Why a Bye Bye Boobs Party?
12 days.... I have 12 days before my breasts are removed.
When I found out that I was going to have my breasts removed due to breast cancer I didn't know what to feel. I was numb with emotion. I'm going to become a breast-less woman was my only thought.
I have probably spent at least some kind of moment, everyday, since I stopped breastfeeding my last child 6 years ago criticizing my boobs in some way. They were no longer full and they sag. They didn't look right under clothes. They didn't look right without clothes. It was then I realized I officially had "Mom Boobs" and that my children had somehow sucked the fullest and perkiness away. Don't get me wrong, I'd do it all over again to have those tender moments and memories with my babies. However, being told that they are getting removed, well.... all of a sudden I LOVED my misshaped slightly deflated boobs. I can't believe all these years I didn't LOVE them. It's true you don't know what you have till its gone.
The first thing everyone says is it "doesn't make you less of a woman to not have breast". My reaction to that was "YES it does!" If only people could see how much that comment upset me. I'm 32! I'm a mom, I'm single, I like v-neck shirts and strapless dresses.... I still need my boobs! Although I'm not very vein and I don't spend much time on hair and makeup, and not really sure about what two colors look good together, I do know that having breasts is part of what makes me feel like a woman and not having them is going to make me feel like less of one, or at least that is how I anticipate I'm going to feel.
My family doctor told me that I need to mourn my breasts. I needed to realize that they will no longer be apart of me, that they don't define me and that I need to mentally prepare to let them go. I just nodded and cried in his office as he gave me this advice not even sure how to start to stay goodbye to my girls.
So what does every logical and emotional sound women does when she is alone and upset about something medically? I googled....BIG MISTAKE! Google should be taken away from people like me. I was searching images of mastectomy. Before, during, after. How the procedure was done. How much it hurt. I learned about drainage tubes. I learned about scar tissues. I learned to much, but I couldn't stop myself. Then I was reading comments from other women on other blogs and how they cried and cried every day and could not function because of their news. How they didn't want to face the world. I was only making myself feel worse about losing my breasts. To be honest it only made me hate the idea of losing them more and disliking the physical person I was going to become in 12 days.
Now I was angry. I was angry at Cancer! Cancer controlled so much of our life already. It controlled what we could or couldn't do that week. If we could or couldn't go places. Some of the drugs controlled my son's temperament and his emotions. It controlled what we ate at times. It took my son's hair 3 times. It made my son gain weight. Lose weight. Have strength. Feel weak. Cancer determined if my kids could go to school because it would weakening my son's immune system to the point he couldn't fight off any germs. Cancer just takes and takes and now it is taking my breasts! The part of my body that defines me as a woman, mother, and sexual being.
I was talking with my friends about losing them and after the initials tears and I'm so sorry comments the mood became lighter about it. Jokes were made about taking pictures of them. Wearing low cut shirts and showing them off well you have them. We were just being silly and making light of the situation but it was making me smile and laugh. That's when it hit me. This is how I will mourn. I will have a bye bye boobs party. I'm going to go out on the town one last night. Truth be told, its probably going to be the last time in months that I'm going to feel like going, regardless of having boobs or not. However, I decided to embrace this loss not with tears, well not yet anyways, but with memories. My friends and I are going out on the town!!! We are going to my favorite restaurant for dinner. Afterwards heading over to a comedy show and then a night out dancing. I'm going to wear that one shirt, that every woman has hidden in her closet where the question if its too much cleavage and always changes before heading out because we know its too much. Not me this time. I'm wearing that shirt! I want my friends to take pictures of me in THAT shirt! I want to feel sexual because I want to remember it.....every single second of it....I want to remember it because I fear I'm never going to feel sexual again after my surgery.
So to answer my initial question about why a Bye Bye Boobs party...it's really simple. I want one last night of memories with friends. One last night of feeling like the person I am today, a young, 32 year old, alive, vibrant, sexual, confidant woman, because the person I'm going to wake up to after surgery, I don't know her yet.... What I'm going to face, endure and struggle both emotionally and physically with getting myself better, as well as getting my son and having normal for my daughter, scares me. Scares me beyond words. So for one last night, I'm going to embrace who I am right now and try to remember every single minute of it and smile.
Cancer you have my boobs next week, tonight they are busy and it has nothing to do with you!
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