AKA The (No So) Great Tittyectomy of 2025 I’ve gotta be honest, I can’t claim intellectual rights to calling this surgery an amputation…I honestly hadn’t even associated that word with my upcoming surgery until I was talking to my friend, and fellow Mastectomy Sister (ew, could there be a more cringey way to say that? I just rolled my eyes at myself. I personally loathe the phrase “sisterhood” or when people are referred to as “warriors” or “fighters” when they are dealing with a disease. I know the intention is in the right place, it just feels so toxicly positive to me for some reason.), my fellow…Mastectomy survivor? Boob Loser?…Ugh, there’s just not a clever name for it that I can think of. Regardless, earlier this week, my friend Cheri referred to it as the “worst amputation a woman can experience” and it really stuck with me. In all fairness, I can’t say that there is any type of amputation that I’d consider myself ever adequately prepared for, but I can definitely tell you...
“So it looks here like you have a thousand dollar deductible that has not yet been met. Did you want to take care of that now?” I was sitting there, in the hospital bed, naked from the waist down, bleeding out onto this white absorbent pad (you know the kind, like you might put on the floor if you have a new puppy you’re housebreaking), and this lady was standing there with her clipboard asking for payment like she had just rung up my groceries in the Wal-Mart line. ***** We weren’t trying to get pregnant. In fact, to irony’s delight, we had tried for about 6 years previously, with not a single bit of luck. Paul and I met “later in life”; While most of my friends were having kids in their 20’s, I turned 30 ten days after Paul and I moved in together, less than six months after we started dating. I still remember celebrating my birthday, just the two of us drinking whiskey in the backyard of our new shared space at the little rental on Pickwick. Shortly after that we decide...