Prosthesis

3.

Amazon archer by Thomas McKnight

March 19, 2024.

LB is the breast I lost in my unilateral mastectomy on March 6. 2024. Rightie Tightie (RT) is the remaining (smaller) breast. Since the day before surgery I have been writing letters/odes to Leftie Bestie on FaceBook and transferring here to Substack.

Dear Leftie Bestie,

It's been just over 2 weeks since we said goodbye in the operating theatre at RPA Lifehouse on March 6. Well actually, that’s a lie, I was so out of it I even forgot to wave farewell (sorry LB) and when I woke up you were gone, replaced by a neat line of stitches and a tangle of tubing leading to a plastic bag containing all that was left of you, they call it fluid but looked like blood to me —were those your tears LB?

Please don't think I'm callous or in denial (I probably am) but I'm one of those people who moves on quickly, who doesn't look back, and even though I didn't like looking in the mirror at first, now it's not so bad. I'm getting to like the 'boy look' as one male surgeon (the one I didn't go with) called it disparagingly when I said I didn't want reconstruction.

The female surgeons at Lifehouse did such a neat job and now the tubing and bag and bruising are gone too, I'm giving more attention to my Rightie Tightie and realising how much I have ignored her in years gone by. Let's not forget she had her own trauma 17 years ago with the lumpectomy and the radiotherapy, and now she gets to shine and not be overpowered by your largesse (well, relatively speaking) but let’s face it, you always were the dominant one LB, more round, more luscious, more perky.

And I hope you are not put out by my fascination and fickle talk of all manner of prostheses, I hope you know they could never be a true replacement for all you gave in your long years of service. The truth of the matter is I feel guilty, that instead of receiving a decent burial you have been sent to some grey walled, brightly lit lab to be dissected, prodded and poked, put under a microscope, analysed and reported on as if you were a corpse in a CSI drama. A crime was committed against you LB and we all know the culprit. I can’t believe he is still getting away with it, after all the billions of dollars spent to try to stop him in his tracks.

Even today on the radio, a favourite presenter of mine was telling the story of his ambush by the BIG C. Maybe his parts and my parts will bump into each other in the petri dish line up in that antiseptic lab, maybe together the information gleaned from them will help future generations when getting cancer will be just like getting the flu. I hope so LB, I hope so.

Meanwhile hang in there LB. Rightie Tightie and I hope it won’t be too long until your final release. To be continued, more research required!

Next update will be from Japan!!

Follow my Leftie Bestie episodes to find out how after my mastectomy instead of opting for chemo and radiotherapy, I sought the advice of cancer adviser and advocate Grace Gawler, and travelled to Japan for AIET, a non invasive immune boosting therapy. Thank you to all who contributed to my cancer fundraiser and helped me achieve my current cancer free result.