May 23, 2016 - Ghost Boob

This week, we are back to mastectomy updates. At certain time points, I want to revisit the boob "status" so you have a concept of what to expect and when if you are in the middle of mastectomy. For this update, it’s been 9 months since surgery #6 and 3 years and 9 months since the mastectomy itself. Visually, Boob 1 and Boob 2.2 are pretty spot on. They do in fact mirror the former tenants, with the exception of a few scars. All and all, we have two boobs and therefore goal achieved. While visually, they pass inspection, there are other aspects that remain a wee bit (or a lot of bit) wonky.  I will start with sensation. We’ve touched on this topic before, but I wanted to update you on the timing in case this information is helpful to you in the future.

Let me introduce you to Ghost Boob. As a refresher, the breast is comprised of glandular tissue, ducts, fat tissue, connective tissue, nerves, blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. Those contents sit on top of the chest wall muscles. During the mastectomy procedure, the entire contents of the breast (+/- the skin itself and the nipple) are removed all the way down to the chest wall muscle. During reconstruction (as I had; there are several ways to reconstruct a breast) a pocket is created within the chest wall muscle and the implant is slipped into the pocket. This serves as a holster per se for the weight of the implant to be supported. While the implant is used to provide the breast structure, during reconstruction the nerves, blood supply, adipose, and ducts are not returned to the breast. As a result, women have a change in sensation, a sort of numbness due to the lack of nerve endings, in the new breast. I’ve mentioned before what a strange feeling this is to run your hand down your neck over the breast and onto the stomach. Feeling, no feeling, feeling. It’s identical to what you (don’t) feel when you touch your hand after it has fallen asleep. Ghost Boob! Overtime, some women regain some (though usually not all) of the ability to feel pain or the sensation of touch on the breast as nerve endings start to regrow in the area. So now, 3 years and 9 months later, I can feel about half (the upper half) of my breasts. The bottom half of the breasts are still Ghost Boobs. What I love about this is when I go swimming I don’t have to worry about that awful moment of slinking your chest down in to freezing cold water. I simply can’t feel it. What I loathe about this, well, is that it is just plain weird. I’m not going to go into great detail here, but there also is the impact on intimacy. You simply need to know that if you are headed toward mastectomy. It is just something you don’t realize going in. The good news is a year ago I truly could feel nothing, so we have some progress as times goes on. It took about 3 years to regain half of my feeling back.

Enter stage left - Frost Boob. The other wonky thing is also around the touch sensation. Imagine you just ran 3 miles (or for some of us 0.0 miles). Your body temperature is soaring as you attempt to dissipate heat. Touch your stomach and it feels very warm to the touch. There may be a cool sensation on top of the warmth as you sweat out fluid, leaving a clammy sensation overall.  So while your body is in temperature overload, if you touch your breast at the same time, it is cool as a cucumber. Frost Boob. This is a result of having a lessened blood supply to that area. Remember, the blood vessels were also removed during the mastectomy. Blood flow is what brings warmth to an area. Limited blood flow, cool to the touch. Over time, like nerves, blood vessels too start to regrow, but the numbers are less. At 3 years 9 months Frost Boob still prevails. It’s simply awkward, and quirky, and a good party trick??? Ok, no, but you get the idea. It’s just something, like Ghost Boob, that you don’t know about going in unless someone tells you. Now you know. This aspect of cold to the touch, unlike ghost boob, has not improved over time as of yet.

Ghost Boob and Frost Boob - the sensation twins. One aspect has improved, one has remained constant. Both were unexpected outcomes no one had fully prepared me for. They are trivial in many ways, but worthy of discussion so you know what to expect as I've learned challenges are usually a little better absorbed/embraced with a little warning.

Unrelated to sensation, enter stage right:  Boob Brain. Early on in this ongoing process of breast reconstruction, there wasn’t a single day (hour?) I didn’t think about the new boobs. I simply always had these boobs on my brain. Part of the all-consuming thought process was simply related to being in the middle of it. Day in and Day out. Early only your entire day is related to the boobs. Change the bandage, empty the drains, log the output, take your meds, keep your arms at your side, avoid looking at them, look at them, don't do this, do do that. It was 24 hours of boob brain! But as the weeks went on, the tasks became less, and then the thoughts would lessen too. But at any moment something would happen and Boob Brain would kick right back into gear. For me, every 6 months or so it was another surgery, so just when I would get out of the thought process and back to normal life, I would find myself right back where I started again. Even on a “normal month” early on you still have at least a daily thought of these boobs being what they are (or are not). Well now, with this being the first time that I have gone 9 months without a surgery, it is awesome to see that there are some days when they don’t even cross my mind at all. And to say that is progress would be an understatement, it’s triumphant really! I truly didn't understand going in how 2 little sacks of gel could carry so much punch...or thought. But they do. And maybe I can soon say "they did". I am getting there, past this. 

I guess the most recent months of having less boob on the brain is a testament that life does in fact eventually return back to normal. You can't rush it. You just have to wait until it suddenly arrives. You will get to the point where the breasts move out of your foreground and in to your background, only to be thought of when you slip down into the freezing cold water…and feel nothing. Or at other random moments when anyone would be thinking about their breast (Changing clothes? Or trying on new bras? Or what not). There is a time point when the reconstructed breast no longer defines you. Instead of defining you, it now merely designs you in that you are a changed being by its presence. Not so much the breast itself, but the journey of getting there. You hear stories of people who have a brush with death and how life simply looks different, more precious, altered on the other side. Mastectomy, when prophylactic/chosen, doesn’t necessarily carry the same weight as my brush with lymphoma did, but it did change me in ways I might not have expected. While an implanted boob is most certainly a boob,  it carries a different weight. Both literally and figuratively. More insight provoking.  More impressionable. More focusing. I see life with newly tweaked lenses which brings certain things into better focus with a better alignment of perspective. While the feeling of touch, the sensation of cold, and even the thoughts of the breast may transition over time, I hope my more finely focused perspective of mastectomy remains with me always. I simply appreciate Post-Mastectomy Sally and all she brings to my “after” life. I may be a little “off” at certain stages along the way, but I certainly carry a new depth. And with that comes an advocacy I didn’t carry before. Advocacy for empowering women with knowledge. Advocacy for loving your body where it is. Advocacy for the spouses of mastectomy. Maybe even a little advocacy for just doing life in general and doing it well with people in tow – mastectomy or not. But when there is mastectomy, just know it isn’t the end all, be all. But rather it is a starting point for what comes next in life. There is an “after mastectomy”. Three years, 9 months. I’m getting there with Ghost Boob and Frost Boob as my side kicks.


Click  www.tradinginthetatas.blogspot.com to access other posts. 

May 17, 2016 - Horizontal stripes

I’m tired of these comparison games. I’m over women not measuring up. I’m seriously over women making other women feel as though they don’t measure up. It happens in the work place. It happens at home. It happens in our minds. It happens in our words. And I for one am simply over it!

Who set the rule and standard that we have to make sure the person next to us feels less? Who set the example that we have to use everything in our arsenal to appear to be more? Certain people come to mind, trying to make waves for other women co-breathing their air and carefully planting a jab in the most vulnerable of soil to ensure the feeling of inadequacy grows. Often, the attack sits unsaid to the intended target and instead flutters across the proverbial acquaintance pool of whoever else happens to be in the room. I absolutely detest this gossip mill that circulates the misfortune of being a target. Are you a participator? Are you a propagator?....More importantly, am I?

I’d say at first response “I am not.” But immediately, I feel that lie down in the pit of my stomach, and I can do nothing less but accept my role in this perversion. While I desperately try to find the good in any person that crosses my path and truly do want to foster a safe environment lacking in judgement or gossip, I can at times fall prey to the bad behavior that may plague my day. It’s so easy to get caught up in the rip current of shaming. If she is a little less, and I make it known, doesn’t this in turn make me a little more? Mercy! It is a lie of eternal consequence! There are a hundred kind words said to me in a given year, yet it is that one unkind rumor said out loud that forever comes back to mind 20 years later. One single sentence can result in huge consequences. And one missed moment to provide kindness instead of judgment can set the tone for that relationship for years to come. Nothing hurts the heart more than making someone feel inadequate or indifferent and it is a dangerous seed to plant. But if we want to falsely assume that we play no role in the routine detriment and shaming of another person, I most certainly am to blame for the shaming of myself where the ramifications are equally eternal.

There’s rarely a week (day?) that goes by that I don’t find myself in a liturgical play-out of inadequacy. I walk into a room of women and immediately notice what I have or have not in comparison. I can count out loud the number of potential “moments” I miss because I am too embarrassed to partake. A hike with friends where I am afraid my performance won’t compete. A cool dip in the pool where I am all too aware of this thigh or that. A dinner skipped out on because of nothing to wear or a result of my pudginess being too pudgy that week.  How many spectacular moments never came about because we falsely believe the lie that we are less? Or better yet, what are we instilling into the people around us (or our children!) when we make these subtle statements of inadequacy. I distinctly remember a dinner invitation I missed out on with a group of friends because I was standing in my closet trying to make something work. Instead of throwing on the jeans and t-shirt and letting reality be reality, I chose to miss the dinner. This was years ago, but the impact remains. My thoughts of “not being enough” cultivated a lie and resulted in missed laughter, missed fellowship, missed everything (they had the absolute best time at dinner that night!). My choice spoke that my perceived appearance mattered more than their time and friendship. And spoke the subtle words to them that they need to have it all together in perfection too.

Are we teaching our children to choose the lies of self-inadequacy over the joys of simply living life and all it brings? But you say, Sally, my legs really are too skinny. To which I need to reply, too skinny to have joy? Are the size of your legs more important than every single other aspect of life? There are some things to which we can reply “God made me this way” and therefore we need to embrace and get on with living life. Then there are other things I need to say “Sally, I made myself made me this way”, and I either need to take action to change, or embrace as being what it is and getting on with enjoying life. But either way, there is a crucial and urgent moment for conscious choice to choose which it will be. Will I perpetuate this self-deprecation, or will I pick up my flubber, or skinny, or scars, or bra size and choose the path of joy? The best example I can be to myself, my friends, and my daughter (if I were to have one) would be to take everything I have and call it precious. For that is exactly what it is: Precious, the bumps, bruises, lumps and all. Every single day, our chosen spirit of being gracious and kind will over shadow any perception of physical or emotional inadequacy. Alternately, we choose to be remembered for our spirit of shaming of self or others.

Give yourself permission to not be perfect. Allow yourself the occasional mistake. Embrace the less than and focus on the fact that we are already enough. For we truly are that! Enough! Enough to be the daughter, wife, mother, sister, coworker, friend, disciple, patient, introverted extrovert that anyone else can be. Enough to throw on the pudgy dress in the closet and go to the dinner! Enough to bring a kind word to the person next to you letting them know they are enough as well. But it takes a purposeful approach to lose the thoughts of being less. Remove ourselves from the unkind words of others. Surround ourselves with women who not only get this, but live it. And if you don’t have any of those. You start the trend! We have to go above and beyond to actively praise the women around us. They aren’t perfect either, but there is no reason on this planet that we can’t make them feel like that are. We have to consciously drown out (and correct!) the negative words being said around us. We have to lead the way by purposely speaking out loud the complimentary thoughts that come to mind. We have to quit fertilizing our disastrous need to feel like more by making her feel like less. And then we need to soak our minds in reading the truth that we are enough. It takes a permanent reset! We may not be able to change our self-perceived “less than”, but gosh darn it, we need to take our dimply thighs to the beach and make some incredible memories! Show the women around us that we value friendship and uplifting sisterhood over inadequacy at every single turn. We need to stop losing out to our inadequacies and to quit perpetuating the lies. Our role is two-fold: It is our choice to love others, and equally our choice to love ourselves. And I need to start at ground zero. This week, I am putting on the dress with horizontal stripes. I'm starting with me.







To access previous blog posts - click HERE.

May 6, 2016- The power of the stool cocoon

Tonight I joined a panel of powerful women. Not powerful in the way society tries to drive us to think, but powerful in the way God guides us to follow. These were women who had chosen (or been given) the challenging roads in life, but who knew how to find the beauty of it all while morphing it into a new way of being. Of thinking. Of surviving. They knew how to re-purpose a life moment and use it to propel their life into action and measurable outcomes. Ten minutes before, there were 5 empty stools absent of meaning. Ten minutes later the stools were holding up previously anonymous (to me) women of triumph! Each story had its own distinct details of how they arrived unexpectedly at a crossroads, how they captured that moment, and then carried it forward in outcome, but all of them sang the same song of hope, choice, and the reinvention of self.

Frustration with Corporate America -> reinventing a career to advocate for women through fair trade. 

Sexual abuse and exploitation -> changes in legislation and formal advocacy at the ground level for hope despite circumstance.

Discovering Faith and purpose in obstacle -> empowering women to not isolate or self-destruct in their circumstance.

Finding oneself in an ill-fitted employment-> grabbing a creative outlet to feed the artistic soul and trust God to take care of the rest.

Finding oneself a product of negative input -> choosing to gain control and change the course for self and for family.

As I sat there on the panel in front of a room of women, I was captured by the power of the collection. Sure, each story held its own power, but bundled together into five stools at thr front of the room created this force that overshadowed any feelings I previously had of inadequacy, or comparison of worth. Together, we formed this unit of interwoven strands of strength that could overcome anything life throws our way, and with grace, and dignity, and heads held high! We were a force to be reckoned with because together we were proof of push comes to shove, keep on shoving until you are on the other side!  In that moment, I felt as though there wasn’t a single thing we couldn’t do….together. I have no idea if this feeling was shared by the other speakers, or even to those in attendance, but the moment that hour was over the last thing I wanted to do was leave this 5 person cocoon of triumph. As an individual, I carry my self-doubt. I question the validity of my stories, of my strength. I see the limitations that lie underneath threatening to squelch it all. But in this cocoon of women (whom I had met for the first time only an hour before) carefully situation on 5 stools, my limitations/inadequacies/self-doubts/weaknesses were replaced by the powers of camaraderie. We were a unity pushing out from a single center into 5 directions of cumulative force. I was able to infer to myself the strength of her story to my left. I was able to believe I carried the same “gung ho” that she did to my right. I could encapsulate the strength from her crisis and bask in the soothing of God’s grace through her circumstance. It was the perfect illustration of the transference of strength that can come in surrounding yourself with motivating people.

It’s in the following moments as you climb down off the stool that you are acutely reminded of the absurdity of going about life in isolation. Once you feel the empowerment of sharing a story (no matter how different they each are) with a circle of women, you feel the emptiness of what lies outside the circle. Why do we continue to do life in silence? Why do we endure life events in isolation? Why are we so fearful of judgment and ridicule when every single one of us has the story, it’s simply the details that makes them differ? Do we really think we are designed to do life alone? Do we really think God created us to wear these carefully concocted masks of perfection? Be the sloppy mess that you are and surround yourself with women who don’t mind getting their hands in your mud. Because life is messy!

Well, I’m up on my soap box! And I plan on staying here for quite a bit. Gone may be the physical stool, but long lives the empowerment of unity collected on it. QUIT DOING LIFE ALONE! Quit waiting for someone to knock on your door (boy, am I ever guilty of that!). Get up, grab your story, and take it to the streets! Be the one to reach out to find someone who will do life with you, and you in return be someone worth doing life with. We need to quit hiding behind the circumstances, and instead be empowered by the potential outcomes. Life is going to happen to you, but we get to choose what to do with the life that comes. It’s in your hands. The “stool cocoon” of doing life together is sitting there waiting for you. Are you going to climb up on it? Boy, how awesome will it be to see who sits down beside you. You just may find yourself empowered by the beautiful mess they bring.

To access previous posts, click here.