Two years ago today, I had a left breast

Staring out at the cityscape during my last chemotherapy appointment before my mastectomy.

I ran through a Santa Cruz thunderstorm to jump into the ocean. The gritty sand swirled around me in the water, rubbing against my cold skin.

It was March 25 of this year. It was freezing, and my lips turned purple.

My left nipple puckered, but I didn’t notice until I looked down at my swimsuit. I didn’t feel a thing in the silicon implant so beautifully stitched into my left breast’s place. My surgeon is so proud that my nipple is reactive, even though my nerves were sacrificed during the surgery.

After I came in from my stormy swim, I checked Facebook. An anniversary photo informed me that on March 25, 2013, I was bottle feeding orphaned kittens.

Prior to my cancer diagnosis, I was pretty involved with cat rescue. In fact, I was bottle feeding a kitten when the doctor called to say, “I’m afraid the test had a positive result.”

This sweet litter of kittens was the last litter I bottle fed before I was diagnosed with cancer.

These are some of the last pictures I have of myself before cancer hit me, photos of me from a time when I took having two breasts for granted.

I knew a lot about saving felines; I knew very little about cancer. I certainly didn’t imagine I’d later stare at the photo of myself, bottle in hand, and try to imagine what might have been. That girl seems so different from who I am now, and I peer into her eyes to try and imagine myself in that body. My health — or lack thereof — wasn’t even on my radar. I can’t help but wonder who I would be now if cancer hadn’t wrapped me in its tentacles.

May 9, 2014, was my left breasts last morning.

A couple of months after my mastectomy and breast reconstruction, which happened at the same time, the scars began to heal.

I try to remember the last time my left breast got to swim in the ocean. I think it was on a 2011 visit to the Corn Islands in Nicaragua, a short vacation tacked onto the end of a work trip.

Did I really let three years go by without getting into the ocean? I’ve never had a timeline marked by a body part before.

I want to be more mindful now, but I also want to pay no mind at all. I must always make sure to get into the ocean, but I wish I could stop thinking about my body as a perishable object whose opportunities to get into the ocean are in fact finite.

I lost a part of my body I never knew I loved so much until I was faced with its death by amputation. A medical assistant took the petri dish with my left breast in it and threw it away with the hospital trash. My left breast died so I could live.

On my left breast’s last morning, my mom, husband and my best friend, along with two surgeons, huddled behind a curtain as arrows and lines were drawn on my bare chest. I took selfies of my left breast from angles that made me look like I had a double chin.

As I laid down on the operating table, I heard my surgeon say to the team “We will brief you now. This is Chelsey Hauge. She is healthy. She is a yogi. Left presenting breast cancer….” And I recall no more. Those were the last words I heard with a whole body.

As the two year anniversary of my mastectomy approaches, the glimpses into my past offered by Facebook’s “on this day” notices remind me of the woman I was before I knew I had cancer.

On May 9, 2015- the first anniversary of my mastectomy- I posted this comparison photo on Facebook. I can barely recognize myself in a selfie I took to send to my friend Jennie after she asked how the surgery went.

After my ocean swim, I stared at the screen searching my March 25, 2013 status for clues. I try to imagine who I would have been if I had been able to march onward without chemotherapy. I see me feeding kittens with a bottle, and I try to imagine warning myself at that exact moment that in short order I would lose my hair, my left breast and my sense of dignity.

And then I look at my life now. It’s wonderful. Here’s what I have:

* Two beautiful baby girls, born because a whole team of doctors helped me save my chance at motherhood by freezing a bunch of little embryos before chemotherapy.

* A job teaching writing to radical feminists and a gig writing essays like this one.

* A fake left tit that, while it is absolutely fake, is a work of art on my chest.

Cancer broke my heart. It broke my heart so much that I think I will always be raw and exposed. I am not grateful for my cancer, though I am grateful for the people who showed up to make my cancer a little easier for me. I did not learn anything from cancer or win a battle because it’s gone.

I’m just here living a life I didn’t expect, heart wide open to the world.

[Thanks for reading. This story originally appeared on ripple.co. If you like what you read, check out more of our stories.]