I’ll Be Embracing My New Breasts and Life, After Breast Cancer Surgery

The surgeon, an efficient, capable, 12-year-old looking, pixie of a woman, is assuring me the cancer in my right breast is surgically removable, and surgery was likely all I would need. I’m relieved. I’m also making jokes — because that’s what I do.

As she is leaving the exam room to retrieve notes — and paper to draw breasts on — I say,

“Well damn, I was hoping to get a breast lift out of this.”

The pixie-like doctor casually turns from the door and remarks,

“Oh, we can do that.”

“And insurance covers that?” my sister asks. She’s the logical one of the two of us.

“Yes,” the doctor says, as she disappears through the door.

My sister and I are gobsmacked.

I stand in front of the mirror and gently lift my breasts. It’s a nice look. As a bonus, my back and neck stop hurting. Huh.

My 12-year-old doctor returns with paper for drawing and making notes. I’m expecting crayons as well, but she uses an actual marker. Close enough.

She sits next to me and draws a saggy breast. She marks the place on the breast where the surgery will be.

I’m wondering if all the breasts she draws are saggy, or only those for women my age.

She marks on the breast where the cancer cells are, and where she will be operating. Underneath that drawing she draws two more breasts.

Also saggy.

She then draws triangles from the bottom of the areola to the underside of the saggy breasts. She draws another line under each breast. These are the cuts she will make to lift the breasts.

I’m so confused.

Doesn’t lifting mean pulling the breasts up from the top? No — oh naive ones, which include me — it does not.

For reasons I still don’t completely understand, the breasts will lift themselves once breast tissue and some skin is removed from beneath, and after the skin making up the legs of the triangle are pulled and stitched together.

It’s also called a breast reduction, since they remove breast tissue from both breasts to make them match. I would never have opted for a breast reduction as elective surgery, but here I am.

Why do I get a free breast lift as a gift from cancer?

So, technically, it’s not called a breast lift. It’s called a restoration mastoplexy.

The lift is the gift. The goal is to keep both breasts matching after a tumor is removed from one.

When I had a much larger benign tumor removed twenty years ago, they didn’t offer restoration. My right breast, the one with the tiny cancer cells now, has since been a little smaller, and saggier, than the left breast. The right nipple has been slightly off-center.

That will all be remedied.

Potentially, my battle with bras will be over.

After recovery of three to four weeks, it’s possible I won’t have to wear bras at all, if I choose.

On the other hand, I’ve had to buy compression post-surgery bras to wear during recovery. I’ve been wearing them daily to get used to them.

Guess what?

They are amazingly comfortable. My years of avoiding substantial, non-sexy bras were wasted. I could have been wearing more comfortable bras, had less sagging, and less back and neck pain all along.

Live and learn.

Living is the point after all

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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