Where from here?

On March 27th I will be admitted to the Burnside Hospital here in Adelaide.  I will be having a double mastectomy and reconstruction.

This part has scared me so much.  I have always been big busted and it's always been 'who' I am.

Because of the way I grew up, with so much attention paid to my bust, it is hard not to think that by losing them I am losing myself.  I don't think like that willingly or even consciously, but I know it's the biggest part that is affecting me.

My sister is so inspirational.  She had her bust done about two or three years ago now and looks amazing!  But then she always looks amazing.  It was her that encouraged me to journal what I am going through because she wishes now that she had done this.

I try to make jokes about getting a boob job done and having a nice new 'rack', things like that,  but down inside I am screaming.  I am so scared and every day I feel like I'm getting more and more wrapped up in my fear of 'what if'  and how am I going to look.

I will be using the same surgeon and plastic surgeon that my sister had and they did a wonderful job with her.  That's a huge plus.

It's other things that worry me.  What if I'm ugly to my husband.  Will he still want to touch and hold me.  I know he is super supportive and the love of my life, but that doesn't stop the 'what if'.  How am I going to feel about myself.  I don't have a good self image now, what am I going to think of myself after the operation.

Because of my size I am going to have a large scar they have told me and this is a huge disappointment.  I thought they just cut around the areola, pull everything out and work through the hole.  But they can't do that with me because there will be too much lose skin and so they have to slice all that away as well.

Well, it's a journey I'm on and need to see through to the end.  One thing I am sure of, I will be glad to know that after all of this I only have the same risk as anybody else without a gene mutation of developing cancer, and that has got to be the silver lining.

How this began

In 2008 I received a letter addressed in a name I had not seen for many years and never thought I would see again.  It was a surname that I had no emotional ties to any more, except hatred, and it made me sick to see it.  

It was a letter from the Familial Cancer Unit of South Australia.   It informed me that a member of my family had been found to have an inherited tendency to develop cancer.  Given this was on the paternal side of the family, and a side I had chosen to wipe out of my life,  I tried to ignore the letter.  I sat on it for nearly 12 months.

It wasn't until my sister told me that she had gone and done the genetic testing and she was positive and then my brother had his test come back positive that I decided to have my test done.  A simple blood test.

On August 19th, 2009, I found I also carried the BRCA1 gene.  This meant that all three of us  in the one family carried a high risk of developing cancer.

My heart sunk even though I tried to make light of the situation.  I have three beautiful children, 2 girls and a boy, what does this mean for them? 

After spending time talking with the counsellor and reading what I could I decided that, given my age, and the fact that I did have three healthy children, I would opt for the hysterectomy first.  Ovarian cancer is so aggressive and hard to detect and there is no known cure yet so it seemed the easiest decision to make.

On May 24th, 2010, at the age of 44, I had a Prophylactic oophorectomy.   I opted to remove my ovaries, tubes, uterus and cervix.

That was nearly two years ago now and, while I'm happy I don't have to worry about those cancers, I still hate the fact that this choice was forced on me by a stupid tiny mutation inside me.

While I know that I may not have had any more children the choice was still there, I was even offering to carry for friends that could not carry babies, I loved being pregnant so much.  Often my husband and I would toy with the idea of another baby,  but that choice had now been taken away.

It did not make me popular with the staff at the hospital but I asked if I could bring my womb home with me.  To many that might not make sense and may make you cringe, but that tiny vessel carried and nurtured my beautiful children and helped bring them into this world.  It was a vital part of who I am as a woman and mother and I wanted it with me so that I could return it to Mother Earth when my husband and I finally find our own home.  Our children laugh at me all the time about my 'dim sim' (that is what it looks like).  It's sitting in a jar of alcohol hidden away safe and sound until the right time arrives and then I will do my own blessing and give thanks to the universe for giving me the joy of knowing motherhood and carrying three beautiful bairns to full term, and then I will return it to the great Mother.

Many don't understand me, sometimes I don't even understand me, but this is who I am and this is my journey.