Lynn Prowitt-Smith is a breast cancer survivor and author of “My Daughter Has Breast Cancer.” Here, she writes frankly about having a prosthetic breast.
From time to time, I get asked to talk or write about my breast cancer. Mine’s a good story — whose isn’t? — because I was diagnosed at 31, four months before my wedding, and I had to lose my left breast.
But now, 11 years later, I feel a little funny writing about it again. I’m a journalist, and it almost feels like I’m just milking the story for all it’s worth -- and that after all this time, it’s been, well, milked dry. Eek. I wrote that entire sentence completely unaware of the somewhat tasteless pun.
But the friend who asked me to do this is someone I respect immensely and adore, too, so I would only say no to her if she asked me to pose nude in Alaska next to Sarah Palin.
So I was diagnosed in May 1997 with stage 2B invasive ductal carcinoma. I had two tumors sitting right on top of each other, near my left armpit. One was 2 centimeters and the other 1.1 centimeters. In June, I underwent a lumpectomy and, because the margins of what they excised had pre-cancerous cells all over the place, had to go back under shortly afterward and have a mastectomy. All that loveliness was followed by six months of chemo.
Fortunately, when I walked down the aisle in September, I had my own hair and a miraculously reconstructed left breast. And my oncologist allowed me a three-week chemo break for my wedding and honeymoon. Of course, the day after we got back from Mexico, I was sitting in that chair with the nasty, freezing-cold poison dripping into me. That was not an easy day.
I was lucky because I had my then-fiance and he’d enjoyed a good year of being with my two-breasted body before the one was taken off. And when the time came to put a nipple on the fake breast, he nixed the idea. I had a red scar going diagonally across the entire thing, and he convinced me that that was decoration enough. Nice, right?
I never did get a nipple put on, though a plastic surgeon recently encouraged me to do it. I told him I don’t view my fake boob as an actual part of me, and certainly don’t see it as sexual. He said, “Trust me, it will make a difference, and I think you’ll feel more like it is a part of you.” So I may do it, just to see.
But the whole sexual thing has not been as big a deal as you’d think. It certainly didn’t matter much when I was married (I’m now single). I still had one “working” breast and I even breast-fed my son for over a year. (I was extremely blessed to have a baby three years after my diagnosis.)
But even when I got divorced four years ago and had to plunge back into the dating scene, the fake boob was really a non-issue for me, except that it needed some announcing. (I usually slip it into the conversation way before I know if there will be any hanky panky. And that’s not hard; I do kind of see it as a badge of honor. It says, “hey, you’re not looking at a shallow chick here. I’ve seen some hard stuff, dude.”)
The fake breast has always been kind of a conversation piece for me, actually. I let people try and guess which one is real and which is fake. And I will lift my shirt for anyone who wants to see what a reconstructed (sans nipple) breast looks like.
Sure, there are still rare moments where I feel sorry for myself and wish I had two breasts. But I honestly feel so, so fortunate to have my life and my beautiful little boy (who is now eight!).
Since I've been divorced and had a couple relationships, I realize how little these things matter. Men seem to have absolutely no problem with the fake boob. In fact, while I'm more of the mind to ignore it -- because it has absolutely no sensitivity and is just a saltwater balloon to me -- the men I've been intimate with insist on being very gentle and loving to it, as if it somehow represents all that I've been through.
I guess the bottom line is that sex is so not about having an intact set of breasts. It's nice having two, sure. It's also nice having a flat stomach and beautiful, smooth skin, and long legs, and a dozen other things I don't have. When it comes to getting under the covers, very little of that stuff matters. Sex is all about everything else. Guys don't care. They really don't. If one part is missing, they seem to find another one they like just fine.
Lynn Prowitt-Smith is the food & nutrition editor at dLife – For Your Diabetes Life! You can visit her blog at www.breathe-theblog.blogspot.com or write her at lprowitt@aol.com. Her complete survivor story, titled “My Daughter Has Breast Cancer,” can be found at www.youngsurvival.org.
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Comments (3)
Beautiful article, Lynn.
Thank you for writing about this (again.) The message you are sharing needs to be repeated over and over again. Sex is about so much more than a body part.
http://Tantric-Sex-Workshop.com
Thank you for writing this. What should really matter to us all is who you are on the inside, not you look like on the outside.