I had a double mastectomy when I was 40 years old in 1997. I was married and had two children under the age of 11.
Cutting off my breasts when I didn’t have cancer seemed radical, but it wasn’t radical to me. I have the BRCA1 gene mutation. That means I have a 60% chance of getting ovarian cancer and an 85% chance of getting breast cancer ― the deadly kind that doesn’t respond to treatment. For me, those odds felt like 100%.
Before genetic testing was available, my mother got ovarian cancer when she was 62 and a few years later, she died. Then two of my cousins got breast cancer before they were 60 and both of them died. So, I got a prophylactic hysterectomy and a double mastectomy.
Now I’m 64, and I know I made the right decision because I’m alive.
Before the surgery, I spoke to a few other women who had mastectomies. They told me how it hurt to lift their arms after the procedure and how it took months to stretch their skin to accommodate the implants used to make reconstructed breasts. None of that scared me. I knew that a cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy, and death were, of course, much worse.
So, I had the surgery and then took my son to his first day of kindergarten three days later with surgical drains hiding under an oversized shirt.
I didn’t ask the plastic surgeon how my breasts would look after the reconstruction. I even thought they would look better, fuller, like they did before I nursed two babies. I was wrong.
My implants are nothing like the ones many women get to look and feel sexier. Mine, the kind you get when the surgeon scrapes every bit of breast tissue out, are right under the skin. The skin covering the implants is thin and taut, and cold to the touch ― a different temperature than the rest of my body.
It turns out that breast reconstruction after a radical mastectomy is a difficult process. After the initial surgery, I had surgery six more times over the next 15 years to deal with the pain caused by scar tissue, and also to try to make my boobs look more normal. Three times, the plastic surgeons attached fake nipples made from skin taken from my pubic area, and they always fell off within a month of the surgery.
My boobs were ugly, and I hated to let anyone see them. Even doctors couldn’t hide their disgust. When I went to the dermatologist once a year for a skin cancer screening, I reminded him about my mastectomies and reconstruction to avoid the slightest change in his facial expression, like I saw the last time he opened my paper gown.
After the surgery, I shut the door when I took a shower or turned away from my husband when I changed my clothes in front of him. I never asked him if he wanted to see or feel my boobs, nor did he ask. I kept my T-shirt on during sex for the remaining 12 years of our marriage, and we never talked about it.
After my divorce and more reconstructive surgery, my breasts, now with tattooed nipples where the flesh ones should have been, looked better, but they still weren’t “normal.” They were too hard and too cold. When I started dating, it had been 30 years since I was with a man other than my husband. I was anxious about intimacy, about letting a man see or touch my over-50 body. But my breasts made me consider never dating again.
When I told the first man I dated how taking my shirt off made me uncomfortable, he said, “You never have to take your shirt off for me. We’ll play shirts and skins, like in a pickup basketball game.”
Mostly, that’s what we did for five years.
Three years ago, when I started seeing David, I went over to his house for dinner. We were standing in his kitchen talking and sipping our drinks, a vodka cranberry for me, and a scotch for him. He looked at me and said, “I’m dying to kiss you,” and leaned in for the kiss. I kissed him back. It felt good. As the kissing got more passionate, we moved to the couch. A few minutes in, I pulled away and put my hand on his chest.
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