Happy Valentines Day/Happy Boob Job Day! (2/14/2014)

So if you are gonna have something awful happen to you, you might as well get barbie boobs out of the deal! So I should say that I am not a person that would have ever gotten a boob job on my own, I hate going to the doctor, never wanted surgery for anything and barely take medications, but all of this was out of my control and I got over all of these phobias quickly because I had to.

I had no idea there was so much decision making when it came to boob jobs, saline vs silicone, round vs this new natural shaped breasts, nipples vs. no nipples...too much. To a certain extent, some of these choices were made for me, I could have a skin sparing mastectomy, but they couldn't spare my nipple or areola on the left because it was too close to the tumor, so again for symmetry purposes I took the nipple and areola from the other side and decided on nipple tattoos. There is something else I never thought I would get in my lifetime... a tattoo! But they looked surprising natural in the pictures. Now you can decide to have a nipple reconstruction where they pucker your skin to try to make a nipple, but I didn't feel that I needed that. There are also nipple prosthesis, which was funny because my plastic surgeon said I can use those for the times in my life I want my nipples to stick out. Now if you are a girl, you know that there is usually no occasion that you want your nipples to stick out, that was such a guy thing to say but it made me chuckle!

So because we didn't know what kind of tumor I truly had, we had to keep all our options open, so I would have a skin sparing bilateral mastectomy with tissue expanders placed (these are like place holders that they will expand until I get to my desired size), so that I can get radiation and chemo if I needed. The other option is to get the implants right away, but then radiation would destroy the implants. Oh and all of this was decided on Valentine's Day! Surgery was scheduled for 2/21/2014, my baby would almost be 2 months old, as was how long it had been since my last surgery (C-section), and this would be almost a month since my diagnosis. This felt super slow to me, but I understood that this is how long these things take.