I don’t know that there are any actual benefits to being a breast cancer survivor, but if there’s one, it’s that I get to talk about boobs anytime I want.
I was blindsided by a comment the other day. It’s hard to say what’s more surprising – that I can still be affected by things like this, or that I was reading the comment section of an online article at all. I normally avoid those like the plague. Anyway.
There’s an article that’s making the rounds on Facebook again, it’s about a woman who posted nearly-nude pictures of herself showing the scars of her cancer surgeries as part of a project to raise cancer awareness. The headline reads, “Woman Loses 100 Friends After Posting Beautiful Post-Surgery Photos On Facebook.”
Whether I believe the story about the false friends or not, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of women who used the comment section to point out that she has the option of getting nipple reconstruction if she wants, and to suggest and/or imply that if she did this, there wouldn’t be as much backlash. This blew me away – that’s what they got out of seeing those photos? That’s what they got out of hearing her story? That’s how they chose to be supportive? As though yet another surgery would somehow fix all of the pain she has suffered. As though she is somehow obligated to make herself more palpable to the general public before subjecting them to the sight of her body.
As many readers of this blog know, in 2013 I had a bilateral mastectomy to treat a very large breast cancer tumor. Both breasts were completely removed, including my nipples. I decided to have reconstruction in the form of implants, so that I could look ‘normal’ while wearing clothes without having to deal with prosthetics (I have trouble just keeping a shirt tucked in, I can’t even imagine all of the problems I would have with removable boobs), and then to have nipple reconstruction afterward. At the time it wasn’t even a decision for me, it was a given. Obviously I would want to make myself look as ‘normal’ as possible, and get my body back to what it was before cancer darkened my door. I admired the holy bejesus out of anyone with the mental and emotional strength to say no to reconstruction, but I wanted it. I wanted to be what I thought was ‘normal’ again.
The process of reconstruction takes longer than most think, especially when you have a long treatment plan involving both chemotherapy and radiation. At first I had ‘tissue expanders’, which are implants that can be expanded or deflated by inserting saline through a port in the implant. They were placed at the same time as my mastectomy, then after a four-week healing process I went in and had them filled with 50 cc’s of saline per week until I reached a size I was happy with.
Sounds easy, but they were a nightmare. They were quite hard, slightly pointy, and were sutured to my ribs to keep them from moving around. So not only did I look like I was wearing undergarments more suited to the 1950’s, but they felt tight and foreign. Some women call this feeling the “iron bra”, meaning it feels as though you’re constantly wearing a bra made of iron, which was pretty much my experience. Friends could feel them when they hugged me, and my children had bruises on their cheeks from coming at me too hard for a hug. They sat up nice and tall, I’ll give them that, but for the most part I couldn’t wait to be rid of them.
At the end of my radiation treatment, nine months after having the tissue expanders placed, I found out that my exchange surgery (the surgery where the tissue expanders are exchanged for my final implants – which are much softer and more realistic) couldn’t happen for another six months. My plastic surgeon said that my radiated skin needed that much time to heal. I was crushed. It felt like I would never be done with this whole cancer experience, that I would never feel normal again.
Because that’s it, right? We all want to feel normal. We all want to look around and feel as though, for the most part, we fit in.
So I cried and raged, and hung out in my self-pity for a while. Then the subject of my nipples came up. Nipple reconstruction is a surgical process where they pull up some of the remaining skin on the breast and tie it off like a purse string to create a little nub. Then they tattoo around the nub so that from a distance it looks like an areola. Presto, nipples.
I already knew that nipple reconstruction couldn’t be done until a minimum of six months after exchange surgery. Implants take time to “settle” and find exactly where they will hang. What this meant as I sat in my plastic surgeon’s office was that it would be another year until I would be finished. Another year until I could consider myself ‘normal’.
Holy crap.
Not only that, but my divorce was on hold until this whole cancer thing was over. My husband and I had been separated for a long time, but he graciously agreed to put the legalities on hold during my treatment so that I could stay on his insurance. All I could think was, “I’m NEVER going to get my divorce!”
So one day during a follow-up appointment with my plastic surgeon’s assistant, I unloaded all of my grief on to the poor woman, lamenting how long everything was going to take, and she had an interesting idea. She suggested that I consider forgoing the surgical part of the nipple reconstruction. We had laughed before about how nice it was that I didn’t have to wear a bra anymore – implants don’t sag or bounce, and since I don’t have nipples I don’t have to wear a bra to cover them. So she offered that maybe I didn’t need the ‘nubs’, I could just stick with the tattoos. That would cut six months off of my reconstruction plan, and allow my divorce to move forward right after my exchange surgery. And I wouldn’t ever have to wear a bra again.
This opened up an entire set of ideas I hadn’t thought of. I could do whatever I wanted with the tattoos – they didn’t even have to look like nipples if I didn’t want them to. It was already my plan to have dragons tattooed on instead of realistic areolas, so without the little nubs, without the need to make them look ‘normal’, I could do whatever I wanted. I could get dragon tattoos that looked like nipples from a distance, or I could get full-sized dragons that even covered up my mastectomy scars.
Normal, schmormal, I could do whatever I wanted.
Around this same time I saw a video about a tattoo artist in Baltimore who does amazing work – breast cancer survivors from all over the country travel to see him and get 3D nipple tattoos. One woman was featured, and her interviews were heartbreaking. She truly felt that no one would want to marry her without normal looking breasts. I understand that, I understand how hard it is to undress in front of a mirror, how impossible it is to navigate the dating world when you’re missing something as fundamental as nipples. Just watching the video made me start to doubt myself again, to think maybe I should try to make mine look more normal.
By the end of the video the tattoo artist was successful, and the woman was ecstatic. He did an amazing job – she really did just look like she’d had enhancements done instead of a mastectomy. But I couldn’t help feeling like a freak all over again. Her scars were so small, and mine are gigantic. No matter what I do, my breasts will never look like hers – they are truly never going to look ‘normal’ again. I realized that even if I had nipple reconstruction, even if I traveled to freaking Baltimore and got the best tattoos ever, I wouldn’t have what she has.
I will never have what she has.
That’s one part of cancer you don’t hear about very often. The jealousy. On the outside, survivors are incredibly supportive – we listen and laugh and nod in agreement with each other. But on the inside sometimes we’re comparing. I’m jealous of your tiny scars, you’re jealous of how well my skin held up after radiation. You think my cancer experience was less awful than yours because I only had chemo for five months, and I think your cancer experience was easier because there were no surgeries. It’s not a bitter kind of jealousy, and it doesn’t keep us from being empathetic. It’s something we might even joke about with each other.
But sometimes it hurts.
So that’s how I felt about this woman. I cried for her and what she had to go through, and I cried for me because I’ll never look as good as she looks now. I’ll never be able to undress in front of someone without feeling that I don’t look normal.
I’m used to my scars, I don’t shock myself when I look in the mirror anymore. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I like them. I’m supposed to be proud of them, to show my strength by being proud to wear them, but that’s easier said than done. Mostly I count the days until I can get giant dragon tattoos to cover them up and pull focus from them. Then the fact that my breasts aren’t ‘normal’ will be my choice. It will be on purpose, and no longer something that anyone would think to pity.
It occurs to me though, what the hell is ‘normal’, anyway? Do my breasts look so much weirder than breasts with extra-large nipples, or misshapen nipples? Why the hell do we agree to this ridiculous standard of what our bodies should look like? I promise you, those standards are not being upheld solely by men – men who love breasts love them in any form they can get hold of them. The standards are set, and maintained, by women. Women who hide their bodies if they don’t match whatever the fashion media (which is mostly run by women) has decided is beautiful. Women who berate other women for exposing their ‘abnormal’ bodies. Women who make seemingly kind suggestions that surgery might be a good option for anyone not fitting the standard.
To the commenters on that article who thought they were being kind when they suggested a survivor get further augmentation to look ‘normal’, I say no. It is not kind to imply that someone should change their body to fit your tastes. It is not kind to suggest that she should hide away in embarrassment either. As women we have a responsibility to hold higher standards for ourselves. We have the immeasurable ability to be supportive and empathetic with each other. We bond together in hard times, lift each other up, rely on each other. We owe it to ourselves to support one another unreservedly. To tell every woman – whether she fits the standard definition of normal or not – “You are beautiful, and you are perfect, just as you are.”
Breast cancer is becoming more and more common, and the number of women who look like me is growing every day. As medical science advances and treatments are improved, this disease isn’t the death sentence it used to be – therefore the number of survivors of breast cancer is growing too. So guess what, there are a lot of us running around without nipples these days.
We are becoming the new normal. Get used to it.
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