So the mastectomy. It's a reality that's been hanging out there for a while but I've been kind of ignoring it will trying to get through the chemo. This weekend in the paper there was a letter in one of the advice columns from a woman who wrote about how her husband hasn't sexually touched her since her mastectomy 10 years ago. That really wasn't had wanted to read, but it is the reality I'm expecting. The last three years my social life has been on hold while working and going to school. There would always be time to date, to enjoy myself even if I never found "the one," even though I'm uh-hum middle-aged. Once you've had breast cancer, once you've had a mastectomy, how do you date? How do you start a relationship with that reality? What's the protocol for that? Second date "oh by the way this one is fake, the real one tried to kill me." Or is that not til the third date?
I know that technically the fact that I've had cancer doesn't make it more likely that I will have cancer in the future. There's never any guarantees in life for any of us. But still as much as I pretend nothing will change, it makes a difference in the way I view myself. As much as I pretend it's not a big deal, they are taking a part of my body and that changes things. It's not just fat and tissue although they are welcome to the fat, it is part of what makes us women, it's part of our body image and I can pretend .... well I can't even pretend it doesn't matter, it matters. And if it matters to me how can it not matter to someone else?
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