On Scars (or, I AM a modern primitive after all)

Well the date to dance with the knives has been set. I will be going in for my bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction on October 21st.

When I first thought about how this was all going to play out I imagined myself getting the perky Baywatch fake boobs out of this crappy deal. While I wouldn’t normally choose this look it was a fun thing to think about. Bouncing my way down the beach at sunset. Rescuing drowning kittens between my perfect plastic lady pillows. Turns out, the way the mastectomy must be performed, takes any idea of this ideal off the table. The scars that the mastectomy leaves behind are 3″ (if I’m lucky) scars across the front of each breast. When I wake up from surgery I will have no nipples but I will have scars that will seem like I’ve run into a samurai’s sword.

I talked to both the surgeon who will be performing the mastectomies and the plastic surgeon who will be reconstructing my breasts about ANY options that would leave out/move/hide those scars but there are no options that suit me. The only options that would minimize those scars across my breasts would be the surgeries I mentioned previously where they move muscle from one place to another. One of those left scars on your back described as shark bites and would render my ability to paddle a canoe deeply diminished. I refuse to let this experience leave me a physically weaker person so I have decided to change my perception of the scars.

I want to talk about rites of passage for a second. I believe in rites of passage. I believe that they must be timely, they must be painful, they must leave a mark and you must be psychologically changed when the passage is complete. In my life tattoos have played this role thus far. Each one tells a story about a specific event that is now part of the story of me. Each one is an outward physical representation of an internal passage. The more I think about the scars I will have on my breasts the more I am ready to embrace them as the physical marks of what stands to be the biggest passage yet. The passage from having cancer to having HAD cancer.