This Week in Boob

I don't think I've told you guys much about my plastic surgeon, beyond the fact that I have one. She scooted in right behind the oncologic surgeon during my mastectomy and started the breast reconstruction. I say "started" because it is still ongoing. Rome wasn't built in a day and all. She put in a tissue expander to make space for a regular implant later. The expander is an implant that can be filled with liquid over time until it's the right size. More about that little procedure below.

I say "liquid" as though it could be something besides saline. Like, hey, root beer!

So the doctor is a tiny little lady. Just a wee slip of a thing. We'll call her Dr. Hottie McTrottie. When I met her the first time, she was wearing stiletto sandals and toe rings. She also has a rather unrefined bleached blond thing going on, or I thought of it as unrefined for someone who is a) not nineteen years old, and b) works at making people beautiful. I don't know, not everyone is trying for the natural look. She is also nine days younger than me. She told me this at my hospital bedside.

Matt and I have imagined an entire back story for Dr. Hottie, based on just a few data points. Her personal style and grooming is one of those data points. Another is that--according to the diplomas hanging in her exam rooms--when she graduated from medical school, she was Hottie McTrottie Schmo, suggesting that there was a Joe Schmo in the picture, but by the time she finished her residency (her CV is very impressive), she had lost the Schmo and was back to being Dr. McTrottie. Oh, and I know that she grew up in a little town in California.

So what happened with Hottie and Joe Schmo? We were moved to speculate. Matt and I envision a hardscrabble girlhood for Dr. Hottie, always being brighter than people expected or needed her to be. Burning through the days at her small high school somewhere in the Central Valley, with not enough to do, pretty and popular but studying hard, planning her next move. At night she would do her homework at the table while her mother wiped the kitchen counters down, wiped the same place over and over again until she wore the finish off the formica. Hottie dreamed of getting away from that worn kitchen and that town, away to someplace where people had kitchens they never even went in.

Like moths to her pure, bright flame, everyone in that dusty place was drawn to her. One of those people was Joe Schmo. He was an older guy (of course) and Hottie liked him because he wasn't talking all the time like the high school boys, those boys always thinking nothing and bragging over nothing. She wasn't sure what Joe was thinking but that was okay with her. Joe had only a vague sense of Hottie as something rare, something he needed to catch and pin down like a butterfly. By the time she figured out he thought that way, she was well on her way to being Dr. Hottie, and she was tired of imagining Joe Schmo as better than he was. Thank God she'd never had his baby. So she shed him and his name, and made it all the way to her own plastic surgery practice in the ATL.

Or maybe this was the plot of Silence of the Lambs. Was I raving?

Yeah, so I've gone to see Dr. Hottie several times since my surgery to get my expander expanded. It's already the right size--it's symmetrical with the other side--but now the idea is that because I'm going to have radiation before too long, and radiation can make tissues shrink, we want to over-expand it to leave room for it to contract back to the correct size. Got it?

Yesterday, Matt and I went down there for another expansion. There's a valve in the expander that they can locate by putting a magnet on the outside of my skin. Freaky! Dr. Hottie's adorable PA (picture a large American Girl Julie doll) finds the valve and then marks it with a ballpoint pen. Then Dr. Hottie sticks a needle in me, through the valve, and squirts in a GIANT syringe of saline solution. Reader, are you okay or do you need a moment?

So this never used to hurt because a lot of my skin near the surgical scar is numb. But yesterday, when she stuck the needle in, I was like, "Anyway, yeah, it looks like it might rain OH HOLY CRAP OW!" Dr. Hottie said, "Yeah, I always tell my patients, that pain is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because you're getting more sensation back. Bad because, you know." Yes, I know.

So Dr. Hottie put 100cc's in there, and then I sat up. She and American Girl Julie stood side by side and studied me. "Hmm, you know what?" Dr. Hottie said, "I kinda want to put some more in there! You think?" American Girl Julie said, "Yes, totally!" Dr. Hottie said, "You're so tall that 100cc's just spreads out on you. So let's do this again in a few weeks!"

I get that they can't predict exactly what the effects of the radiation will be, but it's funny how all of this is seeming less and less like an exact science. She was more like someone hanging a picture on a wall. "Hrrmmm, I think a smidge more to the right? Now scootch it up a bit?" Like that but with needles. I have a lot of faith in Dr. Hottie and I know everything is going well, but the needles are not awesome.

So that's what's going on with my rack. Sometimes when I contemplate writing a post about my post-surgical reconstruction, I think about all the people I know in my life who read this blog. People who I'm not on intimate terms with, but whom I know are friends of my family's or who are following along, concerned for my welfare. Then I think about actually walking up to one of those people, in person, and saying, "Boob. Hi! Boob." It is really too weird. But I also figure you guys might find these things informative. xoxox-B

Boob.