To scar pic or not to scar pic? That is the question.

And here is my answer and why.

I didn't have the opportunity to find out about what other cancer patients looked like after surgery. The entire time I was doing chemo for the first six months, the word lumpectomy was spoken, reinforced, emphasized, so much so, that while the remote possibility of a mastectomy had crossed my mind, the health care people were saying lumpectomy the whole time, so of course, *I* didn't know why the hell a mastectomy had even crossed my mind once or twice. They knew what they were doing, they knew what they were talking about. They dealt with this shit every day. After all, I was *just* the patient who didn't know anything. 

Imagine my shock when I went in after the first half of chemo and was told "Time to schedule your mastectomy." like it was no big deal. I wasn't given an option, there was no actual discussion of it. Just this is what is going to happen next. Within a week, I was in to see a surgeon and things went from mastectomy to my saying (with the nurse telling me afterward the insurance would, indeed, cover a bilateral) that I would not do this again and stay sane, take them both.

As sick as I had been, as sick as I was, I just didn't have time to mentally process going from lumpectomy to mastectomy, to bilateral mastectomy. Imagine my disgust when I was told upon waking up that "nothing had been found, although four of twelve (or sixteen, honestly cannot recall at this point) nodes had been positive." Why, then, had a bilateral mastectomy been done on me, and not a lumpectomy? Why was it both ways? Some lymph nodes were positive and yet there was "nothing" in my breast? What the fuck?  Nobody would (or could) explain this.

As soon as I finished out the second six months of chemo, I relocated because of my husband accepting employment in another state. As I slowly started to recover from the ravages of what had been done to me, physically, mentally, emotionally, I began to find other women like me. Some who had had reconstruction, some who had not. Others were in the process of deciding.

In any case, I decided to start putting up pictures of my scars, generally for the month of October, that was my profile picture. I wanted people to see the reality of breast cancer, a reality that I really didn't get to find out until after it had happened to me. I still fully believe that had I seen more images of other women who looked similar to what I did BEFORE my amputations, I'd have been far more accepting of my body and what it might or would look like.  I think, I believe, I KNOW I would have processed it far better on several levels. 

Instead, I was left on my own to cope and this is such a shit storm to cope with, there's just no other way to put it. It's not like we get owner's manuals for our bodies afterward. Before diagnosis, there is "normal" and afterward, there is no across the board normal, because everything is so varied, age of diagnosis, reason--genetics, hormones, etc./lack of reason, kind diagnosed with, treatments, etc., that I don't believe anyone really, until recently, wanted to try to figure out what to do afterward to help; after all, I'm still of an age where, back in the day, this was an "old woman's disease" and it wasn't talked about.  It wasn't ever a topic of discussion for me until I was in my late 30's and an online acquaintance in another state was diagnosed.  I think this is where social media begins to come into this as a factor.  Now we're able to find and help each other.

Then there's the dumb asses who don't want to see the reality of breast cancer. There's the people who give public lip service, like one person I had to block. She would "cheer me on" publicly when I would be so "brave, putting up scar pictures" and yet she would castigate me in private messages, telling me that nobody but my husband and sons should see my scars, that it should be kept private. 

I politely thanked her for her messages and decided to tell her that I was going to keep saying and doing what I was for others to know they weren't alone. She told me I was evil when I politely told her that since she couldn't be nice, I was unfriending her. Her telling me I was evil was what put me from the unfriending mode into the block mode and I blocked her ass. Who the fuck needs that? I certainly don't. Not when I was getting tons of messages from people, other women, THANKING me for what I was doing because it was the right thing. One person saying I am a horrible person doing that, as opposed to probably close to hundreds (now) telling me that I'm doing what needs to be done? Yeah, I still believe that giving that one person the block was definitely the right thing to do. 

So, bottom line is, if by sharing my ugly ass scar pics will keep just one woman, or even a man, since men can get breast cancer as well, from having such a hard time processing what their body may potentially look like, well, then fuck yeah, I'm going to keep sharing and whoever doesn't like it can go fuck themselves. Because you know, I'm a bitch that way now and if that makes me a bitch with an attitude, then yes, I've got bitchitude and I dgaf.  JS