Turned up, having been warned that I may face a long wait, but was seen quickly.
She peeled the huge strapping tapes off which stung. I was half afraid to look but eventually did. Not bad considering it was only day 6. The nurse finished pulling the strapping off underneath. By my armpit was a stingy patch. She looked at it and proclaimed it a blood blister. When I tried to put my arm down, it was sticky and felt prickly. Overall though, the nurse was pleased with the way I was healing.
Before she redressed it, she asked me if I wanted a look at it. I was shocked when I did. My boob was incredibly reduced. Much more so than I’d expected. My cancer boob is an F cup. My new boob looked to me to be a D cup.
Not only was my boob much smaller than it should have been but the shape was weird too. It continued into my armpit, giving a weird lump shape at my side. At the bottom, near the crease, what should have been a rounded curve was oval, almost rectangular. And the nipple! My areola was almost completely gone. Yeah, the nipple was there but around it, there was probably only a centimetre of areola left. Now, I know my areola was large, larger than the one on my cancer boob, but still. Now it was ridiculously small.
I had to stop examining myself in the mirror to allow the nurse to put the new dressings on. She put on a very light dressing, which was a real relief after the heavy strapping that had been on there.
I walked out of the plastics unit in a daze. Upset, shocked, let down by the way my surgery had gone; by what that bloody stupid plastic ‘surgeon’ had done to me. One thing was obvious. I needed a new bra. I wasn’t really in any state to go shopping, but the huge bra I’d been given on the ward just didn’t fit. M&S bra department was alien, given that I had to eschew the usual underwired bras. I found myself a selection of soft, D cup bras and tried them on. Too big. Not even a D cup then. Down to C.
I bought 6 and took them home.
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