The Good and The Tough

Hi Team,

Thought I would write a bit about my exchange surgery and the time since then.

The surgery itself was a breeze compared to my mastectomy.  I was in and out in the same day, and I knew the routine.  I made sure to ask for some anti-nausea meds and they gave me plenty of drugs for anxiety, pain, and to knock me out and not have me remember what happened.  My mom said, an hour and a half after I went in, my surgeon came looking for her.  She said "You're done already?!" he said "Nah, I just thought I'd come hang out with you."  So yes, he finished quickly, said I did great, and I'm going to be so happy with the results.  I walked out of the hospital.  I definitely have some pain and exhaustion, but nothing like the pain and exhaustion after a mastectomy.

On to my emotional state... I wanted to write a post today just to remember how I'm feeling, because I know with time this will improve, but I don't want to give the illusion that it's all a breeze.  Let's go back to the year 2002, Ten years ago.  I was a senior in college and I had beautiful, nice long hair, and I decided to do something good, and donate it to locks of love, letting them cut off 10 inches.  It felt good until I first looked in the mirror and felt horrified, ran crying to my friends and boyfriend and hid in my apartment for days.  Now in retrospect, that was very silly, the hair didn't look all that bad (hey I HAD hair!) and with a week or two it grew back to looking like a cute pixie cut.  Granted boobs don't grow back (at least not at my age), but I will adjust to how they look and feel, but today, I feel like that 21 year old sobbing and wanting to hide in my apartment.

My tissue expanders, while they were rock solid and didn't feel anything like boobs, looked big and perky and fun.  Now only 3 days later, my soft boobs look flat and droopy.  What happened?!  I got silicone implants, so they are nice and soft and boob-feeling, but the are at least a full cup size looking smaller and just lower on my chest.  I was sobbing this afternoon because I was so disappointed!  My stream of consciousness immediately chastises me for feeling disappointed about boobs - a) I'm lucky to have any and b) I am still alive, what the hell am I doing complaining about boobs.  But honestly, it's a really hard adjustment.  I feel like my body is not mine, a LOT of people don't get the fact that I don't have a say in what they look like really.  I can state an opinion but this is not an exact science, and really it's up to how my body reacts to stretching muscle and skin and holding scar tissue in place.  I can't just order them from a catalogue and make sure I have a good return policy.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm being harder on myself than I need to be, and as we all do, I have this constant push and pull of logic and emotion.  Today I'm just going to let the emotion win and be sad that I'm disappointed that they are not as perky and big as my tissue expanders were.  Eventually over time I'll let my logic influence my emotion to feel better about it.  But for now, this sucks and it's a really hard adjustment.  Again.

Love,
Amy