It's time to fire this baby up again. I quit writing during my first diagnosis because I grew weary of getting bad news, of sharing bad news, weary of fighting, weary of feeling frightened and sad, weary of being Carrie-the-brave-cancer-warrior. Two years of constant assault on my body and spirit got the better of me, I guess, and I lost the will to write about it. And life sort of went on, too. Lots of other stuff happened. Non-cancer stuff. Which was nice, even when it wasn't nice. But I want to write again, and though I'm doing other writing elsewhere, it felt like a good time to revisit this little corner of myself. If you've stopped in to join me...well, hello there. Welcome. And thanks for coming.
Eight years ago today I went to sleep to a fentanyl lullaby and woke up a breast amputee. After looping the loop on the cancer coaster a few times in our quest to eradicate disease, I finally submitted to a completion mastectomy with immediate DIEP flap reconstruction (so I had the bad boob taken off and a new one made in its place all in one big operation). When I woke up from the 8- or 9-hour surgery I felt like I had been hit by a rollercoaster rather than riding one, and for a good 48 hours I deeply regretted my choice of boob job.
It's a brutal procedure.
Sliced in half hip to hip, the contents of my rotten tit scooped out, traitorous nipple chopped off like Marie Antoinette's head, and the contents of my stretchmarked belly crammed back into the slack envelope of skin once caressed and adored by my babies and lovers. When I woke up, crying in pain, at least 7 different tubes snaked out of body: four stitched into my chest and hips to drain off serous fluid produced by the wounds in self defense, a urinary catheter, a morphine drip, a saline drip, plastic oxygen mask over my face, legs encased in intermittent pneumatic compression devices (to reduce risk of DVT), and warmed to Bikram temps by a Bair Hugger (to keep the transplanted tissues alive). Blood pressure cuff squeezing, ECG sticky pads sticking, beeps and alarms beeping and alarming, bright lights blinding me, tearstains on my cheekbones, thermometers being shoved under my tongue and my gown being lifted every hour to look for the tell-tale sign of tissue death: black skin.
It was ugly. It was terrifying. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I was trapped and utterly dependent on other human beings to keep me alive at this stage. I kept thinking of a book I'd read long ago called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It detailed the horror of being locked inside one's own body. The claustrophobia of being trapped inside one's own skin.
My core muscles had been plundered in the surgeon's search for the deep inferior epigrastric artery that he would later use to keep the harvested tissue alive inside my breast skin. To work this microsurgical sorcery, he had to crack my ribcage open to gain access to the blood vessel that would become a lifeline for my new boob. My flabby maternal belly fat rose in status equivalent to the Endeavour docking at the International Space Station. Woohoo. High fives all round. A new hole was cut for my belly button to be poked through, and as a result I lost a cute little mole I'd always had (but also lost my torso's resemblance to Homer Simpson's).
I had to learn to walk again, hunched over so as not to rip open the stitches holding my top half and bottom half together. No coughing, sneezing or laughing, lest my guts ended up shooting out of my midriff like projectile vomit. And there was a lot of pain relief involved (hello, tramadol, you absolute beauty!). Later I had some touch up revision surgeries to nip and tuck the 'dog ears' at the ends of my hip scars, to create a nipple-like bump on the reconstructed breast with a scalpel and some origami-magic, some liposuction on the tummy scar to even out the contours and the very weird experiece of having an areola tattooed on a disk of skin that had once been my belly and now covers the hole - created when my exiled nip was chucked in the bin - like an elbow patch on a tweed jacket.
As agonising as it all was, it was worth it. Eight years on I still look upon my own body as a miracle, both in terms of the cosmetic result and how determined the body is to heal, adapt and keep going. And you can bet your ass I don't look in the mirror and worry about cellulite or crows feet.
I invite you to take a minute today to admire your own body and thank it for whatever it does for you. For whatever it has been through on your behalf. Be thankful for how it has healed, adapted and kept on going.
Our bodies, all of them, are precious and wonderful miracles.
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