Coping with cancer | My Eyes Are Up Here

For some reason, I am finding a need to refer to the right side of my chest as something other than “surgical site.” It’s going to be several weeks before I start the temporary inflation process with the tissue expander so a name would be handy. And yes, I could stick with “righty” but that implies some kind of symmetry with “lefty”. A few ideas of various levels of quality:

The Tissue Formerly Known as Righty
Breast-to-Be (I kind of like this one. Maybe a friend will throw me a shower before surgery. Yay, presents!)
Vegetarian Sweater Meat
Ugly Duckling (Some day it will turn into a bee-you-ti-ful swan.)
Breasterpillar (Some day it will turn into a bee-you-ti-ful breasterfly.)
Puppy Pupa (continuing with the metamorphosis theme)
Empty Jug
Sad Sack (waah!)
Berefticle (waah!)
Scarla
Storage Chest
Bosom in Waiting
Breast, in Space Saver Mode
Unleavened Breast
Late Bloomer
Bosom’s Buddy
Fixer Upper
Do-Over
The Start of Something Big
Under the Shoulder Boulder Holder

Okay, I know a lot of you are thinking, and not in the creepy 1-900 kind of way, “What are you wearing?” I am wearing a post-surgery camisole. The particular brand is Softee. It is made of super soft white material. There is also a little ribbon bow in the front, just like the undershirts we used to wear as girls. For an irrational reason, this bow irritated me so I removed it. There are four pockets on the Softee, two on the exterior and two on the interior. Soft prostheses can be placed in the exterior pockets depending on whether you have a unilateral or bilateral mastectomy. Each prosthetic is filled with the same polyester stuffing that you can buy at a fabric store. You can adjust the amount of stuffing as needed. They are not exactly a perfect match but a reasonable visual facsimile for a breast until a more realistic prosthetic can be used (they are too heavy and hard to use now) or until reconstruction is completed. The interior pockets are designed to hold the surgical drain. This is a very handy feature since otherwise the drain would hang free and the tubing, which is attached to the drain, would pull against the skin. (Sorry, squeamish readers, I am keeping this as non-gross as I can. A function of my blog is educational and designed to demystify this process.)

So for now, the surgical camisole is my bra-facsimile. As for my main other clothes, I am wearing very soft PJ’s. Technically, I believe they are considered “lounge wear” because I could hypothetically wear them outside of the house. I will test this hypothesis on Tuesday for my two medical appointment. Today’s PJ’s (which to be truthful were also yesterday’s PJ’s) feature a loose smock in zebra print over stretch capri pants. I consider these to be my “dressy” PJ’s. Between the black capri stretch pants and the animal print, I believe I would fit in well in Palm Springs, especially if I carried a tiny dog in a pink leather purse.

In a couple of weeks, they’ll remove the surgical drain and I will have slightly more style options. I am insanely happy about this. Cancer is making me wear pants! That’s the last straw! Evil cancer! My body is made for dresses, not pants. I’ve been asked more than once by patients, “Dr. Elizabeth, why do you always wear dresses?” Rather than answering, “If you ever see me in pants, then you’ll know”, I say something about that fact that dresses feel more comfortable to me and that I like the way they look. Now before you all start posting comments like, “You have a beautiful body”, “I’ve seen you look good in pants”, yada, yada, yada, just know that I report the facts. (See, I filed this post in the “facts” category.) I happen to believe that I can be beautiful and still not look good in pants. Pants and I can be friends but we have different needs. I need them to be dresses and they need me to be a quite different shape.

When the drain is removed, I can move on to my one piece lounge wear, a collection of super soft t-shirt dresses, which were also purchased from the PJ section of Target and online from Sierra Trading Post. I favor micro-modal fabric. It is really soft and drapes nicely. It is a type of rayon but doesn’t wrinkle so much. I have pretty sensitive skin so when my medical oncologist, Dr. Rinn told me that I needed to invest in some super soft post-mastectomy clothing, I knew exactly what to get.

I’ve posted pictures below. Also, check out the clothing made by Chikara Design for women who decide not to do reconstruction or to use a prosthetic. I think the designs are elegant and clever.