Keeping abreast of it

Just a quick update on the surgery situation.

On Thursday I had my last drain removed. The drain was basically a bottle on a long tube, the end of which was inserted in to my body and the operation site just at the side of my rib cage. It took a little while to get used to it not being there as I'd grown accustomed to carting the thing around with me everywhere. I'd also been watching in grim fascination as the 'tissue worms' (basically long pieces of tissue from the wound site) made their way down the tube in to the bottle at the bottom. Here is how the bottle looked the night before the drain was removed:

A bottle of blood, tissue and lymphatic fluid. Perfect for distracting zombies whilst you make your escape, if such a situation were ever to arise.

I've managed to get out and about a few times since my operation, including meeting with some of the girls from the Younger Breast Cancer Network. I've been carrying the bottle about with me in a bag like this:

However, as less blood and more fluid began draining from the op site, I realised that it did indeed look like I was carrying a bag of piss around with me. Nice.

Thursday was also when the dressings came off and was the first time that I've seen the results of my surgery. I have a large scar under my arm below my armpit from my axillary node clearance. They went through the scar that they made when they took out the few nodes for my sentinel node biopsy back in August last year. There is one huge lump of scar tissue there now, which makes me feel like I am constantly carrying a book under my arm and is pretty uncomfortable. My armpit looks like a banjo with the amount of cording underneath there, including one thick painful one that almost runs down the entire length of my arm and prevents me from fully extending it. Here is a lovely little piccy of the mess that is now my armpit:

When lymph nodes are removed, the nerves running in to the arm get a good bashing about. As a consequence of this, I've been left with a pretty sore bingo wing - the back of my arm down to my elbow constantly feels as if it's burnt and my elbow permanently feels like I've just banged my funny bone. Ironically, this is not funny. It's in fact very painful. And annoying.

Now on to what is my new breast for the time being. Its an incredibly odd feeling. When I lay down it feels as though I have a small animal sitting on my chest. Its completely numb to the touch and as the implant is only half full at present, when prodded it feels very strange. The only thing I can liken it to is when a football or tennis ball gets a puncture and it has that plasticy, empty feeling. I also have another scar of about 10 centimetres in length running across it. Regrettably however, I am not going to share this one with you!

I'm also currently not able to lift anything heavier than a quarter filled kettle or to use my right arm for anything at all strenuous so any offers of help with the housework would be much appreciated!

Visually, the outcome of the surgery is better than I expected and I often feel like I want to proudly show it off to people like some gruesome Blue Peter project - "and here is one we made earlier!". I am of course having to curb this urge as not everyone will want to be bombarded with unsolicited photos of my Frankenboob. But as happy as I am with the results so far, ultimately this is something I would never have chosen to do unless essentially my life depended on it. I'm still coming to terms with how my body is now irreversibly altered, and will be even more so when I undergo further risk reducing surgery to remove my other breast. So please, please save the 'at least you get a nice new pair of boobs out of it' comments. As it goes, I was pretty happy with the ones I had before. I'd really rather that this wasn't happening and that I could have hung on to those ones, thanks all the same!

Operation Boob Removal

As I'm now safely back in my own flat thank goodness, I'm going to try and write about my surgery and hospital experience. However, some of it is a little hazy due to the copious amount of morphine I had pumped in to my veins and later thrown down my neck. It's also taken a while to write as typing hurts! But anyway, here it is.

Thursday started with me arriving at the the hospital at 7.30, ready to be 'processed' for surgery. I'd had to wash myself that morning and the night before with a special anti bacterial shower gel - sadly it did not smell of coconut but was a lurid pink colour, rather like toilet cleaner. I'm guessing the effect it had on my skin was the same as well.

Once again, I had to stand almost naked in a cubicle whilst I was examined and drawn on ready for the surgeons knife. When I was taken down to theatre, they very kindly let me keep my little hat on so my fluffy chicken head would not be displayed to the world and its wife. I now have very little dignity left so it's nice to be able to cling on to the final shreds of it once in a while! I had concerns about the anaesthetist being able to cannulate me, basically because the veins in my left hand and arm are quite wisely hiding themselves somewhere beneath the surface, however he was very reassuring that he could cannulate my right hand to administer the anaesthetic and then once I was asleep he would find a vein in the other hand. I definitely need to be unconscious for that one, due to the fact that the chemotherapy has ensured that having a needle anywhere near that arm is very, very painful. I'm now not able to have needles anywhere near my right arm due to the risk of lymphoedema after lymph node removal. There goes that tattoo I was planning! 

After having the inside of my breast scooped out and replaced with an empty implant (well - half filled implant) and having all my lymph nodes removed, I came round in a haze of morphine. Cue the talking of absolute bollocks. I had one hand connected to the morphine pump and IV drip - he had managed to cannualte me in my left hand - after a bit of trying judging by the state of it - and three drains attached to my right side. In case you have never seen one of these, this is what they look like:

I had to carry these around with me in a fetching green plastic bag like a spare body part everywhere I went whilst in hospital.I still have one of them in which has been christened Billy or 'this fucking thing'. I don't think I'll miss him when he's removed next week. The stuff in the bottle looks rather like beetroot juice and I would imagine just as unappetising.

Being unable to move very far at all due to pain and being incredibly woozy from the morphine and general anaesthetic, having a pee was not a simple as it once was. Even though I was in a side room with a bathroom, there was no way I could make it to the loo. So I was given a bed pan. If you've ever had to try and use a bed pan you'll know that lying flat with a cardboard bowl under your bum is not the easiest position to have a tinkle in. So in came the commode. Again, if you've never seen one of these, its basically a wheelchair with a hole cut out of the middle with a bed pan stuck in it. Having a pee sat in a chair is a very bizarre experience. Almost as weird as having to try and have pee lying in bed.

Apparently morphine can make it difficult to wee (who knew?) so the second time I sat on the commode my bladder appeared to have gone to sleep. The nurse then inserted a catheter which just made me feel like I was constantly bursting for a wee until I begged her to take it out later, hoping that my bladder had now been given the equivalent of a slap round the face and had been shocked back in to action.

This time I seem to have had quite a bad reaction to the general anaesthetic, meaning I spent a lot of the time in the 24 hours after my operation in fits of hysterical tears. Indeed, my surgeon found me stood in the bathroom the morning after my operation bald and with my arse hanging out my gown crying my eyes out, desperate for someone to come and help me have a wash. Not my finest hour.

At this point I also had a cannula on the inside of my wrist due it falling out of the back of my hand in the middle of the night and the nurse being unable to find another vein. If you can imagine how thin and sensitive the skin on the inside of your wrist is..... ouch.

The morning after my operation two nurses sheepishly came in to my room and told me that unfortunately they had to move me on to the ward as they needed the side room for another patient. Cue more fits of hysterical crying. As I said before, holding on to the final shreds of my dignity is important to me and being displayed on a ward with my Phil Mitchell haircut and broken body like some shit circus attraction was really not what I wanted! My bed was also positioned directly opposite the nurses station meaning that I was party to the comings and goings of the entire ward whether I wanted to be or not. To add insult to injury, the woman in the bed next to me was insisting on telling everyone who would listen to her that she hadn't had a poo for a week and nothing would work 'not even prune juice'. Poogate continued for the rest of the time she was in hospital (luckily she went home the next morning).

My wrist cannula also had to be taken out due to it being incredibly sore and swollen. Because I had been having injections to thin my blood to try and avoid blood clots due to lying in bed all day, the removal of the cannula created a scene akin to something from a Shaun of the Dead - i.e. blood squirting everywhere:

No more IV morphine bah!

The nurses on the ward were lovely albeit overworked and not enough of them. However, i did have to fight the daily curtain battle - I wanted my curtains drawn around my bed to retain a modicum of privacy, whilst they wanted them open. Also being woken up at 6.30am every morning really did not make for a even tempered Rebecca. And the food was terrible. The last evening meal I had there was roast chicken with creamed potatoes and vegetables. Ah that sounds nice, I hear you say? Well, it consisted of a lump of dried up chicken you could have used to polish your boots with and lumpy jaundiced looking mashed potatoes which tasted like they'd been mixed with gone off yoghurt. They were also ironically fashioned in to two mounds which bore a fleeting resemblance to a pair of tits. Talk about rubbing it it.

However, it wasn't all bad as I was treated to lots of visits and pressies from my lovely friends and family including a suprise visit from these two beauties, my friends Sarah and Aimee from the Younger Breast Cancer Network:

Hospital selfie! And a distinct lack of real boobs between us!

There was also a nice array of very attractive doctors. Ladies, if you're wondering where all the fit blokes are in Birmingham, they are hanging out at City Hospital.

As I said at the beginning, I'm now back at home and it's now a week since my operation. The pain level has subsided a bit and has been kept in control with copious amounts of codeine and a sneaky bit of oramorph that I had left over from when I was having chemotherapy. One of the nicest things about being at home is not being woken at 6.30am by glaring fluorescent ceiling lights and being able to eat food that doesn't resemble something that the dog has just chucked up. Anyway, I've rambled on enough now so just to finish with the fact that Operation Boob Removal is hopefully complete -  now just to wait for the results eeek!

Node Basher

About a week or so ago I found what felt like a swollen lymph node in my 'good' armpit. Between then and Thursday night this week I'd convinced myself it was cancer. That the recent mammogram had missed something in my good boob and that it had spread to my lymph nodes and that was what I was feeling. I'd prodded and poked the poor thing until it was sore, earning me the nickname 'node basher' by my friend Aimee.  As what normally happens when any of us are in a panic about anything cancer related, Sarah, Aimee and myself had been talking that evening about my node with them trying to calm me down as much as is possible over Facebook messenger. 

After a sleepless night I decided to rock up at the breast unit without an appointment on Friday morning first thing and beg them to take pity on me. Within half an hour I'd seen my surgeon and been sent for an ultrasound. Whilst waiting for the scan, my plastic surgeon's registrar walked past and stopped to talk to me at which I promptly burst in to tears. The last time I saw her I also cried - not anything to do with her I might add as she is incredibly lovely. 

The radiographer who carried out the ultrasound was the same one who also scanned another armpit node and my tumour in October. Poor woman must think I have an obsession with nodes. In the 30 seconds she was silent as she scanned my armpit, I'd imagined that I had cancer in my nodes, that I'd need a CT scan and I'd be told it had spread elsewhere in my body and I was going to die. However, she told me that there was nothing suspicious, just a normal innocent looking node just minding it's own business, hanging out being all lymphy. After asking her to check and check again, I could have cried with relief. 

I cannot fault the level of care I received yesterday. I turned up in a state without and appointment and they made time to see me, check me and reassure me and I was out within an hour and a half, albeit feeling like a bit of a wally. I can't help wondering where strong, together Rebecca has gone? I had it all worked out, I was dealing with this. Now I feel like I've regressed several months and am back to thinking every ache and pain, every lump and bump is cancer. I know it is a genuine and legitimate worry and one I will live with for the rest of my life (however long that will be) but I feel like I'm in a constant state of anxiety (or Canxiety) at present. I need to learn how to control it and get back to being the person I was a month ago before it takes over my life. As the great founder of the Younger Breast Cancer Network says, why borrow tomorrow's sorrow? 

Plastic fantastic

I have a date for surgery! I went to see the plastic surgeon today and also had my pre-op. I have to say that the highlight of my day today (and yes I am joking) was standing topless in the middle of a room having photos taken of my boobs. I think the last of my dignity got up and walked out the room, waving as it went!

I lose my boob (and more importantly the tumour) on the 5th of February. As the results of my genetic testing for BRCA mutations were negative, they won't be removing the other one at the same time. However, because I still have a 25% risk of another breast cancer (as calculated by the genetic counsellor) I am opting to have the other one removed as soon as possible to reduce that risk. It won't be done at the same time as the bad one, as the priority is treating the cancer and the more surgery I have, the greater the risk of infection, which would delay my radiotherapy.

I will be having what is called a skin sparing mastectomy with immediate reconstruction with an expander implant. An expander is essentially an empty implant which gets pumped up gradually to stretch what skin is left after the mastectomy, until there is enough skin to put in an implant equal to the other side. So instead of a titty squash, I'll now be having a titty stretch!

As my sentinel node biopsy showed one out of five nodes as having cancer in, I'll also be having what is called a level two node clearance - all the lymph nodes removed from my armpit and chest. To be honest, I'm more worried about this than having my tit cut off. The node clearance will leave me with a number of possible side effects, including nerve damage, cording and permanent lymphoedema or the risk of developing it.

Because the inside of my breast will be essentially scooped out (like a jacket potato  - eew) the expander will need to go behind my pectoral muscle and be held in by what is called a 'strattice mesh'. It's basically a sling made of pig skin, but with the 'pig' taken out.

It's very likely that the radiotherapy will muck up the reconstruction and that things are going to need tweaking and fixing. Worst case scenario I could lose the expander and /or the strattice. But it's a risk I'm willing to take. The surgeon told me to look at the expander as a temporary fix until treatment is done, something that will slightly less traumatic for me than seeing a flat scar in the mirror every day where my breast used to be.

I'll probably be in hospital for three to four nights. I'm hoping I'll get a side room where my hairless cancer face and head won't be on show to the whole ward and their families! I'll also be doing my best impression of a boiler, what with the three drains that will be hanging out of my boob and armpit. Two these will come out before I leave hospital, but unfortunately one will be staying in and I'll have to carry it round with me for two weeks like an additional body part - "we've taken your boob but here's a bottle of bodily fluid instead!".

The surgeon will start filling the expander once I have completely healed, gradually filling it with saline at weekly or two weekly intervals. Once this is complete (and it shouldn't take that long - I'm not exactly Katie Price) then radiotherapy will begin.

This is very basic account of the next stage in my treatment. As you will hopefully see, it is not quite as simple as 'getting a new boob'. It's major surgery and a long drawn out process with it's own risks. But onwards and upwards as they say - bring on that scalpel (and the morphine!)

Scalpel please

I’ve managed to drag myself out of the docetaxel induced illness stupor I’ve been in for the last week to write about my visit to see my surgeon last Friday. I’ve been feeling quite useless this week having done nothing of any value apart from sleep and have the occasional hot bath so I’m hoping writing this post will at least go part way to rectifying that. Feeling useless seems to be par for the course for me at the moment, but that’s another blog post….

Anyway, last Friday I went to meet my surgeon to discuss plans for the new year. Not which festivity we’ll be at to see it in sadly, but rather which bits of my body he was looking to remove in January. The first time I met him was when I was coming round from a general anesthetic, looking like a smurf after being injected with blue dye and having five lymph nodes removed. As usual, I was the youngest in the waiting room at the breast clinic by at least 20 years. Cue stares of confusion and puzzlement, particularly when I am called in to the consultation room rather than my elderly relative walk out of it.

The reason that I have been given chemotherapy first is to try and shrink the tumour down so that it can be removed with a lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy. As I am not exactly blessed in the boob department, removing the lump without shrinking it would have left me with what could probably be described as a mangled tit. However, after lots of reading and researching, I have begun to think that a lumpectomy is not for me – rather I would just get rid of both of the buggers to try and give myself the best possible chance of not having another primary breast cancer.  ‘But that’s such a big decision and so traumatic!’ I hear you cry. Yes it is – but do you know what is more traumatic? Having breast cancer. Believe me, I know. A double mastectomy doesn’t remove the risk entirely but it certainly reduces it.

However, this isn’t an operation that NHS doctors tend to do simply on request. As my GP put it, doctors are trained to make people better – to remove bad tissue and leave the good stuff. To remove healthy tissue with no obvious reason goes against the conventional doctor’s way of thinking.

I went to see the surgeon, struggling with the unpleasant beginnings of tax side effects, almost prepared for a bit of a fight. I wanted to ask for a referral for genetic testing purely based on my age. I have no strong family history of breast cancer – my paternal grandmother possibly had it in her 80s however certainly didn’t’ die from it. My tumour also doesn't have the characteristics that can indicate a BRCA 1 gene fault – triple negative and very fast growing (grade 3). However, the simple fact is that I am 32 and I have breast cancer. That in itself is very unusual and for my own piece of mind I need to know whether it is due to a gene fault. Then I can take whatever steps are needed to reduce any further risk of another primary breast cancer or other related cancers.

However, surprisingly the surgeon agreed with everything I said and confirmed he would put me on a quick referral to genetics as the result of the testing would determine the type of surgery I have in early January. For the first time, I felt like someone in the medical profession was treating me as a younger woman with breast cancer, rather than a woman with breast cancer. If that makes any sense at all. He also told me that in dimension terms, my tumour had shrunk by almost half and that a lot of what I could feel now was probably scar tissue, formed when cancer cells die. Pow - take that you bastards!!

So to the surgery and which bits of me will be no more come January. Basically, if genetic testing shows I do have a gene fault it’ll be a double mastectomy, one at a time. I’ll have the bad one off first, with delayed reconstruction as I’ll need to have radiotherapy. Then when they come to reconstruct the bad side, they’ll also take the good one off and reconstruct that one immediately. It does mean I’ll be a one- titted wonder for six to twelve months but I can cope with that. I’m not exactly Katie Price in the boob stakes – it’s nothing that a good prosthesis and a bit of padding won’t fix. Getting naked in front of a new fella (wishful thinking here) might be a bit weird but to be honest, if one temporarily absent boob puts him off he’s not the one for me. Amright, ladies??

Anyway, if there isn’t a gene fault, but the genetics team say I am at increased risk of another primary breast cancer due to my age, the same surgery can still be done, it’s just that ‘there are a few more hoops to jump through’ as my surgeon put it. One of these being me seeing a psychologist to ensure that my fears about having breast cancer again are likely to be reduced by having a double mastectomy. No point whacking them both off if I’m still going to be panicking about it is there? However, I don’t think anything ever ensures that the fear leaves you entirely. As one woman who is now three years from her diagnosis said to me – it never goes away; it just gets easier to deal with.

I’ll also need a level two node clearance , as my sentinel node biopsy showed one node out of five removed involved. A level two clearance basically means taking all the nodes out from under your arm up to your chest. To be honest, this scares me more than the removal of my actual boob.

So basically, the outcome of my genetics referral will ultimately determine the surgery that I have. As regards the type of reconstruction, this is totally way over my head so I’m being referred to discuss this with the plastic surgeons. However, if I lose my nipples. I have decided I want roses tattooed on instead or maybe hearts. Or even the Chuckle Brothers.

I still may be able to have a lumpectomy, but if not, do I feel sad about the potential loss of my boobs? To a degree, yes. I’ll lose a part of me and probably end up with a pair of foobs with no feeling in them that someone could set fire to and I wouldn’t notice. My boobs used to be one of my favourite parts of my body – until one of them tried to kill me that is. So you could say my relationship with them is not the best right now. We’ve fallen out big time. It’ll take me a while to forgive them  - well, one of them anyway. So I won’t be too sad to see them go. But if I do have to say bye bye to my boobs or tara to my tits, I’m going to give them a good send off - a party with bubbly, cake and balloons. And guess what the theme will be.....?

Breast cancer and all that jazz

For the rest of October, as my contribution to breast cancer awareness month, I will be featuring a number of stories about diagnosis and treatment from younger women with breast cancer on my blog, written in their own words.

Before I do this, I wanted to write a post containing information about breast cancer that you may not be aware of. I’ll mostly be using information taken from sites such as Breast Cancer Care, with a smattering of information about my own personal situation.

Contrary to popular opinion, breast cancer isn’t just ‘one thing’. It’s a complex beast and there are a number of different types. I won’t go in to this in too much detail now but if you wanted to find out more about the different types of breast cancer you can find this here. Because all breast cancers are different, people have different treatments depending on what will work best for them.

Some facts about breast cancer (taken from the Breast Cancer Care website):

• The lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is 1 in 8 in women

This means that 1 in 8 women in the UK will develop breast cancer in their lifetime– it also means that 7 out of 8 women won’t develop breast cancer.

• Estimated risk of developing breast cancer according to age

Risk up to age 29, 1 in 2,000.

Risk up to age 39, 1 in 215.

Risk up to age 49, 1 in 50.

Risk up to age 59, 1 in 22.

Risk up to age 69, 1 in 13.

Lifetime risk, 1 in 8.

• Both women and men get breast cancer

Although it is much rarer than in women, men can get breast cancer too. Every year about 400 men are diagnosed in the UK.

• Older people are more likely to get breast cancer than younger people

After gender (being female), age is the strongest risk factor for developing breast cancer – the older the person, the higher the risk. Around 81% of breast cancers occur in women over the age of 50.

• Most cases of breast cancer don’t run in the family. Most cases of breast cancer happen by chance. Only around 5% of breast cancers are caused by inheriting an altered (faulty) gene.
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• Breast cancer can affect any woman, regardless of the size of their breasts (trust me mine are very modest!).
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• Finding a lump in your breast doesn’t mean you have breast cancer. There are several benign (not cancer) conditions that can occur in the breast and may cause a lump. Also many women will experience lumpy breasts just before their period. This is a normal response to changing hormones and often the lump or lumpiness disappears after the period. However, if this doesn’t go away, it’s important to get it checked out by a doctor. Any new lump should always be assessed by a doctor.

Even though breast cancer is more common in older women it can and does happen to younger women! Please check regularly and visit your doctor with any changes or lumps. And never be fobbed off. If you are unhappy push for a referral to a breast clinic.

Please click here for information about what breast changes look and feel like.

Breast cancer can be oestrogen receptive or not, HER2 positive or negative or triple negative. If a breast cancer is oestrogen receptive, simplistically it means that oestrogen is making it grow. My tumour is as strongly oestrogen receptive as you can get. This means the little bastard is doing the happy dance on the stuff. 

However, this is apparently a good thing as because they know what’s making it grow, they can use drugs to try and stop it coming back.

Tamoxifen (or Tamoxibollocks as its affectionately known) is a drug that they give women who have had oestrogen receptive breast cancer. Sometimes it is given to women with an increased risk of breast cancer as a preventative measure. Tamoxifen is usually given for five years after active treatment (chemo, surgery, radiotherapy) for oestrogen receptive breast cancer has finished. However, studies are now showing that ten years may be the more effective treatment strategy. I’ll be having Tamoxifen to try and reduce my risk of recurrence.  Because breast cancer can come back. Unlike some cancers, the term ‘cured’ is not used with breast cancer. It can return – either as a local, regional or distant recurrence. Most people do not have a recurrence, however it can and does happen.

So there are measures that you can take to try and prevent this happening. Tamoxifen is one. On the whole I am happy about this, but there are things that I find a little difficult to deal with. The first one is that you can’t get pregnant on Tamoxifen due to the risk of damage to the foetus. So ten years would take me to the age of 43 - fertility is not at its peak by this point. That’s if the chemotherapy hasn’t fried my ovaries first. But, for me I think I’d be terrified to get pregnant even if it were possible. All that oestrogen flying around. Would be like bloody Christmas for breast cancer. So, children more than likely out the window for me. Not literally obviously. I don’t go around throwing children out of windows…

Anyway, Tamoxifen also has some lovely side effects, mainly in the way of menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes, weight gain and osteoporosis. Delightful.

Surgery

On to surgery. As I have one node involved I will need to have a full axillary node clearance. This means taking out all the lymph nodes from under my arm pit and possibly the right side of my chest. Cutting through layers of muscle and nerves. Not pretty. I’m still in pain from having four nodes out so having around 20 removed doesn’t bear thinking about. It also leaves me at risk of lymphoedema – a permanent, painful and sometimes disfiguring condition which can involve having a very swollen arm.

I’m having chemotherapy first to try and shrink the tumour as the surgeons want to do a lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy. If they took it out now it would leave me quite disfigured as I’m definitely not Kelly Brook in the boob department. I think the words my consultant used were ‘quite small breasts’…

Chemotherapy is usually a given if you are a young woman with breast cancer. They want to try and give you the best chance possible to live a long and happy life essentially. The main purposes of chemo are to try and blast any other stray cancer cells that may have done a runner from the original tumour and be floating around the body and also to try and reduce the risk of recurrence.  Chemo is nasty and makes you feel like shit, but I’m happy to lay back and take all the NHS has got to try and give this thing an almighty battering.

When they perform a lumpectomy they need to get what is called ‘clear margins’. This means that when tested, there are no stray cancer cells in any of the healthy tissue that has been removed with the lump. If there is, it can mean another lumpectomy. And if this then fails again, a possible mastectomy. So, not as straight forward as whipping the bugger out and stitching it up!

Breast reconstruction

A mastectomy means removing all the breast tissue. Essentially taking the whole boob off. I wanted to clear a few things up about mastectomies and reconstruction. Breast reconstruction after a mastectomy is not like having a boob job. You do not just get a ‘new boob’ Pamela Anderson style. Reconstruction is a lot more complicated than that. I’m not an expert but here is my limited knowledge about breast reconstruction:

One method of recon is to build a new boob from tummy fat. This wouldn’t be an option for me as I don’t have enough. Reckon they would be able to build about a nipple from mine

Another is an implant. However, if radiotherapy is required, an implant can’t be inserted at the same time as the mastectomy as the radiotherapy is likely to damage the reconstruction. In this case, something called tissue expander can be used. This involves inserting an empty implant which is gradually over a period of time filled with saline. This essentially stretches the skin and tissue so that an implant can be fitted at a later date. But then this means another lot of surgery later down the line. And obviously no feeling or sensation in that boob.

Or you can just go flat and wear your battle scars with pride.

There is also an operation that involves taking tissue and muscle from your back and reconstructing breasts from that. My friend Sarah, who will be having a double mastectomy and this op due to a gene fault, described it like this:

'They take muscle and tissue from your back. I think this is what I'm having. It's basically swung round from your back to front. So boob removed at front chunk taken from back, swung round to front and stitched in to the gap, and hole in back sewn together. Lovely!  

There are other options and I’ve definitely explained reconstruction very simplistically - its much more complicated than this, but as you can see, definitely not a boob job!

So there we have it. Some breast cancer facts and information. Please do click on the links I have put in this post to find out more as I am definitely no medic and no expert! i hope you have found this whistle stop tour through the land of breast cancer informative - please stop by again soon!