Lake Como, Italy - Fall 2009
I guess I never really thought that I would miss having breasts. All I cared about was getting rid of the cancer. That to me seemed so much more important. I had tried to imagine what it would feel like and what I would look like. That’s a very hard thing to do when it is completely unknown.Before I had the mastectomy I really started to think about it a lot. It was a very stressful time. One night I even googled images of mastectomies and it scared the crap out of me. I remember closing my eyes and then looking at the images and wanting to look away but then always coming back to it. Like a car accident. Why on earth was I doing this? Then I would look again. Then it really hit me that soon I was going to be like one of those images. I remember putting my head down on the desk and sobbing. It was really scary to try to think about how I was going to look afterwards. What scared me more was how it was going to make me feel. I didn’t know what to expect.
My Friends - Brockville, Ontario - Summer 2013
I knew that my husband and my family would love me no matter what. I knew that I was not going to be a different person because I had no breasts. I was not defined by that. However, no matter what, I was indeed going to be different. I would look different and I would feel different. How would my clothes fit me? Would people be able to tell? Would others stare? What if I had to wear a bathing suit? Would I still feel like a woman or would this make me feel more masculine or something? Like some kind of a freak. All of these things went through my head but I suppose I knew that it had to be done and being alive was certainly a great incentive. So I took a big breath, swallowed that lump in my throat and decided that I was strong and I would get through this next hurdle. I turned off the computer and went to bed. I would deal with everything one day at a time. What else could I do?Now that I was on the other side of the mastectomy, I was adjusting to the new reality and still not too sure how I felt about it. Several months had passed but each day brought mixed feelings and physical challenges. However, I was determined to focus on the positive. The cancer was gone.
I Ain't Missing You - John Waite