Reconstruction

Yowza what an issue.  Such a personal choice.  And so much emotion surrounding it. 

I had read many books from the U.S., where they seemed to be saying that reconstruction was often done at the same time as the mastectomy.  When I asked my own surgeon about whether that was the norm, he just said that he didn't do that.  As it turns out, I was later told that no surgeon in Calgary did that.  Evidently, if you want reconstruction, you have to get over the mastectomy and then Calgary surgeons will do the reconstruction a year later.  I don't really know the reason for that.  Is it partly a concern from the surgery perspective?  to make sure women had recovered sufficiently and were strong enough for more surgery?  Is it to give women time to make sure that they really want the reconstruction? I don't know. 

I'll say upfront that I have decided not to go through with reconstruction.  So, as I keep saying, this blog reflects my thinking only.  If you have decided to go ahead with reconstruction, that's your decision and I think we all have to respect others' decisions. 

There are a whole bunch of reasons for my decision, aside from money.  Here, reconstruction is covered in our medical system, so cost was not a factor at all.

1. I hate surgery, so the thought of having yet another surgery was not appealing at all.  More surgery just means more chance of infection and things going wrong.
2. More than one surgery may be required to get things right.   
3. I did not want a silicon breast implant - I think those things have a horrible history and are toxic in the body, so I didn't want one in mine. 
4. I wasn't keen on the idea of them having to scrape parts of my body, probably my abdomen, to get the tissue needed to put in my breast.  This seemed to me to be like a skin graft - my brother has skin grafts and they are not attractive. 
5. My reading indicated that you had to have an expander put in you, to stretch the skin enough to be able to place the tissue to form the breast.  A number of people in various forums or chat rooms commented that this was extremely painful. 
6. It won't ever feel like a breast.  The nerves clearly have been cut, so it's not a breast. 
7. The intent is to have the two breasts look the same - the fake breast and the real breast.  In my case, it was likely that they would have to reduce the real breast just to have them the same size.  This meant even more surgery - and on a breast that was healthy!
8. The option of having a nipple tattooed on just seemed odd to me. 
9. My husband, who has been supportive of me enormously through the whole process, did speak up and was against the prospect of reconstruction for all of the reasons given in this list. 
10. I am not of child-bearing years, so I didn't need it to nurse a child. 
11. There were a whole lot of other factors having to do with the role of the breast in society, body image, society's expectations of women, whose need would I be satisfying by going ahead with a fake breast and why would it be so important to me that I would put myself through that?
12. The surgery is LONG - with all that anaesthetic being administered.  Depending on which option for reconstruction is chosen, it will take between 6 and 10 hours.  I had decided against reconstruction even before I found out this last point.  If there had been any hesitation at all about my reconstruction decision (which there wasn't), this last point was the clincher.  Ten hours of surgery - I wouldn't put myself through that unless it was absolutely medically necessary. 
13. I just talked to another health care professional yesterday who said that she had seen a number of cases where the reconstructed breast contained pubic hair, since that's the area where they take the tissue for the skin graft!  Again, that just seems weird to me.   

At least I'm getting used to seeing myself with one breast while the other side is flat.  It's weird, for sure, and I'd rather still have my breast for sure.  But I'll get used to it.  And I won't get reconstruction.  It's just not for me.