Surgery reflections: 1 day before my double mastectomy

Today I feel great joy in realizing I am exactly one day away from my DMX with aesthetic flat closure. This very moment in one day, I will be in the hospital overnight, having completed this life changing surgery.

I wrote in to my Fierce, FLAT, Forward Facebook group asking other women who have hypothyroidism and Hashimotos to share their surgery outcome with me. They all (except one) had the most positive surgery. No complications. Great healing.

Something about how ready they all are to show up for each other, and me, moves me. It’s a whole community of women who experience life and love, themselves, each other, their new bodies.

I remember when I joined the group. I joined several groups. I needed to feel what each experience could feel like for me while making my decision. I needed to hear their inner thoughts, see their pictures, know what they were truly going through.

My heart broke and my stomach went into fight or flight the first time I saw a woman without breasts. I’ve seen many things, my dad being a surgeon, but this was so different. It was visceral, raw, and induced so much FEAR. The word I hate. There it is.

I went through years of guiding myself not to make decisions based off of fear, and here I was, staring at my possible future, feeling FEAR.

I had to pull back immediately. I wept hard for days, then wanted back in. I wanted to see and know them. I wanted to feel what it could feel like in order to know what my soul wanted for me. 

Do I even WANT to do anything about my breasts?? Maybe I won’t…

I lived with this thought, too. I tried them all on. Implants, DIEP flap surgery, going Flat, doing nothing.

I lived them. I needed to know each feeling in my body to know what decision was right for me. It was so permanent. There was no going back. Not without more surgeries, more scars, more time away from regular life and more possibility of autoimmune flare ups or complications.

I wanted to fully love my body and my choice. I wanted to feel an empowerment in my decision. I wanted to know that what I chose was where I was meant to be.

While I was a professional dancer, I used to wear sports bras or leotards that pressed my breasts as flat against my chest as possible. Pretty funny, huh? And now here I was, my cards before me… which do I turn over?

One day, I realized I still do this very thing. Wearing sports bras that press my breasts as firmly to my chest wall as possible. I giggled. I have had my answer all along. I wore it every day. I just didn’t realize until I realized.