Photo by Erin Lodi, Columns Magazine
It’s been a tough couple of weeks here at Recon Central. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m currently going through breast reconstruction, and contrary to the Hollywood version (i.e., a woman decides to get new breasts following her mastectomy and a half hour later is sporting a pair of perfect, perky boobs), my experience has been less than immediate. Or ideal.
Without getting too technical — or too graphic — let’s just say the body’s healing process can be excruciatingly slow, scary and gross. Especially when you’re dealing with radiated skin which is touchier than a hornet on steroids. I’m currently a month out from surgery and Lefty (my radiated breast) still looks like something you might see on The Walking Dead. But while it’s not pretty (or healthy — yet), the takeaway is that I actually have two small breasts where I only had well-developed pecs before.
And that’s huge (the news, not the boobs).
For those who may not know, I’m doing a different kind of reon than most women (Angelina included). Instead of doing a flap procedure (i.e., where a plastic surgeon cuts a slab of tissue, muscle and blood vessels from one part of my body and sews it to my chest to make a boob) or going the tissue expander/implant route (radiation put me out of the running for that), I decided to use an external tissue expander known as the Brava coupled with fat transfer surgery.
Basically, the plastic surgeon “liposucks” fat from where you have it (goodbye saddlebags!) and injects it where you don’t (hello boobs!).
But before any of that happens, you have to prep the area with this crazy suction cup device known as the Brava. I started using the Brava – or the Barbarella, if you prefer – in early April and wore it for 10-12 hours a day for a month before going in for my first fat transfer procedure. Wearing the Brava – or as I put it, serving time in “boob jail” — is a trip. The domes are huge and unwieldy and are about as subtle as having two roasting pans attached to your chest.
By wearing them, though, I was able to stretch the skin and promote the growth of blood vessels, both of which helped create a welcoming environment for the tiny droplets of fat my plastic surgeon injected during that first fat transfer procedure (I’ll need at least one more to get my “B-girls” back, by the way).
Not surprisingly, this cutting edge procedure piqued the interest of my editor at the University of Washington alumni magazine, Columns, who asked me to write a personal essay about my recon experience. As usual, I decided that sharing is caring (seriously, I hope this will help people understand what breast cancer and reconstruction can be like for women) and took him up on his kind offer. Here’s the top to the essay and a link to the whole piece.
As always, thanks for the read. Also, BC buddies, if you’re willing to share your reconstruction stories, I’d love to hear them.
Reconstructing hope
It’s 10 o’clock on a Sunday night and I’m sitting on my couch watching Mad Men, a glass of red wine at my elbow. In many ways, it’s a typically tranquil spring evening — a cat on my lap, the lull of the television in the background — except for one small detail.
I’m in boob jail.
That’s the term I use to describe the two gigantic domes I’ve got strapped onto my unnaturally flat chest. Prescribed to me by my physicians at the UW Medicine Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Clinic, where I am a patient, the Brava device, as it is officially called, involves two domes made of hard plastic with a thick gelatinous rim that sticks to your skin like bare thighs on a hot vinyl car seat.
There’s also tubing and a little motor and a blood pressure-type hand pump — all of which help you achieve the proper amount of suction. For the past three and a half weeks, I’ve spent 10-12 hours a day with this bizarre contraption suctioned onto my chest. And I have many more hours and days and weeks of boob jail ahead. Why? Because as annoying and cumbersome and claustrophobic as the device is, it — and my UW Medicine health-care team—are helping me do something rather spectacular.
They’re helping me grow new girls.
Double Whammied 