as severely as it has me--or at least as early as it has me. Most people present with skin tags in their late 20's. I had those skin tags (removed for now during the implant surgery) begin during my pregnancy with Hannah more than three years ago. Everything else began early. Starting in 1984 when I was 6.
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