Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Seven Things I learned from Having Breast Cancer

1.   You get so used to going topless, that any reticence you may have about having strange men (and women) look at and touch your naked breasts completely dissipates. 
2.  That burn I had back in 1984 from sunbathing topless in Nice was a piece of cake.
3.  Due to breast tenderness, you become a pro at dodging full-on huggers, i.e., you become a master of the one-sided hug.
4.  There is a non-surgical method to getting your breasts back to where they were in your 20's, but unless you have cancer on both sides, only one boob gets "lifted."
5.  Despite ban on alcohol and lessening of appetite, if you go through radiation during the Holiday season, you still manage to put on weight.
6.   Having breast cancer is like being pregnant in that it seems to give medical people free rein to touch you without asking first if it's OK.
7.  At least once a week, from diagnosis until the end of treatment, at some point you will have to bare your breasts to some medical person who will stare at them and say "Nice, nice, you are . . .  a) healing well,  or b) tolerating treatment well."

3 comments:

  1. Sad for you that you had to go through that..
    ..because of the way it wrapped around my screen, I thought the end to:
    "Nice, nice, you are "
    was going to be:
    "c cup right?"
    Just pictured a medical student saying that.

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