We just happened to be flicking through channels last night and we stopped on Channel fours embarrassing Bodies. This inst a channel we normally watch, but my friend mentioned it the previous night so we decided to give it a go.
Randomly, there was a piece about some relatives with the genetic BRCA1 mutation. There were 3 women, all at different phases of discovery. There was the Aunty, whose mother had died from breast cancer and carried the gene, and there were her 2 nieces; whose father carried the gene.
The Aunty had opted for double mastectomy and full hysterectomy. The older of the two nieces had found out she had the mutated gene so opted to have full mastectomy with reconstruction straight after and then her sister, she had yet to discover if she had it.
The Aunts double mastectomy had been a disaster as she had gone through 7 failed reconstructions that left her in excruciating pain and horribly disfigured; so she opted for having a total removal. This helped her a lot with the pain but she was still considerably scarred up.
It showed the oldest sisters double mastectomy operation and crikey, its brutal. They carried out an immediate reconstruction, but for some reason, it never crossed my mind that they would remove the nipple. They use a sling made from pig skin to support the implant at the bottom but there is so much scarring. I am also confused, I cant get my head around just how bad a job they did/do of the reconstructions. Obviously, I'm not in the medical profession and have no understanding of how tricky it is to reconstruct a breast at this point but surely, there are better ways. than this.
I am quite a vain person, I like pretty things, I like things to look as good as possible. I wouldn't break my back to sculpt my body every day of my life if I didn't. Right now, grasping the concept of a double mastectomy and the aesthetic consequences of this, are sending me under. Whilst this may seem big headed; I have great boobs. I am incredibly lucky that they have remained fairly perky and they just have a fantastic shape. I have always been pretty proud of them and the shallow thought of them being replaced with something that, I would find repellent, is something I am really going to struggle with and could potentially have an enormous impact on my mental well being. Its not like you can take it back, once the damage is done, it seemingly only gets worse when they try to fix it.
I am genuinely pretty let down by myself for taking this point of view, I think it is exacerbated by the fact I have never been close to anyone who has had cancer, so have no reality to draw from in that area. I have realised that trying to get my head around it before I know is never going to happen. I think what I have to do first is just mentally prepare myself for bad news and prepare myself for a huge amount of self reflection and soul searching off the back of it. My opinion before, was that I would definitely have the surgery if I have a positive result; I now see that that was an incredibly naive point of view and the impact goes way beyond what I imagined.
There is also the fact that if I do have it and go through with it, I will pretty much definitely never be a mother. And even if I could be, I would never have the close bond of breast feeding to experience. Tom and I have always said that if we decided we wanted kids and my body clock had done ticking then so be it. However, that's totally different to opting to take away the chance totally... I think I have buried my head in the sand and I am glad I had this wake up call. It has made me realise I wasn't being balanced in my view point at all and I wasn't being realistic about who I am and how I think, that is going to take some time to work through.
I appreciate what I have written sounds harsh, especially if you are someone or know someone who has undergone a double mastectomy. I am not saying these women are ugly at all, I judge myself very differently to how I judge others. What I class as unbearable to me, would never make me draw that opinion of another person. To me, I admire the women who have undergone this procedure even more than I did before. It isn't just lumps of flesh that are going, they are part of who you are and who you have been for many years and is something that can rock your world in a million different ways. My hat goes off to their bravery, every single day and i only hope that I can be that strong if it comes to that.
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