You know that scene in Evil Dead II where the hero has to chop off his own hand because it has become possessed and it's trying to kill him? Well, this article is about someone who did that. Only it wasn't her hand, it was her breasts, and she didn't have a pair of chainsaws installed in their place.
You see, some people know cancer is coming, thanks to a certain gene mutation they can get tested for. Rather than take this sitting down, Eden Dranger opted to have her boobs removed before they could make her sick, and replaced them with firmer, safer ScienceBoobs. So what's it like to preemptively chop off a healthy part of your body, especially when it's a part that society insists is the most important to your self-image? She says ...
#5. If Your Breasts Are Out To Get You, Get Them First
koto_feja/iStock/Getty Images
There are certain genetic defects that function like a deadly curse in a horror movie. My grandmother died before I was born, my Mom died when I was 13, my Dad when I was 24. Cancer, as it turns out, isn't random -- there are errors in your genetic code that can all but guarantee you'll get it. Statistically, some of you reading this have them.
So I bit the bullet and visited the doctor to get to the bottom of this deadly pattern I was noticing in my family. I found out that no, the women in my family didn't have a habit of pointing their breasts towards open microwaves. They were unwitting carriers of the breast cancer gene mutation known as BRCA1.
Emw/Wikimedia, Eraxion/iStock/Getty Images
BRCA1! No longer owned by a corporation, thanks to the Supreme Court.
That meant I had an 87-percent chance of getting breast cancer myself. (Women without the gene have a 12-percent chance, which is still pretty damned high -- imagine a game of Russian Roulette in which the revolver has one bullet in eight chambers.)
I wasn't going to wait for the other shoe to drop. I'd seen my mom battle breast cancer for the first 13 years of my life (she had it when I was born), and I wanted peace of mind for myself. The only way to get that was to have my deadly, deadly breasts straight-up removed. When I first decided to go that route, I had people telling me "You're too young." But cancer doesn't care how old you are, and you do not want to turn cancer prevention into a game of chicken. You will lose.
Serjio74/iStock/Getty Images
Play chicken with a train. You'll have better luck.
#4. Boob Removal Means Shopping For Replacements
poplasen/iStock/Getty Images
First, you have to shop for a breast surgeon. This is not to be done lightly -- there are good surgeons and bad ones, same as with mechanics or anything else. It's this guy's job to actually take out your breasts, you want to make sure he's good at it. If they leave breast tissue behind, you aren't cutting your cancer risk as much, which would mean you could go through an extra surgery only to maybe still die from cancer.
VladimirFLoyd/iStock/Getty Images
If they cut other parts to "prevent cancer," that's overzealous.
A separate surgeon does the reconstruction afterward. I Googled the shit out of local plastic surgeons before I picked mine, stalking them on Yelp and other review websites. They all have photos of their work online, so my Internet history contained so many close-in tit pics that anyone snooping my computer would've assumed I was a 13-year-old boy.
Next, I had to decide if I wanted to keep my nipples. If you don't, the surgeon might be able to make pretty great artificial ones. There's an art to plastic surgery, and you can be picky with it. When I first visited my plastic surgeon, she had an iPad and showed me other work she'd done, so I could shop around for precisely the boob-caps I wanted. Ultimately, I decided to keep my own -- my doctor told me that between zero and one percent of breast cancer starts at the nipple, so I decided to risk it. If I get paranoid in a few years, I can just take them off (or, you know, pay someone else to do it).
Milan Vasicek/iStock/Getty Images
Breasts are tough to remove. Nipples, not so much.
Then you pick the size of your new breasts. I could've gone as big as I wanted. In the olden days, they'd remove your whole breast, skin included. Nowadays, skin-sparing mastectomies are a standard procedure, so you have more to work with, so to speak.
When I woke up from surgery, I was flat. Not completely flat, but like "pre bat-mitzvah" puberty flat. Every few weeks after that, they'd pump a little more saline into my chest, until my boobs were at the size I wanted. I'm about the same size now as I was before (around a full "B"). And when I was in my "flatter" stages of my journey, I didn't mind all that much -- I could wear really low-cut dresses now! It was kind of a bummer not having cleavage, because it helps in avoiding eye contact with boys and catching stray snacks, but I learned to deal.
Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Mostly by napping facedown.
As for the cost, my insurance covered about 90 percent of my hospital bills (however, the remaining 10 percent was sadly still a lot of money -- depending on where you live, the cost can run into six figures). Note that the law requires most insurance plans to pay for the reconstruction as well, but it depends on what kind of insurance you have. So yeah, give their asses a call ahead of time.
#3. New Boobs Have Some Downsides
b-d-s/iStock/Getty Images
Here's something you probably didn't know: When you get fake breasts, you have to keep getting them over and over again. You have to get new implants every 10 years (or earlier, if they burst in a high-impact a car accident or if you get stabbed in the boob with a spear or something). The 10-year exchange is a standard benchmark for most people with reconstructed breasts. It's kind of like a cell phone upgrade. The implants can lose their shape slightly and go bad, like expired yogurt.
Siri Stafford/Photodisc/Getty Images
Much like the rest of your body, but easier to replace.
The breasts of today are much better than they were years ago. Mine have no sensation, so that's something we'll hopefully see improve with more science. Right now, I can't feel anything there. You can give me a solid tit-punch and I'll feel nothing. If you poked me with a pen or a needle, I'd feel a prick on the skin, but nothing if you stabbed in deeper. Is this part getting weird? Let's move on.
Say I go on a date or meet a guy I'm interested in. I have to tell him. I don't want guys to be surprised. What if they get grossed out and can't handle my fake boobs? I don't want to waste time dating that dude. So he gets the standard spiel: "Hey, so they're really firm. That's because they're fake. There's, like, no meat -- they're tofu breasts. I've had this procedure done, run now or forever hold your peace."
Martinan/iStock/Getty Images
"Sorry, I don't like looking at boobs. I think it's what's inside that counts."
Oh, and in case you're wondering: Yes, they found abnormal cells when they did the boob autopsy later. If I'd waited a few months, they could've turned into pre-cancer, and eventually cancer. That's just stage 0, but stage 0 is still closer than I want to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment