This sh*t is weird

Sorry for the curse. But, fair warning, it’s going to happen occasionally. In my everyday life I’m very sweary. It’s kind of a hobby of mine and I enjoy it very much. I do, however, try to limit it in this space. In some cases though, a swear is simply the best possible word choice. And kids, this ish is exceptionally weird. I discovered early on that the best way to deal with the weirdness is to find the funny in it. Doing so kept me smiling and sane when I might otherwise have been neither.

So today we’re going to take a break from the heavier stuff and I’m going to tell you a funny story from my experience. 

Some context: I started out with an implant reconstruction. For me that meant that, once the oncological surgeon had everything chopped off and scooped out, the plastic surgeon took over and put in tissue expanders. A few months later they were swapped out for implants (and eight months after that I had them removed and had reconstruction using my own tissue, but that’s a different story for future posts).

Most people have never even heard of tissue expanders, so let me explain what they are and how they work. A tissue expander is a lot like an implant, but with a thicker shell. They’re used when a patient is either sizing up a little after a mastectomy or has lost so much skin, their desired implant won’t fit. Sometimes, as in my case, it’s both. The purpose of the expanders is right in the name: they stretch the skin and outer tissue to make more room. 

If, like me, you had a pallet stretcher as part of your braces experience, the concept is basically the same. Except, instead of turning a dial to gradually widen the stretcher, the expanders get filled over time. You have to wait a few weeks till your scars are strong enough to bear the pressure, then you have a series of appointments with your plastic surgeon’s office to gradually add more fluid. The expanders each have a port for a needle and there’s a tiny magnet at the site. This allows the nurse to use what looks like a miniature stud finder to locate the port, insert the needle, and add fluid. They call these appointments “fills.” How many fills you have – and over what period of time – depends on a number of factors. In my case, I had about four and she was able to add a decent amount each time.

The technology is actually really cool. In the sixties and seventies, if you lost too much skin, you had no choice but to go flat or go down to whatever size the salvageable skin would allow. Of course, back then, most people didn’t have reconstruction anyway because insurance didn’t cover it. Expanders came along in the early eighties and they’re used for a whole variety of reconstructive surgeries now. They’ve also come a long way since their introduction. 

Parts of the fill experience are also pretty neat – to nerds like me at least. It’s a fascinating process to have your boobs gradually pumped up like beach balls. I took before and after photos and measurements for each fill and it was nifty to see the progress.

What’s not fun is the pressure that hits a few hours after each fill appointment. I suspect it’s less intense for people who elect for several smaller fills, but I elected for fewer fills of as much as my nurse felt comfortable with, partly because it fit into my schedule better and partly because I’m always paranoid about infection and, any time your skin is breached, there’s a low-level risk. It’s a very tiny risk, but still. My body loves to latch on to an infection and I figured this was one risk I could reduce.

Anyway, because I opted for larger fills at each visit, the pressure was extraordinary and, in my case, hit suddenly each time. For me, it took a few hours to kick in, though I’ve never understood why. I’d be perfectly comfortable for hours and then wham!  I distinctly remember stopping mid-bite of my dinner a few hours after the first one, gasping at the sudden intensity and wondering if my boobs were actually going to explode.

They did not, of course, and subsequent fills weren’t quite as bad, probably because I knew what to expect. And after my last fill, one of those incredibly weird but funny moments happened.

It was good timing. I was exhausted because I’d gone back to work much sooner than I should have post-mastectomy and because my body was not coping well at all with the hormone suppression medications – and because I was trying to keep moving as though it was all just a bump in the road instead of a period of real physical struggle that deserved more care than I was giving it. I had my eye on two surgeries: the exchange, where they remove the expanders and put in the final implants, and the oophorectomy that would allow me to safely come off the injection that was causing me so much trouble. I was much more stressed out and worn out than I realized at the time – and I knew I was pretty tired. All-in-all, I needed a bit of funny right then. And the universe delivered.

So. My partner and I were getting ready for bed the night of the last fill. I was feeling so tight it hurt to raise my arms over my head or stretch my shoulders too far back. Also important to know is that I am the palest of Irish white girls. The parts of me that never see the sun – my boobs, for example – are vampire-white, and at the time they were stretched so taut they practically shone. In fact the skin was so pale and so shiny and so smooth from being stretched that, when my partner turned on the bedroom TV at the exact moment I took off my tee shirt, the light from the television bounced off my skin and hit him right in the eye. I know because I saw it gleam on his glasses. He jerked in surprise. I laughed at the expression on his face. And then, because we’re not normal people, we spent a good five minutes turning me this way and that, flashing light around the room – off the mirror, onto the bed, in front of the dog – like an admittedly weak but still amusing set of disco balls. It’s one of my favorite memories of the entire two-plus years.

The moral of the story is three-fold. 

First, you can actually blind a man with your boobs. That discovery alone was worth all the pain of the expanders. 

Second, bodies are weird. A lot of the weird in this experience is gross-weird, not funny-weird, so grab the latter whenever you can.

Third, and most importantly, laugh. No matter what’s going on, how tired you are, how worried you are, how much pain you’re in. Find something you can laugh at – or at least smile about. Those little moments will glitter like diamonds in your memory long after the hard parts end.