Ugly and Perfect

I'm going to start this blog post with something I wrote to a friend after she emailed me to ask about how I'm recovering from last week's surgery:

"I'm loving this little/no boobies thing! It's ugly (stitches and symmetry-wise), but it's perfect for me. I've been so sick of my boobs and worrying about them that it's a relief to have them GONE. And my body is now so used to being cut and stitched, that I've barely had to slow down this week. I hope I don't sound fake-chipper, like everything's great but it's really not. I am truly just plain old thrilled to get on with my life."

I actually don't even think that paragraph fully describes how tremendously wonderful I'm feeling about my decision. Why did I ever go for reconstruction in the first place? Actually, I do know the answer to that. I wanted the doctors to make my cancer go away immediately, so when they told me what is usually done, I simply said, "Do it." Most women want reconstruction, so the doctors told me it would be easier to do it up front. Now, a year-and-a-half later, I've had time to think about who I really am. The real Shari never needed fake boobs in the first place. I'm SO happy to have them gone.

HOWEVER, something I left out in my emotional posts trying to accept my cosmetic/corrective surgery last week was a description of the reality of what I would look like after my reconstruction was reversed. Paul and I were quite aware of how flat I'd be, but since that doesn't matter to us, I didn't even think of describing it here. Now that it's done, I want to prepare you for the pictures you know I'm going to share.

I'll begin by linking you to another non-reconstructed woman. During the summer of 2012, that bummer summer when I was enduring biweekly chemo treatments, I read a few stories about Jodi Jaecks, a woman in Seattle who wanted to swim topless after undergoing a bilateral mastectomy. She did eventually win the right to do so, and not surprisingly, she was willing to be pictured in a local paper without her breasts. She's really skinny, so I knew I wouldn't look quite like her, but it gave me a starting point as to how to picture myself.

For reference, here's a shot of me that shows the boobs before the best breast cancer ever. Note, this was before I started taking naked pictures of my breasts. And the hunchy posture was because I was talking to 2-year-old Reese in the chair next to me. But it gives a good view of the 36Ds while they were still growing the breast cancer.

Now here's the after picture, a bit blurry due to 4-year-old Reese's photography skills. I've been reading from other flat post-mastectomy bloggers that the most common comment I can expect is about having lost weight. In truth, I'm almost exactly the same weight in both pictures, but in better shape now.

 Before I show the nakey picture, I want to tell my closing story, so people who don't want to look can just click away after the punchline. As you can see, I have a little tube coming out of the bottom of my shirt leading into the black fanny pack. That is a drainage tube, and in the fanny pack is a little bulb that holds the blood and fluid that drains out of my body. The other day I had this conversation with Paul:

Me - "As much as I loathe having this drain and I'm counting the minutes until it comes out, I'll actually miss having a fanny pack. It's such a perfect size to carry wallet, keys, phone and pen without having to bring a purse."

Paul - "You know, honey, you don't have to have a drain in to wear a fanny pack."

Newly boobless me - "Yeah, but that would look weird."

(That was the punchline, so people who don't want to see my boobs, please click away now.)

Here's ugly but perfect me!