Nipple courtesy of Pink Perfect
.Damn things change fast with breast cancer. My body in the past two and half years has seen some crazy shit. I have been sliced and diced like mango (I like that fruit and I am a vegetarian so I won't use meat). When I was first diagnosis I did the whole "take them off" "get rid of them" "they are trying to kill me I don't want them". I thought that was the easy part, you know because the cancer was there so why not just get rid of what is hurting you. Then after the breasts settle :) and you start to adjust so does your mind. And the games begin.
It happened fast for me I think because it was in the summer. You know you wear less clothes. I saw this body change so quick my mind didn't have time to catch up. My chest didn't fit into my clothes and that was hard plus with implants and the fills the change kept happening. Then the weight gain after the hysterectomy. I couldn't stop crying. I felt deflated-who was this scared person with misshapen breasts weighing 25 more pounds? It was a hard year and I could not see how I was going to get out of it. Then the implants shifted into my armpits-not at all the look I wanted back to surgery. The DIEP was hard, painful and really changed my body but I felt a little like me in a weird way. Like I took two from cancer back and said "fuck you" this is me! That was when my mind started to get it, like it was connecting.
So two and half years later I sit here. I am sewn like a patchwork doll, not nearly as fit as I was before cancer not even close, losing weight a little every week but feeling a little more like me. Cancer is a dirty bastard and I know I will never go back to my entire whole self, cancer took a lot of my confidence. I walked for the past months with my shoulders rolled in, slowly I am rolling them back. You may not have realized you were doing this but one day I did and I am blaming cancer, the bastard gets blamed for everything. I am dealing with the weight gain and learning to accept this challenge but know that because of everything I have been through it will take time. My breasts are now me, ALL me and that makes me happy. Happy they are me not that I have them let's be clear there. This was not a "gift", I hate that shit. I do not want a gift from cancer nothing actually if anything I want to give it away.
The scars are just that- a reminder of who I am. I need to stop looking at them as pain but as strength and smile at the fact that they are more than a line across my chest and stomach. That a scar doesn't make me ugly or imperfect or weak. That a scar does the opposite is shows beauty and strength. As far as perfection goes screw that no one is perfect and I wasn't before so why the hell would I be now. I will tell you one thing, cancer changed a lot of things but it didn't make me perfect.
Yes I cry still in front of the mirror, at the doctors, when I realize I have no feeling or when I am mad at this fucking disease but I laugh too. A LOT! Not because I am alive and beat cancer and all that crap but because I am Ann Marie fucking Giannino-Otis and I laughed before cancer so why the hell should I stop now. The tiara looks best with a smile anyway.
