I Didn’t Have Anyone to Tell This To

A year after the mastectomy it hit me. Hard. For about a month I was raw in a way I hadn’t been during the surgeries themselves. Not dramatic in front of other people. Just quietly undone.

I told a friend who had walked me through the mastectomy. She said the same thing had happened to her. Her friend had told her the same thing. Over the next couple of years I mentioned it to two or three more women. Same story. Roughly a year out. The practical part was over. The emotional part arrived late and with interest.

I don’t know why it’s so consistent. I’m not going to explain it. I’m just telling you it happened to us so that if it happens to you, you don’t have to decide you’re the only one who got it wrong.

I no longer have my breasts.

It looks like I do.

To almost everyone I look normal. No one would ever know.

I don’t know if that is a shame or a blessing. Most days I think it’s both. The people who love me can treat me like nothing happened because, from the outside, nothing did. That is a relief and it is also lonely. I am a woman who had a mastectomy. I don’t have my breasts any longer. Saying it twice is not for emphasis. It is because the mind keeps trying to slide past it.

I didn’t keep a diary. There were too many days that were ugly and too many nights I asked whether I had made the right decision. Writing them down would have made them permanent in a way I wasn’t ready for. So I stayed busy. Work was how I powered through. It worked until it didn’t. When the work slowed, the bill was still there.

Most of the women I know are already holding other people. Kids, parents, partners, whole departments at work, the mental list of everyone else’s needs. We put ourselves last because the list is already full and because going first can feel like taking something from someone who needs it more. That is not a character flaw. It is how a lot of us were taught to be good. It still costs something. You cannot keep handing out oxygen if you never put your own mask on. The people who need you do not benefit from a version of you that disappears.

I just finished a DIEP flap, both parts. It was brutal. Worth it, but brutal in a way the implant surgeries never were. Two surgical sites. The chest and the abdomen at the same time. Drains that seemed to multiply overnight. Walking bent over for weeks because the incision across my stomach refused to let me stand straight. The kind of tired that doesn’t lift with a nap or a full night’s sleep. Part 1 moved the tissue. Part 2 refined it. Both demanded more from my body than I had budgeted for, and I had already been through two surgeries before these. I am no longer fighting silicone and the rare, extreme inflammation that kept flaring no matter how carefully we managed it. For the first time the body is accepting what was given to it instead of treating it like an intruder. That relief is real. I can feel it in the new tissue on my chest and in the quieter abdomen underneath.

Some stretches are too hard to record while you’re still inside them. You measure the day by whether you made it to the bathroom without help, whether the drains came out on schedule, whether you slept more than two hours at a stretch. You tell yourself the telling can wait until the worst of it is no longer happening to you in real time. I am finally healing. That sentence still feels new in my mouth.

If you are recovering at home right now and something looks wrong, call tonight. A red patch that is spreading. Skin that is turning dark. Pain that doesn’t match what you were told to expect. Anything that scares you. Do not wait until morning because you don’t want to bother anyone.

Have something ready before you need it. One thing already arranged is enough: a person who already knows the story, a women’s group or minister or online space that doesn’t require the whole recap, a day you have cleared so you can sleep or stare at nothing, a book and a cup of tea that takes you out of the house without leaving it. Whatever actually works for you on the worst day. The method is yours. The readiness is the point.

Get through it. And let yourself know what is happening while you do. Both. In sequence if you have to. I did both. The first kept me upright. The second kept me from vanishing inside the uprightness.

I am still in it. Mine was caught early. I cannot speak for paths that are harder than mine. What I can tell you is that the day passes. The bad day ends. Another kind of day shows up. That is as far as I will promise.

Maybe this has already hit you. Maybe it is hitting you now. Maybe you are waiting and hoping it skips you. When did it hit? Or has it not yet? Tell me. The women I talked to only knew because someone told them. This page can be one more place that happens.