Exactly seven years ago today, I had a unilateral mastectomy (they threw the lymph node dissection in as a bonus). I wasn’t supposed to have cancer. My cancer wasn’t supposed to be in a lymph node. And I certainly wasn’t supposed to have a mastectomy.
Things don’t always happen the way they’re supposed to.
Roughly a week before my scheduled lumpectomy, some suspicious MRI results meant my surgery had to be canceled to accommodate follow-up tests. (Can I mention here that you haven’t lived until you’ve had an MRI-guided breast biopsy? I was immobilized on a table, my breasts dangling through a hatch so that technicians with drills could access them from below. It was like being the car at Jiffy Lube.) When it was all over, the surgical plan had changed to mastectomy.
I got the word about the new biopsy results and met with my surgeon on Wednesday, March 5. Surgery was scheduled for Thursday, March 13. That didn’t leave much time to think about options. I was pretty sure I didn’t want reconstruction, and a hastily-scheduled consultation with a plastic surgeon two days before my surgery didn’t change that. If anything, it solidified my negative feelings – a mixture of queasiness, fear, and horror.
Of course, I was pretty shell-shocked at the time. It’s possible that if circumstances had been different in any of a hundred ways – if I was younger, say, or older; if my breasts were bigger, or smaller; if I’d planned on mastectomy from the get-go and had more time to get used to the idea; if I wasn’t a competitive runner obsessed with training and 10k times; or if I was just less of a chicken about surgery – I would have gone a different direction. One never knows.
Why not reconstruction?
First, the required disclaimer: nothing in this account should be read as attacking other women’s choices, disparaging their results (some of which I’ve seen, and know can be amazing), or offering medical advice. It’s about my personal reactions to my individual situation at a specific point in my life.
Got it? Okay . . .
There are two basic approaches to post-mastectomy reconstruction. One involves implants, as in breast augmentation surgery – except that with no breast to augment, the implant is placed behind the muscle on your chest, which must be gradually stretched out over weeks or months. This is done through weekly fills with increasing amounts of saline. (I was told that for me, with my smallish breasts, the expansion process would take just a few weeks.) The result is round and firm and relatively immobile – and it will stay that way, even as your other breast sways and sags. (This week’s vocabulary word: “ptosis.”) As a consequence, surgery on the other breast is often required for symmetry’s sake. Oh, and because implants have a lifespan of roughly ten years, a woman in early middle age would be facing multiple future surgeries to swap them out.
The other approach to reconstruction involves moving bits of your own body around. Surgeons can craft you a nice, new, jiggly, squishy breast out of tissue from your abdomen, your upper back, even your ass. There are variations within these variations – some take muscle, some spare your muscle by using microsurgery to connect the blood vessels in skin and fatty tissue – but all are long, involved surgeries. Not infrequently, a second surgery is required to tweak the results of the first. Recovery time is significant.
Both these approaches create what surgeons call a “breast mound,” breast-shaped but featureless. Nipples are optional.* They can be added later, through a process that has been described to me by several different doctors as “kind of like origami,” and tattooed pink or brown or the color of your choice. While they’re at it, they can also tattoo you an areola.
To all of which, my reaction was: hell no. It wasn’t just about the surgery and all that it entailed, though that was certainly part of it. (I had made it to the age of 46 without ever experiencing surgery.) It was also – and really, this was the biggest part – emotional. Imagine a six-year-old offered a substitute for a beloved stuffed animal; now project that child’s desperate, disconsolate reaction onto a grown woman threatened with the loss of a body part. Those are the not-entirely-rational (but entirely understandable) emotions I was tapping into. I wanted my breast, goddammit, not an insensate mound with an origami nipple and tattooed areola, as though that’s the same thing when it’s not, it’s not at all. You might just as well cut the damn thing off and be done with it.
And so that’s what I had the surgeon do.
What a mastectomy is
I’m going to admit something embarrassing. Before I was faced with the possibility of a mastectomy, I didn’t really know what a mastectomy was. I knew it was the surgical removal of a breast, obviously, but how did they do it?
By which I mean, what does your chest look like afterwards?
I imagined myself with a man’s chest, a cute but purposeless little nipple on my left side where they’d scooped out my breast tissue and sewn me back up. That would be pretty weird, I thought. But not as weird as having . . . nothing.
Thanks to the Internet, I was able to look at pictures. The first mastectomy photo I saw was the iconic “tree” poster of the artist Deena Metzger, beautiful, joyful and one-breasted, arms outstretched against the sky. “Is that what the scar looks like?” I wondered. It was far more prominent than I would have thought, and despite the fact that I’d braced myself before looking, I was a little horrified. (Later I understood that she’d tattooed a blooming tree branch over the incision. It’s a measure of my emotional state that I didn’t see that at the time.) I also saw Matuschka’s stark 1993 cover photo for the New York Times Sunday magazine. “You can’t look away anymore,” the headline read, and the editors were right – I couldn’t.
I wasn’t solely dependent on the Internet. During the week between my revised surgery plans and the actual surgery, as I shared the news and it spread, two individual women showed me their own scars. One was the nurse-coordinator assigned to my case (until then, I hadn’t realized she was herself a breast cancer survivor). The other was a co-worker. She approached me in the hallway and we ducked into the women’s restroom in the basement, where she lifted her shirt and undid her bra.
So I knew going into my surgery that an unreconstructed post-mastectomy chest is a blank. Depending on your body type and your surgeon’s skill, it may be flat, or there may be bulges and flaps of skin. The scar curves from armpit to sternum, and once it heals, is unobtrusive.
A few days later, I closed the bathroom door, stood in front of the mirror, and slowly removed the gauze dressing. I wanted to be alone for that first look. Someone, somewhere, had advised that it went a little easier if you looked down at your chest first before getting the full frontal view in the mirror, so that’s what I did. The incision was sutured and covered with steristrips, but I could see that it was nice and flat. Even when viewed head-on, it wasn’t shocking or horrifying, just . . . odd. My right breast, still bruised from its MRI biopsy ordeal, looked lonely without its partner.
I called Eric in for his first look, and he helped me remove the last, awkward bit of gauze around the surgical drain tube. We were both quiet. It was nice not to have the thick dressing between us when we hugged.
There’s always a kind of vulnerability that comes with being naked, and without my left breast, I was nakeder than naked. That’s how I described the feeling at the time, and seven years later, I still feel exposed and vulnerable when I take off my shirt. The bone, muscle and skin on my flat chest seem awfully thin and insubstantial. I can even see my beating heart: it looks like nothing so much as a small bird trapped inside my ribcage, flapping its wings rhythmically in protest.
A lopsided life
At the risk of stating the obvious, breasts are kind of a big deal in our culture. They advertise products, hang on museum walls, star in movies, draw web traffic, and motivate breast cancer awareness marchers (“save the ta-tas!”).
It’s easy to decry the sexualization of breast cancer and the use of women’s breasts for marketing purposes. It’s a little harder to confront the role our breasts play in our own lives, the ways they shape our perceptions of ourselves and our bodies. Sometimes they thrill us, sometimes they embarrass us. Long after our childbearing days are over, and regardless of whether or not we breastfed, they evoke nurturing. And – might as well admit it – they’re bouncy and fun. Did I always notice other women’s breasts? I honestly don’t know – but I know I do now.
Thanks to the spending patterns of my 22-year-old daughter, our household is permanently on the Victoria’s Secret mailing list. Browsing their catalog is a reminder that bodies like mine are, by and large, invisible. That is, in part, by choice. When I dress up, I usually wear a silicone breast form inside a pocketed mastectomy bra. It makes me look reasonably symmetrical. (“No one would ever know,” my first prosthesis fitter told me, in a hushed voice. And I agreed, and thanked her.)
Mastectomy bras aren’t frilly and flimsy and fun (and you can’t buy them at Victoria’s Secret). They tend to couple sturdy construction with matronly styling. Shopping for a mastectomy bra seems to me more like shopping for durable medical equipment than lingerie, and so I do it as little as possible. On occasion, I simply slip my form inside the cup of a regular bra (no underwire – that would dig uncomfortably into the area under my arm where the surgeon extracted my lymph nodes). I have one that I particularly like, a sheer, stretchy, girlish number from my pre-cancer days. The downside is nipple show-through – having none on my left side heightens its conspicuousness on the right, which is awkward in thin, clingy t-shirts. That, and the fact that if I lean over too far, the unsecured form may pop out and go flying. (This has in fact happened, but fortunately, never in public.)
In either case, if you look down my shirt, you will see a dangling breast on one side and a bony chest wall on the other. This bothers me a little, but not a lot. In certain situations, I relish it. (“That’ll teach you to look down women’s shirts, you lech!”)
More and more, though, I simply go lopsided.
The first time I met up with my running group post-mastectomy, I panicked at the last minute and stuffed a wadded-up bandana inside my sports bra. That was the only time I did something like that. It took a little while to feel truly confident – I bolstered my nerve by asking myself, “who looks at a sweaty woman runner’s chest, anyhow?” (please do not answer that question) – but I got there soon enough.
Running was one of my reasons to forego reconstruction – silly as it sounds now, I was desperate to get back to training as soon as possible – and it also helped reconcile me with my non-reconstructed chest. Like many (most?) women, I struggled for years with body image issues and feelings of unattractiveness (though I always liked my breasts). When I’m running has long been when I feel most at ease in my skin, most comfortable with and forgiving of (if occasionally frustrated by) my body. Surgery hasn’t changed that. Post-mastectomy, I’ve tried to draw on my runner’s body image – positive, whole – in other areas of my life where I feel less positive, less whole. If I can go lopsided in a running singlet, why not a swimsuit? How about a sundress? A tank top? A tee?
It’s true that nothing makes lopsided feel quite as natural as running – but then, nothing made non-lopsided feel quite as natural as running, either.
The point is, with time, things you thought you’d never do, you do. You get comfortable, you get brave, you get tired of pretending, or perhaps you simply care less (and what’s the difference, really, in the end?). The breast form spends more time in your drawer.
Turns out life in a lopsided, non-reconstructed body is pretty good.
*There is such a thing as a nipple-sparing mastectomy, but it’s a newer procedure and not all surgeons do them . . . or at least they didn’t back in 2008. This would only be an option if the surgical margins around the nipple were clear.
Not another Brooklyn blog 
“queasiness, fear, and horror” – my thoughts (about reconstruction) exactly. I know that not everyone feels this way, but you captured my thoughts and feelings exactly. Thank you so much for posting.
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Great essay! I am also uniboob, my left side is flat. I had my surgery 24 years ago at age 44. Just 3 weeks ago I decided to quit wearing my fake boob. It has been liberating.
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I just had this conversation with my husband…I had uni lateral without reconstruction on Valentine’s day.
I’m having a hard time with it.
Maybe if my left boob wasn’t so big it would be different…
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We were going through this at the same time exactly, in March, 7 years ago! I also opted NOT to re-construct. The thought of it horrified me, and working in MedMal as I did, I was sensitized to the rare–but awful–bad results that can occur. Also, as the hostess with the mostest ptosis, there was no doubt I would need reconstruction on both sides to attain any kind of a balanced outcome. Why bother? I am actually physically more comfortable with my matronly bra and its silicon occupant ON, than off. When there is pressure on the mastectomized side I don’t feel all those weird sensations of numbness and pulling, but lately I’ve become a bit more casual at home going braless. One thing my surgeon did that makes me happy: he left a little mound of fat at the inner corner of the missing breast. This makes for some cleavage so I am not self-conscious wearing low cut tops.
Here’s to all of us, regardless of our decisions. Symmetry is highly over-rated. Happy just to be here and to be well. Regards.
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“Hostess with the mostest ptosis” – that cracks me up. I think breast size must make a big difference in our individual reactions, but in unpredictable ways. Although I like(d) being symmetrical, I don’t really notice a difference in my posture or the distribution of weight when I go lopsided.
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I’m 5 weeks out of a bilateral mastectomy (I’m 46), with no reconstruction. Wish I can say I have a runner’s physique, but it’s more like a “I’ve had 4 kids and have been too busy and lazy to exercise” body! Having a flat chest and a Buddha belly is not flattering and I am determined to run 10k before the end of the year! Thanks for being open about this!
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No doubt in my mind you will run 10K – if you want to, that is. Running helped me because it’s my thing, but I firmly believe that everyone has something. Or can have something. Thanks for reading and commenting.
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Thanks! That or ride 100 miles for ADA’s Tour de Cure for my daughter who has T1 diabetes! Best wishes to you! But I swear if someone tells me one more time I have no need for my Breasts anyways, I’m going to slap them (and I am not violent! LOL!)
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*anyway
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Thank you so much for sharing. My mom has been diagnosed with IBC and will have to undergo a radical mastectomy with a slim chance of reconstruction. I feel so out of my depth and your insight is so appreciated.
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Lettherebetime, I’m very sorry about your mom’s diagnosis. You and she must both be reeling. I can only say that she’s fortunate to have you helping her – and if my post helped at all, I’m very glad. (A little secret: *everyone* feels out of their depth dealing with this stuff.)
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Thank you ❤ I shared this on facebook.com/FlatANDFabulous – I actually did the expansion process before having it all removed to live the flat life. It was torture and I was never really able to move beyond my mx and recon as it was a daily reminder.
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Thank you for sharing your story. I had a bi-lateral mastectomy 11/4/2014 and and still going thru the joys of chemotherapy. I did not get reconstruction. when I finish Chemo at the end of April, I will get fitted for my prosthesis. I am so very grateful to be alive (I had 3 cancerous tumors and my surgeon removed 35 lymph nodes) and now there is a light in my tunnel. For me, no reconstruction, is the right choice, and as Sandra said “Symmetry is highly over-rated”. thank you all for sharing a part of your journeys!!
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Thank you for sharinG!! I lived the uniboob life for a year before I had a prophylactic sx on the other side. Your perspective is important. First diagnosed, I would’ve loved to read a post like this about a strong amazing woman with a unilateral mastectomy. PS love your description of the biopsy. ❤️❤️❤️
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Thank you for sharinG!! I lived the uniboob life for a year before I had a prophylactic sx on the other side. Your perspective is important. First diagnosed, I would’ve loved to read a post like this about a strong amazing woman with a unilateral mastectomy. PS love your description of the biopsy. ❤️❤️❤️
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My story to a “T”. Thanks for your post. There aren’t many of us uniboobers out there. Good to hear from one.
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Pingback: Lidt hjælp til inspiration; valget om ingen rekonstruktion (links) – Previvor behind the scenes
Thankyou for sharing, very helpful indeed.
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Glad you found these thoughts helpful – that was my hope in writing the piece. I’m sorry, though, that you’re in a situation where you need to be reading about mastectomy and reconstruction.
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Just want to say thank you for sharing your experience. These were the words that I needed today. Thank you again.
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So glad my words were helpful to you.
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Thank you so much for this post and all comments. I have had 4 surgeries, 1st to remove my right with cancer, then found out I have the BRCA2 gene, so they are both off. I opted for no reconstruction and am okay with that. They have nice “falsies” out there to wear when I WANT. My husband is ok with this though he didn’t have a choice but his opinion was important. I am just glad to be alive and cancer free now. I lost 2 sisters to this. All other posts I have seen were with the reconstruction, so thank you thank you ladies.
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Jeanette, I’m so glad you’re doing well, and that you found your way to this post. You mention that you’ve mainly seen posts about reconstruction . . . are you aware of the “Flat and Fabulous” group? I’m not active in it myself (maybe I should start a “Lopsided and Fabulous” or “Amazon and Amazing” group!), but friends are, and they’ve found it super-helpful. Here’s a link in case you want to check it out.
http://www.flatandfabulous.org/
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Thank you. I have just found your post and will have a unilateral in the beginning of April 2018. I was very lucky that my cancer is hormone responsive. This is the first I have read about non-reconstruction which is what I wanted from the moment I was diagnosed. It does seem that there is not much discussion of the non-reconstruction choice.
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Good luck to you, Yvonne. It’s interesting, I think things have changed a lot in the last decade or so. When I had my unilateral, I was told by one of the nurses that only a minority of women had reconstruction (she thought that was a shame). But in the years since, it seems to have become the overwhelming choice. Now, it’s opting for nonreconstruction that’s the uncommon (and unspoken) path.
Wishing you a speedy recovery. (And feel free to report back.)
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Wow, just discovered this blog post and so grateful! Your experience mirrored my own (stereotactic biopsy the worst torture ever) and I ended up as a uniboober too. After 12 years, tired of prosthetics although like to wear breathable Tatas in normal bra now. But if exercising I am trying to just go lopsided, but I do feel self conscious about it. My left breast, while more saggy and larger, it seems to accentuate lopsided look. I don’t want more surgery but wish I could lose weight in that breast! On the other hand, sure wish I could find suggestions on how to mask the uneven chest and clothing that would also do same. I like someone’s suggestion for Lopsided and Fabulous 🙂. However you look terrific and inspire me. Thank you for sharing your story!
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Tracy, I’m glad you found the post and found it helpful – and even gladder that you took the time to share some of your own story. Love the idea of “lop and fab”!
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Thanks to your blog and another (“I Don’t Need Two”), I stopped wearing my prosthesis earlier this year. I wear camisoles and I feel more comfortable now. My bras and breast forms may have also contributed to some slight lymphedema swelling in my chest wall. That’s resolved now! While some people notice, many do not and now, I am no longer self-conscious about it. Thank you so much to you and the other strong and brave women who contribute to this and other blogs!
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Hello! I’m facing a unilateral Mastectomy and I don’t want reconstruction. I’m 30 and so I guess it shocks people that I don’t want that. I live with chronic pain so the thought of inflicting myself with more goes against how I feel. I couldn’t really find any resources for unilateral- no reconstruction so I’m super glad to have come across this. Thank you for sharing your journey!
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Lucy, I’m so glad you found this post, and that it was helpful to you. You’re not the only one out there by any means, even if it sometimes feels that way. One reason I wrote the post was to try to make the state of one-breastedness less hidden. Wishing you all the best.
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Thank you for this post! I’m having a unilateral mastectomy in two days time. I already know I don’t want reconstruction. My surgeon and I have discussed having a second mastectomy in a year after all my other treatment has finished, but the big question I’ve been asking myself is will I have the courage to go out without a prosthetic on in the interim, especially as my breasts are huge and it would be hard to miss! I know me and I know that I’ll quickly get tired of having special bras and and a fake breast. This post helped me so much because now I see that there are women out there who go one-breasted and are cool with doing so. Thank you for sharing your story.
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Thank you for sharing yours. I’ll be thinking of you and wishing you quick healing.
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Thanks. I am a Brooklyner too and about to explant to flat I only know one other flat friend (on one side like you). I am scared to be so different, and I know I will look it as I doubt I will wear fakes. Implants have been a drag and uncomfortable. You didn’t miss anything! I like hearing life is good in your body. I wonder if there are any groups in NYC for women who have this experience?
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I’m so glad you found this helpful! Not sure about NYC groups . . . I was a number of years out when I moved here, so didn’t seek support. Is it possible your hospital could steer you to some resources? FWIW, in an odd way, this pandemic summer has reinforced my comfort in my non-reconstructed chest. Because, honestly, who cares these days, right? With no fancy dinner dates or social engagements or theater outings, I’ve been going comfortably, lopsidedly bra-less 99% of the time.
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Thank you so much for sharing your story. I can relate to every word, even your age at the time of diagnosis and left sided mastectomy. I am one year out from surgery. Its comforting to know I am not alone and that their are other women out there living with the best choice we could make for us. You writing this was important!
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I’m so glad you found your way to this post, and that it resonated with you. Wishing you good health and a great life. (By your reference to being a year out from surgery, I assume you were diagnosed during the pandemic? I can’t begin to imagine how hard that must have been!)
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I can’t thank you enough for sharing your experiences. I’m an anomaly here; I have not yet been diagnosed, but have just had my 4th negative biopsy in as many years and am growing tired of the panic every time I get another abnormal mammo result, as well as the terrifying dread that accompanies every mammo and breast MRI I have to have. I’m high risk, and my provider and I agree at this point it’s probably a matter of time before my luck runs out. We have begun discussing prophylactic mastectomy and based on all the problems my mom had with her implants (she’s the reason I’m high risk), I have no interest in reconstruction. Reading your story makes me feel better about the decision I’m about to make. Thank you for your courage in sharing your story; knowing I’m not alone helps give me the courage to make a difficult choice.
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Leigha, thank you so much for your kind words – they’re all the more meaningful coming at what is such a difficult time for you. Talk about courage!! I wish you the best in making the decisions that are right for you, and most of all, I wish you good health.
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