Waking Up After Surgery: “Did You Lose the Breast?”

When I woke up after surgery, I was strapped into a contraption called a Surgi-bra, which someone had stuffed with wads of gauze so it looked like the breast was still there. It took me two days to look under the Surgi-bra at my incision, and I felt faint and weak in the knees when I did.

My younger son, Robin, walked into my hospital room after my mastectomy and asked straight-out, "So, did you lose the breast?" And he wanted to peek under all the gauze—he actually took a look before I did. Then he settled down to play with the controls on my hospital bed.

There was very little bleeding, and I didn't need the wads of gauze. The incision, I decided, once I finally looked at it, was pretty tidy and not too upsetting, but the big hollow under my arm was a surprise. It's a wounded-bird look, and I felt very vulnerable looking at it.

I abandoned the scratchy Surgi-bra in short order, in favor of a soft cotton Calvin Klein undershirt and a plaid flannel shirt. These shirts and black sweat pants became my uniform.

The surprising thing is, once the breast was gone, it didn't bother me, even though I had been so adamant about not wanting a mastectomy. How can I explain my feelings? I became focused on other things, more important things—my survival, getting through the chemo. They were more important than the breast I'd lost.

My scar is neatly done, a curving red line across my chest, with a smaller incision closer to the armpit from the sentinel node biopsy, and an angry red spot where the drain was. The skin over the whole area was numb for months, which felt weird, and it was tight or tender underneath, where scar tissue was forming.

It was at this time, when I was recovering from surgery, that I decided I wanted to buy a poster of an Amazon--one of those one-breasted, mythical women warriors--to hang over my bed. I never was able to find one, and I still don't have my Amazon poster.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Jacqueline]

I know where you can get an image of a true "Amazon" warrior... just point your camera in your direction and click open the shutter!