"Boob Story" 2008
Anna DuBois
1. How it all started
“Mmmm… Mrs Dooboyz, we’ll have to do the right one again. The doctor is not happy with this one, and he wants to have a better look.”
I am standing topless in the mammogram room, my boobs just released from the clutches of the bloody machine. And now this woman wants to put me through this torture again. Mammogram must be one of the most grotesque and ridiculous procedures a woman has to go through. Not only are one’s breasts pulled away from the body and then squashed first from top to bottom and then sideways, but one is also told to relax, “otherwise it won’t work”! This is my third mammogram, so I know the game, but every time I have one, I indulge in abominably cruel fantasies about the man (and it has to be a man!) who invented this contraption. I wish he’d have his balls pulled apart, stuffed between two plastic plates, squashed until he can’t breathe anymore and then told to produce a stiff erection – otherwise “it won’t work”!
I go through the whole thing again, and am told to wait some more. After a while the nurse comes back and says that the doctor has spotted something and wants to do an ultrasound. I wait some more. The ultrasound takes forever. The doctor goes over the same spot again and again, until my breast feels bruised and sore. Eventually he points at something on the screen and tells me that I have these three spots and he is not sure what it is but I’d better have a biopsy as soon as possible. He won’t say anything else, but faxes the report to my GP.
The next morning I am sitting, again topless, in the breast surgeon’s consulting rooms. He looks at the ultrasound, looks at my boobs, nods and says he isn’t sure what it is. But he sends me for a biopsy right away. I go downstairs and the kindly looking doctor tells me that he doesn’t believe in local anesthetic because he thinks it hurts more than the actual needle biopsy. He assures me that I’ll just feel a little prick, that’s all. By the time he’s done, I have invented a torture for him too. I wish I could take that very same needle, stick it in his balls, wriggle it until he screams in agony and then some more again, and then pat him on the arm and say in a soothing voice: “Are you OK down there?” No one wants to say anything to me, other than vague “I don’t know, I am not sure, let’s wait for the results”. And I just want to scream at them all – just tell me, tell me you think it’s cancer, tell me and put me out of my misery! I can cope, I am a big girl, I have three nearly grown up kids for Christ sake, I’ve been through a lot! Just tell me, I can deal with it! But no, they won’t tell me, because they are not sure.
All of this happens on Friday and I spend a painfully slow weekend waiting for the results. Finally on Monday afternoon I see the breast surgeon again. He has the results in front of him and he tells me that they are negative, but there is no joy in his voice. He says he isn’t convinced, he is worried and he doesn’t want to send me home without being totally sure that this is nothing. We agree that I should have an excision biopsy. I have to wait until Thursday. Finally Thursday arrives and I have the biopsy. However, this happens to be the week of the longest weekend of the year, with a public holiday on either end of it. So I will only get the results next Wednesday afternoon. I spend the next five excruciatingly slow days trying to keep myself busy. I don’t want to tell my children anything that would worry them unnecessarily, so I try to keep happy and breezy. However, by the time I see the surgeon again, I am prepared. Again, he has the results in front of him, and he tells me that they are positive, but this time there is joy in his voice. He says, its’ good that we did the biopsy because we’ve caught it, I mustn’t worry, it’s very early stage, it’s treatable, we have several options… I feel nothing, nothing at all. I just want to know what he’ll do with my boobs. He says I must have a mastectomy on the one side. What about the other? Well, he says, you can leave it there for now and we’ll monitor it, or you can have it removed.
- So, what will happen if I have only one side done?
- We’ll do the reconstruction at the same time, don’t worry.
- But what about my other boob, won’t it look different?
- Oh, don’t worry (He puts his hands on his chest). We won’t leave you with a Janet Jackson (right hand flips up) and an old one on the other side (left hand flips down)! We’ll give you a breast lift on that side.
We discuss various options, what it will be like to have fake boobs, what I must expect and so on. I still feel nothing. No tears, no fear, nothing. I’m only interested in my future boobs. Will I have any sensation in them? Well, he says, you will, but not much and, how should I put it? – your breasts are not going to be the most erotic part of your body. Eventually we agree on bilateral, skin sparing mastectomy with immediate reconstruction. He then tells me that I should see the plastic surgeon the next day, “and you will be able to, er… choose the size and… shape.. you want.”.
2. Choosing the new pair
My friend pops in the next day but I am not at home. She asks my daughter where I am and she replies: mom’s gone to choose her new boobs!
The plastic surgeon is very friendly, very sympathetic. We go through the whole thing again: various options for breast surgery, various options for reconstruction, and why I should have what he suggests. He shows me a PowerPoint presentation of before and after photos and then the time comes to choose my new pair.
I sit on the couch and the surgeon stands in front of me, studying my breasts. The nurse hovers around protectively. He looks at me for a while, then puts his hand on my good breast, the one that I could keep if I wanted to, lifts it a bit and says in a sad sort of voice, Mrs du Bois, when we do the implants, we won’t be able to achieve the same droop. Your new breasts WILL be higher… I feel like screaming again. I want to scream at him, you silly man, that’s the only thing I have to look forward to – perky tits! He then asks me if I want the same size or maybe something bigger? Or a bit smaller? I toy with the idea of Pamela Anderson “melons” or flat little “pimples” like Keira Knightley, but in the end decide to stick with the familiar B cup.
Now we have to discuss nipples. I am going to lose at least one, maybe both, when I have the mastectomy. The surgeon says, I mustn’t worry, they can reconstruct them for me and no one will even know they’re fake. And the colour of the areola? “Oh, we’ll just tattoo it. If you keep one of your nipples, we’ll match the other one, and if you have to have both new, you can choose the size and colour. You can have them brown, beige, pink, small or large. And the nipples too – you can have them flat, or pointy, in a ‘ready for action’ mode.” I think of endless photographs of Victoria Beckham and her hard “tennis balls” with nipples at some impossible angle, always pointing in different directions, always ‘ready for action’ and shudder at the thought. But if I want, I can also have boobs without nipples. One can buy stick-on nipples for special occasions, say, for an evening out. As he says that, I have visions of my stick-on nipples getting unstuck and ending up on my belly or somewhere else, maybe on the left cheek of my bum. The thought is too awful and I tell him I want the whole thing – new boobs, new nipples, new everything.
He proceeds to explain how they’ll go about giving me this amazing, totally symmetrical, perky, non-sag bust. They’ll insert the silicone implants under the chest muscle and leave them there to settle for a month. Each implant has a little pouch with saline solution. After four weeks, they’ll start inflating the implants to stretch the chest muscle and the skin by gradually adding more saline solution to them. They’ll do it over a few weeks until I end up looking like a freak with a bust that starts somewhere near the chin. As the nurse put it, “you will feel as if you are walking around with two upside-down Tupperware dishes in your chest.” Nice… They’ll leave me with the Tupperwares for THREE months. But after that they’ll take away the extra saline solution, remove the tubes, make the nipples, tattoo the areolas - et voila – a pair of completely natural looking, soft, slightly drooping, yet totally fake boobs!
3. Getting ready
Now that it’s official, I have the dreaded C-disease, I start getting advice from everyone. Some say I must start taking arnica, others advocate vitamin C, yet someone else says I must stop eating all meat. I listen to it all but do nothing. I trust my doctor and he hasn’t mentioned anything. Until he does, I am not changing anything. He did say though that I should stop smoking and I have. And I feel more distressed about it than about cancer or losing my breasts! Cigarettes have been my companions for thirty years now. They’ve seen me through various traumas, from relationships, to death, divorce and parenthood. They’ve kept me sane and happy and they’ve been my solace in difficult times. Theirs was the most enduring relationship I’ve ever had in my life. To give them up now, when I need them most seems incredibly cruel. I spend a week contemplating the very idea of not smoking and then quit with the help of Zyban. It takes away the chemical craving, but I still miss the cigarettes, I miss them badly, miss them every day, miss them like I would miss a really good friend. But I will not smoke again.
People keep on asking me how I feel, it must be dreadful, you must be devastated, they say. No, not really. In fact I don’t feel much of anything. The cancer itself does not cause me any discomfort, and I believe my doctor who told me that I have a 98% chance of complete recovery. So, what’s the big deal then? I do not feel any sudden spirituality or religious awakening, not at all. After all, if someone is diagnosed with diabetes, surely they don’t come over all religious and spiritual? They probably think, shit, I won’t be able to eat my favourite chocolates! Well, it’s the same in my case – I won’t smoke again. Breasts are not like arms or legs, you don’t need them to walk or make a cup of tea, do you? So if you have to lose part of your body, then breasts are best.
I think a bit more about this whole thing and come to the conclusion that there is only one thing that really upsets me, and that is the fact that because I don’t have a partner, I will not get a chance to have one last go, as it were, with my old pair. I do feel sad about it, but can’t find any solution to this problem and can’t find a volunteer among my acquaintances. How does one go about asking a male friend or acquaintance something like that? Will you please have sex with me, just this once, without any further complications and just concentrate on my boobs? And please don’t think it’s going to lead to a relationship; I don’t want one, not with you! Wouldn’t work, would it?
Then, one day when I am crawling in the afternoon traffic on my way home from work, I have a major panic attack: how will I ever have sex again with those fake jobs attached to my chest?! Post-divorce dating is bad enough as it is. All this dancing around: his children, my children, his baggage, my baggage… Can he cope with mine, can I deal with his? Do you like Bob Dylan? What, you don’t like Bob Dylan? But he is IT. How can you not like him?! It seems Bob Dylan can make or break a potential relationship at best of times. Now, add to all of that a pair of fake boobs and the situation seems pretty dire. I get home in a state of complete desperation. I talk to my surgeon about it, to my GP, to my family and friends and all of them give me the same sanctimonious advice: beauty is from within, the right man will love you, fake boobs or not, etc, etc… Ya, sure. They don’t have to contemplate telling some near stranger that the very perky, cute pair of boobs that attracted his attention in the first place is actually fake!
A week before surgery a very well meaning person tells me that I should spend some quality time with my boobs and mourn them properly before they get the chop. Now, how does one spend quality time with one’s own boobs? I ask for suggestions and they range from taking my boobs for a bit of airing in the garden to flashing them at passing motorists on my way to the hospital. I am told I should thank them, photograph them, fondle them and say goodbye to them. In the end I decide to just let them hang in their usual place and to look forward to the new pair. The time for surgery has come.
4. Waking up
I wake up flat on my back. Everything swims and I can’t breathe. Not at all, I can’t, I just can’t breathe. I try taking little, shallow gulps of air but it doesn’t help – with every bit of breath I am stabbed somewhere in my chest, under my arms, in my back. Maybe if I stop breathing the pain will go away. That doesn’t work either. Someone says, she’s struggling, give her the oxygen mask. I touch my chest – it’s completely hard and unbearably, unspeakably sore. It also doesn’t belong to me. I hear my friend’s voice: ag, shame, you are struggling there a bit, aren’t you, girl… Ya, just a bit. The night is interminable. I am given crushed ice, morphine, more ice, something in the drip, an injection. The chest is still not mine, it just sits there, or rather relentlessly suffocates me. I want to tear it off, the whole chest, the new boobs, the drips, everything. I just want to breathe and go to sleep. My legs irritate me. They are hot, but I can’t say anything to anyone because it hurts to speak. They are encased in the blanket, which is tucked very tightly under the mattress. The more I wriggle it, the more the nurses tuck it in, making me “comfortable”. It goes on like this for ever. Eventually 5am arrives. It’s the official beginning of the first day of the first week of the first month of my cancer treatment.
The dressings are changed the next day and I get the first chance to have a look at my Pamelas. They are beautifully round, very hard and start somewhere under my arms, closer to my back rather than my front. They also have no sensation below the nipple line. None at all - like touching someone else’s body. I can see my finger gliding along the scar and below it in circles, but I feel nothing. It’s not even upsetting, just very, very strange. The nurse is worried about me, she thinks I might start crying, especially when I see my right breast, the one without the nipple. But I find my new breasts utterly fascinating and only wish they weren’t so stiff. I caress them, discovering the sensation boundary, touch the scar and try to imagine what they’ll be like in a few months’ time. I think that even now they are rather gorgeous, perky little things. It’s just a pity the surgeon left one nipple in place, because now all he’ll do is match the new one to it. Had I lost both nipples I could have chosen completely different ones – small and brown, or huge and pink? Now it will just be more of the same…
The woman across the room from me had her left breast removed on the same day as I had my operation, but opted not to do reconstruction. She says the Lord knows his ways, he’s chosen this path for her and she will not complain. She speaks on the phone to family, colleagues, friends and fellow parishioners several times a day. It’s the same conversation every time: “I was on such a roller-coaster, one day up, one day down, but the Lord knows what I can take, he has his reasons. That’s what I tell myself, he is there for me, he will guide me. When I start feeling sorry for myself, I just tell myself, don’t be silly, woman, remember the good Lord, and look at Mrs du Bois there, across the room, she is so brave, she lost both sides, we must pray for her. I get my strength from the Lord and from Mrs du Bois. She doesn’t complain, so I must not complain either. Yes, I was on such a roller-coaster, but the good Lord provides – I haven’t had to pay even once at the coffee shop downstairs this week – someone has paid for me every time. The Lord truly provides.”
5. Tests
Day five is for tests. All goes fine until the bone scan, which involves having to lie flat on my back on a very narrow stretcher for half an hour. By the time it’s over I am in such pain that I can’t sit up anymore. The assistant props me up but now I can’t breathe. The boobs, drips and bandages are crushing my chest again. The porter comes with a wheelchair to take me back to the ward. I can’t take the pain anymore and start crying. Silently and with grim determination, the porter pushes me back to the hospital. Past the construction workers, past the visitors, along the street, through the car park, next to a gaggle of nurses on their tea break… I cry, clutching the hospital blanket. I don’t know what’s worse – the pain or crying in public. I don’t do tears. Crying is for sissies, for little girls. I am big and strong and I will not cry in front of complete strangers! But I do, all the way to the ward. As I am wheeled back in, the nurse on duty sees me and shouts, ag, nee, man! Have they made you sore?! I am put back into my bed, everyone fusses over me, offering painkillers, sleeping pills, morphine, tea, counseling. I want none of that. All I want is to stop crying, but I can’t. The more help I am offered the more I cry. My GP phones: what’s wrong? Why are you crying? Are you in pain? Yes, no, I don’t know, please stop me crying! I don’t want to cry anymore! But you can, she says, crying is good. I don’t want to cry here, I want to cry in my own bed, I don’t want to cry at all! What if I never stop!? No, she says, I can tell you, you will, you will not cry forever, so please go ahead and cry, it will make you feel better. But I don’t want to! It gives me a headache, I don’t want other people see me cry, I never do that!!! You can, love, she says, you can, it’s OK. Today you can. I am giving you permission. Two hours later, when my children come to visit me, I am puffy-faced, exhausted, but calm. My GP was right – I did stop crying.
The next day I am allowed to go home. The surgeon comes to check my new boobs before I leave, and I ask him why the right one is smaller than the left. He says, that’s where the cancer was, so we took a bit more on that side, but don’t worry – we’ll pump you up! Reassured, I take my Pamelas, get dressed and finally leave the Lord, blood pressure machines and friendly nurses. It’s time to learn to live with my new body.
6. Birthdays
My treatment is punctuated by birthdays. I have the mastectomy on the day my daughter turns 20. We have a celebratory breakfast for her before I go to hospital and in the evening she throws a party, but tells me later that she spent most of the evening just waiting for the phone call from the hospital to tell her that I am fine.
A month later it’s my own birthday and I decide to treat myself to a new bra for my semi-reconstructed and newly expanded boobs because my old ones are anyway too small now. I ask to be measured and to my absolute horror am told that I now have a D cup! I feel like crying – I just want my puny little B-cups back. I don’t want a huge bust that travels ahead of me like some kind of bouncy appendage. I try covering myself up with multiple layers but the more layers I put on, the bustier I look. I try stooping so that the bloody udders don’t stick out so much, but that doesn’t work either, because it hurts my back. Finally I resort to the ‘celebrity’ trick: I put on my sunglasses. I also remind myself of the breast surgeon’s words: “But you don’t understand - WE like them big!”
Six weeks after the surgery, having had a couple of infections and gone back to hospital to treat them, I go overseas for my mother’s birthday. Before I leave the breast surgeon gives me a letter stating that I have metal in my breasts because he’s had patients who’d set airport alarms off with their semi-reconstructed boobs. The ports through which the new breasts are stretched can apparently do that. I imagine having to tell some highly agitated security officer in London that I am not a terrorist, I just have prosthetic tits that go ‘ping!’, the mayhem it will cause, the security alert, dogs and armed police surrounding me… This is enough for me to want to cancel the trip, but I go and for the first week things are fine.
The day of my mother’s birthday party I notice what looks like a small bruise on my left breast, with skin peeling around it. Mildly worried, I carry on with the party preparations. That evening, when I get ready for bed, what was a small bruise earlier in the day is now an angry purple wound which splits open as I undress. It oozes yellow gunk and seems to grow in front of my eyes. Terrified, I text my plastic surgeon. He phones the next morning and tells me to see him the day I arrive back home. I go to him straight from the airport. For a split second I see concern on his face, real concern and surprise. But he quickly regains his usual unflappable manner and tells me completely calmly that what I have is called an extrusion and it doesn’t happen very often but there is nothing to worry about, we’ll just have to take this breast out and replace it with a different one. But won’t it look different from the right one? “Don’t worry”, he says, drawing a straight line in the air, “we’ll pump you up and adjust both sides until they are exactly symmetrical, just like a wheel alignment.”
The additional surgery delays chemotherapy but I finally start it two weeks later. Just before the second chemo session, the day of my twins’ eighteenth birthday, my hair falls out and all I’m left with is patchy stubble. We go to a steak house anyway where the boys gorge themselves on mountains of meat and coolly order their beers. I feel completely naked but can’t bring myself to wear either a hat or a wig. Somehow it seems even worse. When I take a shower the next day I realise that it’s not just the hair on my head that’s gone. Now I really look like a half-plucked chicken. Thankfully there are no more birthdays this year so nothing can go wrong anymore.
7. Chemo
I am lucky – I only have to have four chemo sessions instead of six that were mentioned originally. Four is enough though. The worst part of chemo is not the actual procedure, but the waiting in-between, the dreaded anticipation of the nausea, the fatigue and cortisone-induced hot flushes that last for days.
Chemo sessions themselves are a bit like a little drug party in the middle of the day. Everyone sits in nice, comfortable armchairs, attached to a drip. The room is light, with plants, stupid magazines, and a TV set for sports fanatics. Chemo nurses scurry around, changing intravenous bags and adjusting the speed of the drips. When I arrive for the first treatment and install myself near a window, I notice a rather cute looking guy in the next armchair. He has an unfortunate, high pitched voice, but as long as he keeps quiet, he is a real pleasure to look at. I later tell my friend about him and she replies: “That would make an interesting answer to the question – so where did you, guys, meet?”
Second session arrives and my friend starts texting me – is the hotty there, have you spoken to him, did you get his number? Sadly he is not there; instead there is just a bunch of older and rather miserable patients. But then a former colleague arrives with his wife. When I tell him that I am here for breast cancer treatment, he beams, waves towards his wife and says, “So are we, so are we! Welcome to the club!”
When I come to the third session, I am in luck – the cutie is there and there is an even younger, cuter hotty too! This is going to be a treat – I can sit in my chair and feast my eyes on those guys! Who cares about chemo. But then they start talking… and, oh dear, it’s all about that strange game that people in Britain and its former colonies find so exciting. The one where grown up men dressed like doctors stand around on a green field, then one of them takes a very small ball, rubs it against his crotch, spits on it, rubs it against his crotch again or against his bum, and then throws it in a windmill kind of motion. Various pretend doctors run around for a short while, then stop and the entire procedure is repeated. If I didn’t know it was a game, I would honestly think it’s some kind of worship.
The last chemo session is boring – no hotties, no friends, just the anticipation of the nausea and the unbearable fatigue that the treatment brings. All that’s left for me now is to get my final-look boobs and my hair back. After that I’ll have my life back too.
8. The Belles
“Power up! One, two, three! Twenty percent, fifty percent, four, five, push it, push it! I want aggression, ladies, aggression!”
What am I doing here!? How did I get myself into this? I can’t swim, really, really dislike any team activity and in particular team sport, and as for exercise, I hate it with a passion. I belong to the tribe of people for whom exercise is something that happens to other people and turns them red in the face, hot, sweaty and smelly. It also makes them cranky as they complain about aching muscles and stiff joints after a particularly vigorous game of some sort, usually involving a ball. We, the non-exercisers, are happiest curled up in bed with a book in one hand and a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine) in the other.
So what am I doing here, at the Waterfront marina, with a bunch of other women in a narrow boat that sits perilously low in water, and with some guy shouting from behind about aggression? My arms are sore from paddling, my bum is hurting from sitting on a hard bench and my heart and stomach lurch every time the boat wobbles. And to top it all, I am sweaty, hot and red in the face!
Well, last year’s cancer treatment had left me with limited mobility in one arm and with so little energy that even the thought of walking to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea made me tired. So although my oncologist was pleased with the actual treatment and told me that as far as she was concerned, I was perfect, in reality I had to do something to rediscover my body and get some strength back.
Exercise is of course the answer in this situation but what kind? Ball games are out – they require too much hand-eye coordination. Going to the gym to impersonate a hamster in a wheel is not appealing either. On the other hand, something new, different, possibly fun and preferably challenging could just be what I need. And then I remembered one of the oncology nurses mentioning dragon boat racing. Family and friends said, you are mad, you can’t swim, you are weak, cancer is enough of a challenge. But they are wrong. Cancer is not a challenge. It’s a calamity, a pain in the arse, but challenge it ain’t. Webster dictionary defines challenge as a stimulating task or problem, and cancer is anything but stimulating, that’s for sure.
On the other hand overcoming my fear of water, learning to do things in a team, possibly acquiring a taste for physical activity – and maybe even achieving that ever-elusive flat tummy that all women dream about - is indeed a challenge. A huge one and maybe a somewhat overambitious one, but a challenge it is. And this is why I find myself on a wobbly boat with other breast cancer survivors who are all part of the amaBele Belles dragon boat racing team.
The amaBele Belles (amaBele means ‘breasts’ in Xhosa) team was started in 2006 by Pam Newby, the team’s coach, with the help of two reps from a pharmaceutical company that produces cancer drugs, who advertised the idea among oncology doctors and patients. At the first paddle the team had a full boat with BCS women, some clinic staff, one surgeon and five paddlers from the Paddlesnappers and Mujaji teams. The amaBele Belles’ main purpose is to introduce breast cancer survivors to dragon boat racing, to show them that physical activity can exist after cancer, and to provide a support group. Unlike other support groups though where women get together purely to swap breast and treatment stories, the Belles, as they call themselves (or should I say ourselves?), get together to paddle. And in the process they may also occasionally and incidentally talk about their breasts and treatment options.
The amaBele Belles
There are only two conditions to be part of the team – one has to be a female and to have had breast cancer. So the range of shapes, ages and fitness is quite staggering: from someone like me, barely able to paddle for more than a few minutes without getting out of breath to superfit women who don’t even break into sweat after an hour of training! There are also a couple of supporters who come along. Usually they are either people living with other types of cancer or attached males – brothers, boyfriends or husbands who get roped into giving a hand. In 2006 the team even went to the first BCS dragon boat world championships in Singapore. The newest team on the water, the Belles had only been paddling for five months, winter months at that, yet they made every major final and came home with a silver medal and a trophy for coming second in one of the three categories.
And so I find myself doing the unthinkable: I am participating in a team sport and one that takes place on water! It makes me tired, it makes me sore, but now that I’ve started, I don’t think I’ll stop even though all this water is still frighteningly close. I’ll power up and I’ll give it the twenty percent extra push that Martin wants from the team. I will also get sweaty and hot, and who knows – maybe I’ll even go to China with the Belles next year?
Moving on
I never get to China, but something else happens to me. I move to a different country, start a new job and try to put the whole cancer episode behind me, despite the fact that because of a hospital infection I end up with only one partially reconstructed breast.
Then one day a man asks for my number at a café. At first I think that this is ridiculous and I must just forget about it. But he is really sexy and he smiles, and gives me some cheesy compliment about my eyes. I give him my number and go back to work, almost angry at myself. What am I going to do now? What if he wants more than coffee? What if I like him, he likes me? When do I tell him? I google things like “intimacy after breast cancer” but none of the websites have anything to say about dealing with a new partner. They all give the same boring and tired advice to husbands: love your wife’s new body, be patient, discover new ways of loving her, etc, etc… Nowhere is there anything about telling a stranger who’s made it pretty clear that he thinks I am sexy, that certain, seemingly essential parts of this sexy me are missing. And once I’ve told him, then what? How do I cope with him wanting to run a mile from me? Or how do I actually go about having sex with this mess on my chest? Do I cover it up, pretend that it’s not there? I have no answers.
I spend a few days thinking about it and decide to tell him next time I see him. This way, if he is not interested in “damaged goods”, I will have wasted only one date on him! When we meet he flirts outrageously, and I feel the panic rising and think that I am actually going to cry. Finally I tell him, waiting for him to say something disappointingly polite and take off. Instead, he clicks his tongue, grins and replies: but there are other parts of the body to focus on.
And that is that. My initial instinct was right: if you have to lose some part of your body, breasts are best. You don’t need them to walk or to make a cup of tea. And it turns out that you don’t need them for sex either. They are completely superfluous.
