Unicorn

Ok up until yesterday I have been reading about the disease of breast cancer. Treatments of it and surgical choices in regards to survival rates. Peeked briefly at reconstruction surgery as my surgeon brought up I could have reconstruction surgery at the time of removal. Ok this seemed reasonable to me as then one surgery all done. Well, not exactly.

Last night I realized that after today, I will most likely be making surgery decisions and I had better read up on reconstruction.

So here we go:

There are basically three choices 1. this crazy flap trap thing where they actually take a flap of your body, from your stomach or butt or thigh or somewhere and make a boob. Surgery is about 12 to 17 hours. Recovery time is ungodly and it can fail. Fail? yes because its microscopic surgery where they are hooking up all the veins to supply blood the new boob and if it fails then the new boob stops getting the blood it needs....ok I stopped reading at this point. Ewwwww. Rotting boob on chest. That's all I could invision. Decision No. no no no no couldn't pay me enough money to do this. On to the next one

2. reconstruction surgery at time of mastectomy. Ok seems reasonable. It adds 2 to 3 hours to an already expected 2 hours surgery. So fast math tells me under for 4 to 5 hours. Not feeling so good about it now. Recovery time in hospital a couple of days longer. Recovery time over all longer. More pain. I'm not liking any of this but, its not like the mastectomy alone is going to be a walk in the park. But, there's more. They are basically doing a boob job. So saline filled silicone bag goes into the empty skin. And poof new boob. But, because its a foreign object your body is going to make heavy scar tissue around this bag which could displace the bag and have it ride up high on your chest or to the right or to the left or well just not where it should be and you'll be lop sided. Then the scar tissue could form so heavy that it actually squeezes the bag and pop goes the boob. The scar tissue could become painful. Ok all this leads to more surgery to fix the wondering/deflating boob. And you're going to have to have surgery at some point down the line because these things just don't last a life time to begin with. So new boob=more surgery. Not feeling warm and fuzzy. Oh and its not just a one shot deal because about a year after they go back to do a second surgery to give you a nipple. Yea they construct one out of skin all kinds of ways for them to do this and then...because the nipple just looks like skin, later you go to the doctors office and he...tattoos the nipple to match the color of your other nipple. Want to see my tattoo...flash.

Option 3. Delayed reconstruction. Same as 2 only done later down the road. But, this is going to add one more part. So quickly. 1. surgery to put in expanders to stretch the skin to the desirable size usually takes up to 8 weeks. 2.another surgery to put the bag in. 3. surgery to put on the nipple. 4. tattoo.

Oh and we are not done. We are forgetting someone here, yes the other boob. The new boob is going to be new. Perky. Not matching the other boob. So the healthy unscathed boob, needs readjusting this could be anything from lifted to its own bag of scar producing tissue and all the problems that could entail.

All this to put a non functioning appendage onto my chest? Is our society so boob obessive that women are actually putting themselves through all this torture. Invasive surgery. Pain. Possibly complications. Further risks?

Conclusion:

I'm going to be a unicorn. And as some of you know I don't wear bras and I'll be damned if I'm going to wear one just so I can stuff a sock into the empty cup to appease society's sensibilies. I'm going to wear my battle scars as a badge of courage! I'll wear what ever the hell I want and be proud to be a unicorn!

Then again I'm not right in the head right now and delayed reconstruction surgery can be done at anytime. So if later I want my boob back and can go through the torture and do it.

But, I can't play the ukulele with it, can't paint with it, can't drive the car with it. All it can do is fill up a bra cup and I don't wear those.

Unless some medical professional does a sale's job of the century, I think I'm ok without it. I don't gain my self worth or sense of who I am from them. I didn't give them a whole lot of thought before I got breast cancer. Now they are on my mind because they are trying to kill me.

Yep, I'm going give living as a unicorn a try.