24 hours

nails done, legs shaved, house cleaned. it's unbearably hot and has been for a week (this seems like something i'll want to remember). i allowed myself one day of navel gazing and complete panic on friday night but that's passed and i'm feeling really ready to get this underway tomorrow morning. 

five years ago, before my mastectomy, i drank a bottle of wine and had a nice conversation with rory. things are different this time - we don't speak, for reasons i'm sort of unsure of (they're pregnant, did i mention that?). yesterday afternoon i drank wine with mara and eric at the shop and had an easygoing evening with danny after work. my dad and renata asked me if i had a will, or a plan for the kids. i think the last time i wrote a will i was 17 and it's on some long since recycled brick of a laptop. (here: i want my parents and danny to raise my kids. i want them to use the money in my savings account to give them the most badass childhood that one can have with a dead mother and deadbeat dad. i want their community to remain the same. i want them to know that nothing has made me more proud than being their mom and seeing the incredible people they have become.)

work. more later. and this, for posterity and searchability:

Celeste (35) - Dx 12/98: Hodgkins Lymphoma Nodular Sclerosing stage IIA - 25Gy mantle radiation & VAMP 5/8/12: Prophylactic BMX w/TE 9/7/12: Reconstruction w/Sientra cohesive gel implants 400cc 5/2/14: Liposuction to remove missed tissue 6/23/17: Implant revision w/Natrelle Inspira & fat grafting 

t-minus 14 days . . . pre-op

this is the face i make when i have to show my incredibly handsome surgeon my thighs.

i had the singular pleasure of showing my foobs and backside to not one, but three lucky souls at dr. bates' office yesterday. it's science, okay?

the nurse practitioner went over what to expect: three-ish hours of surgery with an hour of recovery in the surgicenter, pain meds & antibiotics, compression garments for six weeks at the lipo sites, blah blah blah. the lipo is gonna bruise and hurt like i've been hit with a bat. a tech took pictures of my breasts and butt & thighs. i'll have parker do the same so there are some good before and after photos for here.

dr. bates and i finalized what i'd like my end result to look like (more projection with less armpit boob) and feel like (vaguely human). he's using a brand new (yeah, i'm oh for one on the new and best boobs but whatever) cohesive, extra full implant by allergan, the natrelle inspira. (i forgot to ask how many cc these will be - the current ones are 400cc.) the fat will be grafted from my thighs. namely under my butt and between my legs (he was expressly warned not to touch the butt) and will be put all around the implant so soften everything a bit. i'm not gonna lie, this feels like a windfall. more lifelike foob, more shapely legs AND i get to stick it to my insurance? gosh, i'd trade my nipples for that.

anyway, i'm expecting the recovery to be a week or so but i'll of course be documenting the whole thing, under the influence of narcotics, if you're lucky!

the Allergan SCX - debuted January 2017. not so "natrelle" looking on a platter!

mama's getting brand new bags

angry left boob rears her lumpy-whiny-bitch-ass-head again. a few months ago i noticed laying in bed that there's a "corner" of boob way up by my clavicle that wasn't there before. i made an appointment with dr. bates and he noted that my foobs have migrated up my chest over the past few years, making it appear that my areolas are trying to slide off. ha. he said ALB may have ruptured or perhaps the pocket just constricted more on that side and there's some wonky muscle cutting across it but apparently it doesn't matter because what i was NOT told before last month, is that these tits have to be replaced every FIVE YEARS. pocket constriction is apparently normalish and common. none of this would have changed my decision to do the BMX but i certainly would have known better what to expect over the next several decades.

so, let me reframe and say: SWEET, new boobs every five years! on june 23rd i'll be getting a foob swap out with fat grafting (there's gonna be some great bruise pictures ya'll!). as i've mentioned, i have almost zero sensation in my breasts so they're mostly just for looking at. i'm opting for an entirely different kind of implant based on some sort of vain complaints i've had about these. what i have now is a fairly firm, cohesive gel, in a smooth anatomical shape. my biggest complaint about these is that they seem wide for their cup size so i'm opting for a narrower implant with more projection. in other words, approximately the same volume but they'll stick out a bit more and not be so wide. i'm also going to a round implant instead of a teardrop or anatomical shape. dr. bates thinks these will fit my body a little better but since they have the tendency to hollow out up top they will require fat grafting. this means liposuction from my under-butt and lower back. i'm told this will be the more painful part of the recovery and will involve compression garments and bruising for about a month. but hey, under-butt lipo amiright?

a letter to my cousin on his 22nd bithday

the day i almost died wasn't the day, shortly after my 16th birthday, that i got t-boned and nearly crushed by the steel door of my 1982 bmw. it wasn't any of the days in high school that i thought i'd be better off dead but was too scared to formulate anything more than a vague plan. it wasn't for that matter, any of the days of cancer and chemotherapy and radiation or the day, years later, that i decided to have my tits cut off and woke up, after 8 hours of surgery, wondering where the hell i was and what the hell i'd done. the day i almost died was the sunday after thanksgiving, november 26th, 2006.

that morning, when rory quietly walked away, i almost broke in half and died. and then, that night, when i realized he was never coming back, i did break in half. and then i broke in half again and again and again for days and days and days until i was tiny grains of sand and i couldn't break anymore. it wasn't pretty. at all. it was drained bank accounts and mistresses and lies heaped upon lies. it was my parents sleeping on the floor of my living room because i was too immobilized to be alone with the kids. it was legal papers and process servers and years of protracted proceedings. it was wishing and regretting and begging and negotiating. it was the world's saddest christmas and a shaved head. it was talking and writing about what i was thinking and feeling, endlessly. endlessly. i can remember every single moment of it and none of it at all.

looking back, almost 9 years later, that day, all those days that i almost died, crystallize to one conversation, one word. integrity. maybe it was just profound to me in hindsight, but sometime during the divorce i had a talk (okay, a million talks) with my dad about what i could control. namely myself, and my own behavior and nothing else. and integrity became the guiding principle of my life the moment he spoke the word. act with integrity. even when you don't want to. even when it would be easier not to. even when you want to be petty. have integrity. you will never be sorry.

armpit liposuction to tweak reconstruction. as always, icky pictures within...

liposuction is as violent as it looks on tv. i had the rather unusual experience of being fully awake with only local anesthesia for this procedure. dr. bates told me he has only done this a couple of time with patients who a) request it be done in office b) aren't squeamish c) have proven they aren't going to freak out halfway through. i do NOT recommend this for everyone but i don't like the unnecessary risks of general anesthesia and obviously have a fairly high threshold for pain and gross. and let me tell you. it was gross. anyway, the first pictures are from immediately after. i felt woozy for the first couple of days, mostly because it's a fairly traumatic experience (jostling and jiggling and stabbing and sucking, oh my). the pain in the last couple days has been manageable. i feel like i got punched as opposed to stabbed. tender to the touch and worn out.

that syringe is as big as it looks. three stitches on the left side. hickman scar. bruising…fun!

a year and a half post reconstruction…before liposuction

i need to get parker to take a better front on shot. and a couple in a shirt and with a bra...

left side, you can see the old hickman scar, and that tissue area between the implant and the armpit that dr. bates was after with the lip suction. a bit of unavoidable rippling too but no issue at all with a shirt on. which it typically is… ;)

minimal scarring for such a major surgery, eh? right side especially tries to pucker into a nipple when it's cold. derp. angry left boob still looks a little odd. and hulk foobs will never go away despite stretching. this is an under muscle implant. i've learned how to scoop gelato without activating my pec muscles and freaking out customers.

helloooo ladies from the breastcancer.org forums!

hey ladies. i'm back and happy to answer questions. on june 2nd dr. bates is doing a liposuction procedure to get at some missed breast tissue near my armpits. i'll be documenting that before and after so you can see the results. it's been a little over two years since the mastectomy now and a year and a half since reconstruction.

pictures and an actual update will be up tomorrow. 

aaaaaand if you're here to read about other stuff…all shit's gone to hell with BK. danny and i are planning a wedding. school's almost out. the shop is so so so busy. reminder to myself to talk about the thyroid hell.