It's a Loooong Process

The thing about breast reconstruction after breast cancer is it's a process. Usually, a long process.

All the available methods take time and require stages. With implants, expanders are filled on a regular basis and then removed and replaced with the final product.

Tissue transfer procedures like TRAM and DIEP require an initial surgery to move the fat and skin and then another to make things look good and, if needed, to align the other girl.

Then, of course, building the nipples is another stage, and tattooing color for the areolas is yet another.

The time it takes to progress through these stages varies by individual. I'm realizing that I'm at 16 months and have only completed stage I of my DIEP. There's still a lot left to do, and it will take time.

I'm coming up on the third anniversary of finding my cancer--Thanksgiving night 2006. I don't feel like much has changed. I'm still very busy with cancer fallout--determining and then completing a yearly breast check plan and working to get to the next stage in reconstruction.

Gildna Radner got it right--it really does feel like it's always something or it might be something once they load you on the cancer rollercoaster.

I smile when people say, "It must be so good to be past all the cancer." It doesn't work that way.

I wish it did, but it just doesn't.