In some ways I was a late bloomer, but certain parts of puberty came early for me. I had the second set of boobs in my grade in elementary school, as I recall. And they just kept getting bigger.
In high school, I would wear huge shirts that made me look fat, but I preferred looking fat to the stares I’d get if people could actually see my shape. I didn’t want the attention, I felt ugly and deformed, and though I had crushes on people I had no real sex drive yet and couldn’t comprehend any of it.
As I got a bit older I started to own them, more and more. I saw that they held power. And once I figured out what sex was all about, they finally seemed useful. But they were still getting bigger — hormones, a little weight gain, etc. They were unwieldy, and uneven (the right almost half again as big as the left). I once saw on my doctor’s chart that they were described as “pendulous”. I cried. Bras that did any good at all were ridiculously expensive, and most of them were entirely unappealing. The only clothes that looked good on me (as in, were cut for women with serious curves) were formal gowns.
And then when I was about thirty, I realized I was developing a hump.
Yep. There was a hump growing at the back of my neck. I was going to be the Hunchback of Temple Beth Shalom. This was…not cool. Not cool at all.
At around that time, I got married and moved to Canada. Wait…Canada has that whole publicly funded health care thing. Wait.
I became a woman and a feminist in the early 90's. I went to college in the Backlash era. In high school I stood outside women’s health care clinics to protect clients from the protesters. I was going to get plastic surgery? HELL NO. That was a thing that women who hated their bodies did.
But I hated my body. It was turning on me. It was making it impossible for me to do things, like take a staircase at a run, stand up straight, reach the bottom of a top-loader washing machine (I often use that last one as a joke, but it wasn’t all that funny at the time). I had to do something before something really bad happened, like my neck crumbled to bits.
And so, a little less than two years after moving to Canada, I met with a grandfatherly surgeon (who took one look at me and practically shouted, “you’re a perfect candidate!”), quit the job I’d never planned on staying in that long anyway and made an appointment for breast reduction surgery.
The appointment happened to fall on Rosh Hashanah that year. I’m in no way religious, but that’s the culture I know and it’s what makes sense to me, so renewal on the New Year felt appropriate. I’d discussed all of this with my then-husband J., and he was all for it if it was going to help me. He was going to have to help me some, too, at first, and he was game, which was really great of him (he tends toward the squeamish, generally). So I did a bunch of research and prepped the apartment (moving things so I wouldn’t have to stretch to reach them, buying things like gauze and extra pillows), and went for my pre-surgical appointment with the anesthesiologist, and all that fun stuff.
The morning of the surgery was so strange. J. drove us to the hospital, across town. I checked in, at which point I was astonished that I just had to show my little hospital card, so Canadian. I went to the Day Surgery area — they were going to kick me out that same day, which seemed terrifying until I realized that I would be exposed to all the sick people if I stayed. And then we sat in the waiting room. I’m not great at waiting. I started to freak out and said, “Hey, J., really, I think they’re fine, let’s just go home.” He didn’t let me.
Finally they brought me in, and I changed into surgery clothes — I don’t really remember exactly what, but there were booties or socks or something because I went to an inner waiting room with J. where he set up camp with his laptop and all our stuff, and I wasn’t barefoot. They gave me an Advil, which seemed strange. A few minutes later, a really nice nurse took me into the back. I gave J. a kiss and said something flippant, I’m sure, and then the nurse and I hung out in a hallway while the staff finished setting up the operating room.
I just hopped up on the table. It seemed so casual! And then my surgeon came in and drew all over my breasts with a Sharpie and left again. I talked constantly through all of this, I’m a nervous talker. And then suddenly they were positioning me on the table and knocking me out.
It wasn’t like they say, for me — everyone says surgery goes by as though it’s an instant. When I woke up I felt like I’d been asleep a long time. It had been four hours. The first thing I felt was pain. Later, they would explain to me that in order to get the right angles for the surgeon, the surgical staff positions the patient in strange ways and that can leave you sore and achy. The surgical site itself felt seared. But the thing that bothered me most? My lips were dry. I begged for Chapstick, which I’m sure annoyed the shit out of the nurse, and eventually she globbed some Vaseline on my face to shut me up. I was drugged, what can I say?
The day surgery recovery area was just cubicles separated by curtains. By the time I was moved in there the pain was already less and I was half lucid. Only half, though, and it was kind of like I was drunk, because when J. came in I kept talking to the nurses about how cute he was. I became incredibly nauseated, which was awkward because they kept trying to get me to drink things so I wouldn’t get dehydrated. I didn’t throw up, but everything tasted terrible and I may not have been as charming about it as I could have been.
Eventually the surgeon came in. Everything went well, he said, and at last I focused on the bandages. I was tightly wrapped, there was some orange tape and lots of gauze. I’d known going in that I wouldn’t be stitched or glued — my incisions were closed with strips of white surgical tape, which I couldn’t yet see.
He’d removed five pounds of flesh.
Eventually I felt well enough to get up and go to the washroom (had to stay REALLY still for a minute but didn’t barf), and I put on my clothes and we went home. The drive was tough, but soon I was installed in our comfy king bed with everything I could possibly need. I called my family, who were in the middle of Rosh Hashanah dinner, and my brother the doctor begged me not to take the T3s — the codeine would make me constipated and that would just lead to more pain. So I promised to just take Advil and Tylenol. J. brought me soup, which I tried to eat.
The next few days are a blur. My mom flew in to look at me, to prove I was OK. J. made me good food, which I actually was able to eat. I didn’t need too much help since I couldn’t shower until the bandages came off, and I was able to use my arms more than I thought I would be. Then I think it was a Monday when we went to see the surgeon.
I spent a minute looking in the mirror when he took the bandages off. They were Frankenboob — TWENTY inches of incisions (they don’t call it the anchor procedure for funsies), merely taped together. They were swollen, hard as rocks, practically up under my chin, or so it seemed. But I started to get the idea.
Recovery was both easy and difficult. I had the absolute gift of not having to rush back to work, so I could rest and heal. I slept a lot at first, tried to get lots of vitamin C for collagen production and all that sort of thing. Then, slowly, I started to do things. The Internet told me to take a non-underwire bra and stick panty liners into it to catch any errant blood or fluid coming from the incisions (gross! VERY gross! but normal). The tape was supposed to fall off on its own, and after a week it started to do so, sloooowwwly.
Hiccups came. I almost passed out in the shower at home alone one morning — I had to sit on the edge of the tub for about fifteen minutes before I could move, then went to sleep for an hour and was fine, but I thought that was how I was going to die. A HUGE, scary-looking fluid-filled THING cropped up around one of my nipples one morning, and I called the surgeon’s office in a panic, and she said to hold a hot-as-I-could-stand wet compress on it. When it went away in five minutes I realized it was a blister from extra-sensitive skin rubbing against clothing.
And then the vertical incisions wouldn’t heal. Weeks had gone by. The putrid horrible tape was all gone, things were all closed up, except for those vertical spots. The weight of the breast tissue that remained pushed on them any time I was upright. So I gritted my teeth and spent a week on my back, basically only getting up to pee. And they closed.
They’re not perfect. It’s clear that a knife has been there, particularly on the left. There’s scarring, and a little bit of misshaping of the areola. But the right one, which was the even more ridiculously huge one, is really beautiful. They point forward, instead of down. I can buy $15 pretty bras at Winners instead of $70 ugly ones at specialty shops. Servers in restaurants don’t accidentally touch them when putting down my plate. I think surgeons do this on purpose — a large freckle-type mark that used to be all the way underneath the right one is now just next to the nipple, which amuses me greatly.
I’d do it again in a second. I had trouble at first, recognizing myself. When you have unusually massive breasts it becomes part of your identity. I didn’t know myself without them for a bit. But now I get to know myself with breasts I like, which means I am that much closer to loving my body. It’s much better this way. They were hand sculpted just for me.
