Tomorrow morning I am having a second surgery. My first surgery, in December, was a bilateral mastectomy. They took my breast tissue, the skin surrounding my breasts, and my nipples. My plastic surgeon used donor tissue to create a pocket to hold an implant in my chest cavity, and inserted the implant, called an expander, into my chest cavity. He pulled the skin from below and above where my breasts had been, and sewed a neat line across the two lumps where my breasts used to be.
Then he used a stud finder to locate a piece of metal in the expander that was placed in my chest cavity and under my skin, inserted a needle through my skin into the metal disc under my skin, and filled the expander with saline. This is called a "fill".
In the weeks after my mastectomy, I would go to my plastic surgeon's office, where he would use the same type of stud finder, locate the metal disc in the implant under my skin, and mark it with an X. Then he would swab it down, and insert a needle and pump saline into the expander.
The act of this never hurt, only pinched or felt kind of uncomfortable. But I got used to it. It became commonplace. Sometimes my chest would hurt the next day, very painful in the beginning, and less so as time went on. The muscle anchoring the top part of my expander would be pulled and stretched from the saline injection; as the expander, well, expanded, the skin and muscle would stretch out.
The end result of this a size and shape that approximates the breasts I once had, or failing that, the size and shape of breasts that might exist on some woman somewhere. These lumps look nothing like my breasts. They look like oval shaped lumps. They feel like hard rocks encased in plastic. You can feel the metal disc easily, if you just lightly touched my chest. I could flex my pectoral muscles and move my expanders - it was sort of my party trick for the first half of 2015.
What happens tomorrow is called exchange surgery. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Pop one out and put another in! Well, it's a bit more complicated. The surgeon will open up the same incisions he used for my first surgery. He will repair the pocket on my left side, and possibly my right, too. He will remove the expanders and place permanent silicone gel implants in my chest cavity. These are nicknamed by the press "gummy bear implants", if you want to google them. Then he will sew those incisions back up again, another neat red line across the two lumps on my chest. It should take about two hours, and I will be under general anesthesia.
Today I was thinking about this surgery, and how much we as a society downplay breast reconstruction. This surgery is not the end of my reconstruction, it's merely another step in the process. It will take weeks of healing before the implants "settle" and I could face further surgeries or procedures to get my body to have something that vaguely resembles the breasts I lost.
In short, it's not a "boob job". I am not getting new boobies, and they will not be better than yours when we are 80. I can only surmise that our language around reconstructing a body part generally seen only in women is another mark of sexism, misogyny, or the patriarchy. I cannot imagine gleefully commenting on the rebuilding of a leg or arm, for instance, the same way my long and sometimes difficult breast reconstruction is remarked on. I cannot imagine saying "Well, you are lucky! Free bionic arm, dude! Better than my arm!"
Yet it's okay to say that about women's breasts.
Let me be clear. I am not speaking for anyone else but me. I am not the representative of all women, or all women with breast cancer, or all women with stage one breast cancer who opted for a double mastectomy and implant based reconstruction. If you personally want to call your breasts "the girls" or "boobies" or "tatas" or any other slang term, you have that right. I do not want those body parts that I had amputated called those things. They were breasts, so that's what I call them. I'm not calling my big toe a "piggy", either. See the blog title - Not a Cutesy Slogan.
When I started this blog, I asked a lovely writer if I could use that name, and she told me she didn't own it - of course, go ahead and use it. She's a kickass sister in arms, and I urge you to read her and her blogroll on this same topic of the language we use. There are links at the end of this post. There are many of us women who have lived through or died because of breast cancer who reject these terms.
I almost didn't continue this blog. I almost deleted it. I didn't want to be seen as a mouthpiece for all my fellow sisters, and I didn't want to be seen as an attention seeking navel gazer. I just wanted to speak my truth in the hopes that my voice had a purpose larger than my little life. I struggled with this for months - my feeling that personal blogging was pure hubris, but my conviction that those who speak their truth change the world. I had a small army of people telling me to write, and a small army of voices inside my head telling me it was silly. I haven't really reconciled this, I have just come to the place where the words need to get out - so out they go.
Tonight I want to thank all of you who cheered me on, who prayed for me or said nice things when I wrote something or sent me a random text or held me in your thoughts. I want to thank all the professors in my life who helped radicalize me, and the women who taught me a lot about the inequalities and inequities of cancer, cancer treatment, and what kinds of cancers get attention. I want to thank all the teachers that taught me compassion and kindness and empathy. I want to thank everyone who said in one way or another, "you have a voice - use it". I plan to.
And if you have read this far, I hope you come back. I have a really funny story about how the hospital lost me the night before my surgery, and some really interesting links to read and discuss, and some good old social justice rabble rousing. And possibly some navel gazing, too.
Here's some links to keep you busy while I'm having surgery!
Get Up Swinging
Nancy's Point
Living Beyond Breast Cancer
Cheers!
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