Think Bananas

We met with the surgeon today, Dr. Williams.

He confirmed that there was in fact a tumor in my breast, as he had seen on the MRI and mammogram.

He expressed some frustration that not all the information was back on the receptors...and he is wondering if there is something else behind the nipple, but he couldn't see it clearly...so far it was showing up as a shaded mass.

Either way, he feels like the chemo will take care of the cancer and whatever isn't taken care of by the chemo will be removed during surgery.

We started talking about my surgery...and the different types of mastectomies that are possible. Nipple sparing. Skin sparing.

He felt like he could save the nipple on my left breast. They will simply remove all the breast tissue on that side and replace it with an implant. This leaves that nipple with sensation.

You have to imagine that as we are having this discussion, he is addressing both Keith and I, while he is actually touching and probing my breasts and demonstrating by pointing how my nipple with still be able to get erect.

I wish you could have seen Keith's face.

Of course, that was nothing compared to what happened when he pulled up the photos of my breasts on his computer. He was showing us where the incisions would go and what the scars would look like.

He pointed out how my boobs had gotten long and are no longer perky. Think bananas.

He wanted us to see how they would look with the procedures he was describing, so he pulled up photos of other womens' breasts.

I was really interested in what the doctor was showing me, while at the same time, as the doctor scrolled through various sets of boobs, Keith continued to move a little further away with each set until he was standing at the door.

It isn't that Keith isn't supportive, but I think it was feeling a little wrong to him to stare at other people's breasts.

The doctor was showing how much better my post surgical breasts would look if I got a double mastectomy as opposed to a single one. And obviously, how they look isn't really my main concern, but let's be honest, if I have to go through this, new perky boobs are just a bonus.