Perfectly Imperfect - Part I
It's been a while. it's a pretty long (and not so interesting) story so I won't bore you with the list of reasons why time to blog has been...well...lacking...since early this year. Things have begun to normalize over the past month or so, so I'm going to try to dive back in to some regular (probably not daily) posts.
To be continued...
I thought it was time to write about my scarred up old body. For any BC followers, this is going to be one my, long lost, really real truth posts. For others, you will either find this interesting or solidly in the TMI category. To me, it's just me, so read on at your own risk.
To recap, I had a double mastectomy in April 2014 and then had to wait a year after radiation ended (in December 2014) before we could start reconstruction. The reconstruction process started in January of 2016, took a year and included 4 surgeries and about 6 months of tissue expansion in the middle. Since I'm now over 6 months beyond the last of the big procedures, I've started getting questions about the process and the results so it's time to share! Don't worry, as always I keep things family friendly - there will be diagrams but no actual pictures. Just for you, I took the time to map my scars. I realized that I put the port scar on the wrong side but you get the idea. So here it is...my map to the scars!
The abdominal scars are older and unrelated to breast cancer, same for the scar on my throat. I just wanted to show that I'm not kidding when I say I'm all scars. The scar on my back is what is left after my lat muscle was released and pulled around to my chest along with a football shaped piece of skin (hence the shape of the scar on my chest).
In real life, the implants turned out great! I'm very pleased with the way they turned out - I had nothing for more than a year and a half so I'm thrilled! But, as the diagram shows, they're never going to be "pretty". It's always interesting when my (non-plastic surgeon) doctors see them for the first time. Not for any other reason than to hear someone who knows where I came from comment on how great they look. lol If you saw them in person you'd probably be thinking - "Holy crap she's right! Frankenboobs!"
To be continued...