Saying Goodbye

The night before my mastectomy, I said goodbye to my right breast in the shower as I scrubbed with a special antibacterial soap to help prevent infection in the operating room. I washed my breast, knowing that by the same time the next day it would be gone, part of it off to a lab for analysis, the rest sent to an incinerator, I suppose, with the other medical waste.

There was a tremendous feeling of unreality: This was not happening.

I remember nursing my younger son, Robin. I loved nursing. I have a vivid, physical memory of going to see Kevin Costner in "Dances With Wolves" when Robin was less than a year old, and nursing him through the entire movie on that right breast to keep him quiet. I remember the feel of his mouth on my nipple.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Kristina]

I have not yet come to terms with this loss.

I nursed Tessa for 15 months. I remember the hungry, mewing, gulping sounds she would make as she first latched on, greedy for her supper. I remember the feeling of her body relaxing against me as the milk began to flow. And I remember my utter contentment that I was able to nourish her so fully with my body.

I stared at my daughter's face as she nursed, her small closed fists resting on my breast, her eyes closed in sleepy contentment.

I thought that I would look down at my breasts for the rest of my life and feel the sweet rememberences, but the remembering is tinged with bitterness because I now know that I probably had breast cancer even then, and that I fed my daughter with a cancerous breast.

It is cruel that breast cancer taints even old memories.