Parting Ways with Body Parts, Ten Years Later

Today I am grateful for overall health and for this earthly vehicle I reside in, scars and losses and all.

I am taking a break from the A-Z "gratitude in recovery" list to focus on a milestone, an anniversary to mark today.

I have been reflective and emotional in recent days as I approached a milestone in my cancer journey. It was ten years ago today that I woke up with two intact breasts and later that afternoon came out of anesthesia minus them both.

Ten years is worth marking with "then and now" photos. The one on the left was taken just days before my mastectomies on December 17, 2008. The one on the right was taken this weekend, in the same location as the first one, but in a much different place emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. A good place overall. A place rich in gratitude and acceptance.


The white shirt I am wearing shows the flat terrain of my chest clearly. It also happens to be the finisher shirt from the 2009 Kansas City Marathon, which I ran exactly 10 months after this surgery. It is a fitting shirt to be wearing for this picture. Life went on post-surgery and life goes on today. 

Here are a couple of posts from my now-dormant Late Bloomer and Slow Learner blog that tell more of my story surrounding this surgery:

12 Days  January 2, 2017

Goodbye Breasts July 13, 2016 (This is also the title of a poem in the post.)

In these ten years, 400,000 have died of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) in the U.S. alone. My sister Mary Jo heads into 2019 as a patient with MBC, a woman living with cancer. Let's keep raising the right kind of awareness, donating to meaningful research, supporting those with the most serious circumstances. And let's also revel in this day, today, the only day any of us get. Cancer or no cancer.

I close with a poem. From "Goodbye Breasts" ten years ago to "Hello Today" now.

Hello Today


Ten years have passed since
I parted ways with my breasts.
Willingly, yet under duress.
The duress of cancer.


Waking up from surgery
five pounds lighter physically,
spiritually strong, relieved mentally,
and at an emotional loss
as I fully realized my loss.


Bodies heal. Blood flows.
Nerves and muscles recover.
Not fully, but still remarkably.
Scars and numbness indicate
losses, and also strengths.


My stark flatness now can
go unacknowledged
and unnoticed by me for days.
Not a partial denial,
rather an ongoing acceptance.


It is ten years later.
Words and actions brought me
to this place, a day at a time.


Among my words:
“I miss my breasts and grieve them still, but
I would miss my heart so much more.”
“I am not less of a woman, just a woman
less her breasts.”


Among my actions:
Running, push-ups, vacuuming,
full range of motion for my arms.
Walking our dog, getting the groceries,
doing laundry, giving hugs.


Ten years later, my breasts are
long gone, and wholeness evolves
in meaning as I live life fully,
with deep gratitude.


A new day is here and I greet it
with an opportunity-filled “Hello.”


LHV  12/16/18

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