Going Flat

This year has been a challenge. Not only were we still in the throes of Covid-19, being alienated from our friends and family, but I found out I had breast cancer. For five days I thought I was going to die. Then, I met a really nice woman, Dr. Ting, who took my hands in her and told me “you’re not going to die.” I cried. As it turns out, there are as many kinds of breast cancer as there are people and I had the “good kind.” My kind was treatable. But there was a price. And that price was my breasts. They had to go. To be fair, only the right one had to, but I figured the dissymmetry would drive me insane.

Before that could happen, however, I had to choose from the options for reconstruction: implants, DIEP flap or autonomous tissue, and aesthetic flat closure or no reconstruction. In a quiet moment I considered the freedom that would come from not having breasts at all. I was leaning that way until I mentioned it to my husband and he made “that face.” I never want to see that look when he’s looking at me, so that idea was scrapped. I looked into implants, but the plastic surgeon that Dr. Ting works with was booked out until July. At the time, that seemed like a long time to wait. Little did I know.

I looked into the DIEP flap procedure and found out that they create the look of breasts using tissue from your own abdomen. It essentially gave you a free tummy-tuck with your new breasts. I was in! Unfortunately, there was only one surgeon in the city who performs it, and she was in a different healthcare system so I’d have to repeat some of the tests before getting a consultation. It took two months to jump through all the hoops and then I found out she was booked until spring of 2022. In the meantime, however, she could work with a breast surgeon to get the cancer removed and put in temporary “tissue expanders.” I figured it was better than nothing, so we went ahead and booked my surgery for June 9th, 2021.

The expanders caused so much pain, I was taking the max dose of medication I could. On the morning of June 18th, I woke up and my right breast had ballooned up over night and was causing extraordinary pain. The tissue expander had nicked an artery and I’d lost a lot of blood. I went into emergency surgery and the surgeon on call fixed the bleeder and, at my request, removed the expanders. I would have to put off reconstruction.

When I’d finally healed enough, I went back to see what my options were. They were the same, but I would need the expanders put back in to do either implants or DIEP flat. I was disappointed, but if that’s what was required, that’s what I would do. I got an appointment for December 9th—exactly six months after the first surgery—and underwent three full months of physical therapy to try and break up the scar tissue that had built up. We put the expanders back in, and only two days later I was back in the hospital. This time, the plastic surgeon convinced me to keep them in after he repaired the artery. I shouldn’t have listened.

For nine weeks, I endured grueling pain as more and more scar tissue built up around the expanders. My husband couldn’t stand to see me in so much pain. He said to me one day that he didn’t need me to have breasts. He just needed me alive. I got an appointment on January 28th to have them removed for good. On January 25th, the doctor got sick and cancelled my surgery. It took another week to reschedule, but I finally got them out on February 3rd. I’ve gone flat and I’m never going back.