Removing 5 lbs of flesh from on top of your heart turns out to affect your heat loss.
Everybody needs a bosom for a sweater.
I already know what it's like to be flat-chested.
Hooray? I have no idea what to do with my hands.
What had you been doing to me with your hands?
Found out just after New Years that the wife of our family best friends was diagnosed with cancer. She's ~45 and Ashkenazi (and maybe there was one other possible indicator?), so serious BRCA concern, but she got the results back and there are no issues, so she gets a lumpectomy tomorrow. It was so weird knowing this so intimately from you guys, but only kind of. And, also, so crazy knowing that the range of outcomes was from simple lumpectomy with chemo and no radiation, all wrapped up in 6 months, up to removing all the parts.
Anyway, I thought OP.2 was going to be about how removing 5 lbs was making your running much faster.
Four happens to me occasionally though not, I assume, because of the loss of breast tissue.
7: heebie is just discovering what we men have been enduring all our lives.
It's given you a craving for goat meat?
I had another saline fill today, so my chest has been killing me. The surgeon only filled me with 30 cc because the last one had been painful, but this hasn't been much better. It still amazes me how much pain I've been willing to go through for purely aesthetic reasons.
I love your observations, heebie. Welcome to Flatland. Those bras look a lot like my go-to everyday bras, except for the pockets.
You all get incredible-looking results, but it does sound excruciating.
It's not purely aesthetic, though - it's feeling whole and intact and things like that as well, right?
It still amazes me how much pain I've been willing to go through for purely aesthetic reasons.
Like when I floss.
It still amazes me how much pain I've beenpeople who get tattoos and piercings are willing to go through for purely aesthetic reasons.
15: I guess so? It's hard to untangle--I wouldn't feel whole without implants because I don't like how I look flat, but at the same time, I definitely don't feel like I have "real" breasts. We'll see if that changes once the expanders are swapped out for implants.
I feel the same as 20, but as you can tell from 17, I also have suffered for my beauty.
One time, I was on the phone with my parents and they launched into a big story about how entertained they were by a recent study, which showed that the testosterone left in the womb from baby boys can masculinize the subsequent baby girls that the mother may have.
I sat sort of rigidly in the conversation, knowing that I'm a pretty androgynous person with two older brothers, but wondering why exactly my parents were being so rude about it, especially since I never discuss such things with them.
It turns out the reason they found it hilarious is that they were applying the logic to my grandmother, who was a fraternal twin. The evidence that she was masculinized was that she's a bossy jerk.
I just laughed thinly when they explained themselves and was happy to get off the phone. I don't think they realized that I assumed they were talking about me.
All this is to say, I think I had less emotional attachment to being female-shaped than the average female-bear.
At least from a distance, male and female bears look the same to me, and I'm reluctant to get too close to bears, despite my Canadian heritage.
Bears worry more about their shape because they don't have clothes.
It turns out the reason they found it hilarious is that they were applying the logic to my grandmother, who was a fraternal twin. The evidence that she was masculinized was that she's a bossy jerk.
Not to judge your parents, but they've got some issues, no?
20: I was thinking the other day* about how insanely barbaric branding cattle seems. And then I considered whether it's meaningfully different (aside from consent, which I'm not sure is a relevant concept for cattle) from tattooing and piercing. I mean, again, I get that consent matters. But body mods seem to work on a basic principle of "30 seconds of pain, even pretty excruciating, isn't that big a deal."
*while behind a Ford "King Ranch" F-150, which has a brand-like logo on it; come to think of it, not unlike some of the brand-like iconography to be seen en route from cosmopolitan Austin to desperate backwaterincreasingly well-governed Heebieville.
27: no shit.
This is the sort of thing where I step back from my normal position of stepping back from my assumption that my parents/family were normal and functional, and think, "Holy shit yes, they were totally fine*."
*except for the heteronormativity that fucked up my sister, but they weren't out of the mainstream for the mid-'80s
Let's not get all antisemitic. Plenty of gentiles have issues. They just take them out on the constitution instead of their kids.
Talking of pain, I got a tattoo last week. It didn't hurt too much. Now it's at the itchy scabby stage and driving me mental. I can't imagine having a larger one and even more itching.
I just assumed everyone got 4. Unexamined male privilege!
What had you been doing to me with your hands?
Placing you on a pedestal.
Are those bras supportive at all? Asking for a friend who isn't flat-chested.
Active listening and sincere expressions of concern, but no actual assistance.
28: Cattle branding in this day and age is typically done with a super cold implement (freeze branding) rather than a red hot iron, when it is done at all (ear tags and/or lip tattoos work for most purposes). Freeze branding is probably no worse than getting a planar wart removed; not exactly comfortable for the animal, but considerably more pleasant than dehorning or castration.
Not to judge your parents, but they've got some issues, no?
It's actually very reassuring to hear this from external sources.
Placing you on a pedestal.
It's really more of a rattan peacock chair.
a basic principle of "30 seconds of pain, even pretty excruciating, isn't that big a deal."
I feel like several major parts my life operate from this principle. Context matters.
seen en route from cosmopolitan Austin to desperate backwater increasingly well-governed Heebieville.
I'm uploading a visual representation of this to the flickr group.
Never mind. It keeps failing to upload and I'm giving up.
Hooray? I have no idea what to do with my hands.
Have you ever really felt your nipples?
Tell me have you ever really, really ever felt you nipples?
Yes. Everyone else in the Starbuck's was uneasy with it.
It's all just context, Moby. Do the same thing at the Squirrel Cage and you're just local color.
It still amazes me how much pain I've been willing to go through for purely aesthetic reasons.
Please forgive me if my speculation is baseless or if my expression of it is crude, but this suggests shame (an emotion I consider myself somewhat of an expert in) in an aesthetic concern, when no reaction more natural occurs.
Although we do not speak of it in school - still we must labour to be beautiful.
"30 seconds of pain, even pretty excruciating, isn't that big a deal."
After I got my new piercing done I asked my friend who'd accompanied me to my first one 20 years ago how I described the feeling and she said I called it the worst pain I'd ever felt. Somehow time and a shitty memory had made it seem like it had been no biggie, so I was surprised as hell when it hurt like a motherfucker. Somehow "30 seconds of pain is NBD" had become "there's minimal pain." I think it's pretty common for remembered pain to be less severe than the reality of it. This is why women are willing to have more than one kid. If the pain of childbirth were accurately recalled humanity would die out.
Somehow "30 seconds of pain is NBD" had become "there's minimal pain."
I think I've related before that I used to be on this seesaw wrt the pain of giving blood. I'd go in thinking it would hurt badly, then it would hardly hurt at all, so next time I'd expect zero pain, but then it hurt more than that, so next time.... It took literally 30+ donations for me to really calibrate my expectations.
I recently had a little blood draw for medical reasons, and I almost literally didn't feel it. Needles that aren't for platelets/plasma are tiny!
I'm not allowed to donate blood anymore because of Mad Cow disease. This annoys me because it was always the low hanging fruit of good deeds for me.
IHMHB that I was once turned away from donating blood because of Mad Cow, even though I've never been to the UK. The nurse didn't believe me and said they were "just taking extra precautions." I wasn't sure if I should find it super offensive or super funny.
48
I feel that way about novacaine. I always tell myself it doesn't hurt as much as I remember, and then it always hurts way more. I suppose it's evolution's way of making us go to the dentist on a regular basis.
46: If the process weren't so painful, I wouldn't feel any shame at all. As it is, I do feel a little bit ashamed, or maybe just uncomfortable, with all the effort and trouble I'm going through in order to have two bags of silicone stuck to my chest. If they were ever going to be functional/give me physical pleasure, I don't think I'd feel as torn. Then again, I don't judge people for other extensive body mods, so I really should just get over it. All of this is also complicated by the fact that, so far, my process has gone perfectly--so many other women at this stage are having much more difficulty.
I miss my real breasts a lot. The new ones should end up being prettier and larger, when the whole damn process is finished, but still. I was reading a romance novel the other day that had scenes with nipple play, and I actually started crying.
I still contend that women in Heebie's position, who have the BRCA mutation but haven't had cancer yet, are in an even more difficult position. Prophylactic mastectomy strikes me as a very hard choice to make. I'm having a prophylactic oophrectomy myself, but the fact that I'm already in "chemopause" and I don't want kids makes that one easier for me.
It wasn't hard for me because I never thought of it as a choice. There was a rigid time frame, and I am obedient. It was just ASAP.
I found it very hard to keep having doctors encouraging reconstruction, though. Since that part is squarely a choice, it felt awful to be making the non-recommended choice. I kept wondering if I was truly being dismissive and foolish and if they knew something I should listen to.
As for pain, it's weird how easily one can get used to it. Conversely, it's weird how unfamiliar pain can make one freak the fuck out. I get sebaceous cysts removed almost annually. (Although it's been a while now with no sign of a new one; maybe my body's hormones are changing as I age.) I like to think I've become blasé about them: the novacaine in my scalp stings, I feel generally crappy for a day or two, there's a couple weeks of washing my hair very gingerly, maybe I bleed a tiny bit on the pillow, and it's all back to normal before the stitches come out. Ho hum, just part of my spring routine. But the last time, the cyst was right under my ear rather than being on my scalp. Feeling the doctor dig around between my ear and my jawbone was really weird and uncomfortable. The first time they tried to take it out, they missed a bit and had to go back for the rest a few weeks later, and that was even worse for multiple reasons.
As for giving blood, I never have, and the obligation to do so is only growing, but there's always some reason not to. In addition to life getting busier, I've had weird not-quite-fainting stuff recently, so I'd be even more concerned about passing out than I used to be.
52
I don't think you should feel bad at all. Wanting to have breasts after cancer isn't in any way superficial or shallow. You've lost a part of yourself and this is a way to reclaim that on some level. No one thinks someone who gets a prosthetic leg is being vain, even though they don't technically need it for mobility (e.g. they could use a wheelchair).
54: I wonder if some of that was geographic.
I wonder if some of that was geographic.
Heebie's doctors want vast tracts of land?
57: I think so. Also apparently San Antonio is a destination for reconstruction, so they were extra confused.
J, how long does the process take? How much longer will you be in it?
Dude, I was depressed for weeks after I chipped a tooth.
It varies quite a bit. I had tissue expanders placed under the muscle at the same time as my mastectomy, and have had 60 cc of saline injected into them every 1-2 weeks since the late November surgery. I'd like to get to a C cup, and now that we've gone down to 30 cc at a time I think that the next fill, or perhaps one more, should do it. Surgeons usually want to wait at least a month between the last fill and the exchange surgery, in which expanders are swapped with implants. I scheduled mine for spring break, the last week of March. After that, I need to wait at least six months, and also figure out if my insurance will pay, for nipple tattoos.
Otherwise, I'm still getting infusions of a "targeted therapy" drug every three weeks until the end of June. I had been planning to have my plasyic surgeon remove my port at the same time as my exchange surgery, but this week my chemo nurse said that the veins in my arm aren't too great, and that I should leave the port in until the infusions are done.
On the bright side, my hair is growing back. It's straight so far, and maybe a little darker.
Are you guys familiar with Knitted Knockers (http://www.knittedknockers.org/)? My wife has started making some of them, and she screwed up the first pair (they are supposed to be left open so you can adjust the cup size, but she closed them up before realizing that). She's checking with a friend who has recently undergone surgery, but if anyone here wants a non-adjustable pair, let me know, and we'll keep you in mind if the friend doesn't want them.
This is the only way you can have the satisfaction of knowing that a commenter has handled your breasts without all the awkwardness that usually entails.
63: I've crochet some for friends myself. I'm too far along to need them now, but thanks!
I'm not allowed to donate blood anymore because of Mad Cow disease.
I'm still not allowed to donate because of the gay. Oh, sorry, they changed the rules: I can donate if I want to be celibate for a year first. Yeah, I'll get right on that.
I haven't eaten a cow's brain in more than a year but I'm still excluded.
They won't take my blood because of malaria. Not that I've ever had malaria.
I can donate if I want to be celibate for a year first.
Same-sex marriage is legal now, so that goal has never been more attainable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1n7o4Wy4g0
In honor of Paul Kantner, to whom nmm.
I still have a nipping-out sensation in the cold,
I AM JUST NIPPING OUT AND MAY BE SOME TIME.
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to donate. I tried while I was in college but was turned away because I come from AIDS central. Perhaps the rules have changed by now.
||
NMM to French New Wave director and critic Jacques Rivette.
Did anyone catch the newly restored Out 1 when it came around* a few of months ago?
*Though sadly not to Arrakis, almost considered flying to London for that.
|>
J, that sounds rough, but at least finite.