My Own Changing Landscape

Today I am grateful for a date night with my husband and grateful that writing some poems yesterday morning helped pull me out of a funk.

Since I was on the topic of changing landscapes yesterday, and I am making an effort to talk more about my breast cancer experience this month, I am going to talk about my own changing landscape, courtesy of bilateral mastectomies on December 17, 2008. 

I was diagnosed with both infiltrating ductal carcinoma (IDC) and ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Fortunately, the more concerning IDC was successfully removed with a lumpectomy that July. Unfortunately, DCIS remained at the margins of that lumpectomy. DCIS is early stage cancer, some even call it pre-cancer, but it can be illusive and we don't know yet whose DCIS could go bad and whose may sit there for 40 years doing nothing, so it gets addressed. In August, a re-excision was attempted to get the rest of the DCIS. None of these decisions were easy, but each was made with the information I had in front of me at the time. The re-excision was not successful and my twice-excised breast was already scarred and deformed. Chemo was next on my cancer treatment agenda, so that became my focus while I made decisions about my third surgery.

It was clear to me now that my next surgery needed to be a mastectomy. I chose to have both breasts removed for a number of reasons. I chose not to have reconstruction for a number of reasons as well.I was clear in my decisions and have not regretted them. But that doesn't mean it's easy to go from 38 C's to flat-chested and even a little concave. I will never forget the last days before my mastectomies and saying goodbye to my breasts (last run, last sex, last shower) and I will never forget the first moments after waking up from surgery. One of the very first things I did was look down at my new landscape. And I was relieved. Relieved to be done with surgeries, relieved to be done with chemo and have hair growing back, relieved to feel I had done what I could to rid my body of cancer and be able to move forward with the type of life I wanted to live.

My changing landscape took time to get used to. I remember the strange feeling of sleeping on my side with no breasts. I remember feeling phantom itches for the first weeks--like my breasts were still there. There was grieving and healing.

Today I accept my flat terrain and as I am about to head out for a run, I even embrace it.

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