They’ve assured me that my boobs will not explode

I nervously approached the security checkpoint. I’d been so busy with work that I hadn’t done the math on everything that could go wrong until this exact moment.  First, my driver’s license picture is two years old.  Generally, that wouldn’t be an issue, but I’ve lost and gained and dyed approximately 20 inches of hair in that time. I feel ten years older then the person in that picture.  Its like Annie Lennox walking up to the TSA and handing over Alyson Hannigan‘s driver’s license for passage.

Second, I have at least three circular metal disks under my skin, roughly the size of two quarters and a dime, respectively.  I’m rolling around with 60 cents American at all times.  I tightly grasped the card provided by my doctor that kindly explained that my boobs will not, in fact, explode and therefore I am not a threat to the friendly skies.  I tried to think of what to say to the kind young man explaining to the person ahead of me that no, your e-reader can stay in your bag, but your laptop should be placed in the bin.

I think that he probably doesn’t need the whole story, which is this: I’m almost four months out from a double mastectomy.  I’m back to work full time, and my bouts of total exhaustion are spreading out further and further so that I can go almost two weeks on my old schedule before I need to nap for approximately 24 hours.

We are reconstructing breast-like spaces on my chest to fill with implants.  This was my choice and I’m comfortable with it.  I’m also lucky because my spouse and my family supported me during my decision making process where I considered not getting reconstruction.  Because isn’t reconstructing breasts when your old ones tried to kill you just one more way of bowing to society’s expectations of beauty?  Probably, but I’m doing it anyway.  I have some logical reasons, like I like how my clothes fit with breasts, but mostly it was a gut feeling.  And if you’re thinking, well duh, I’d encourage you to read this article for a well-written counter argument or this one for a slightly less militant reasoning.  Reconstruction need not be a foregone conclusion.

My breast-like spaces at the moment sort of resemble Horrible Accident Barbie.  Each one has a long scar and is hard like a basketball.  They are also not susceptible to gravity in any visible way (other than that they do not float into space).  I theoretically understood that this was the plan, and frequently made jokes about, well, hey, at least I’ll be perky.  But these new breast-like spaces are covered by the same skin that covered my old murderous tatas.  My brain needed to reconcile this with the new reality: what’s underneath is a different composition.

Which brings us to my metal disks.  I don’t have implants yet, I have expanders.  Expanders make the breast-like spaces for the implants to occupy and are needed because the space is actually behind my pec muscle.  Skin, it turns out, wants to lay on something from the body, not a man-made object and will die if not.  So the cross-section diagram in the earth science textbook would show skin, pec muscle, expander, chest wall.

I imagine it like trying to blow up an air mattress inside a sealed cardboard box.  As the air mattress fills, the cardboard box will stretch and bend outward from the pressure underneath. Instead of air, we are adding saline solution to my expander to push the muscle out and make space.

The nurse take a needle and punches it through my muscle to reach the expander and then pumps saline in.  So that she doesn’t punch straight through to my more important organs, there is a metal disk backing to each of my expanders that stops the needle.  She finds the metal with a magnet device, marks the spot and Pulp Fictions me, albeit less dramatically and without Eric Stolz shouting at her.  I told her I was worried about seeing the needle because, when I picture muscle, I picture steak.  And I didn’t want to see the needle one would need to punch through a steak.  And she said, its more like a flank steak: very thin.  So the needle isn’t that big.

Folks, I’d like to pause here and say if you can find a nurse who will meet you on your gross analogy level, put a ring on it.

Until we switch out the expanders for more natural looking breast-like spaces, I am apt to set off metal detectors.  Further, I still have my port, which works in a similar way but with a smaller metal disk and instead of saline the port generally carries solutions only recently approved by the FDA.

But that is not the government agency concerning us for this story.  Fortunately, the young TSA agent in Columbus and the slightly older one in Raleigh on my return trip were both incredibly nice.  The agents deftly handled my awkward explanation, in which I tried to illustrate without making the international hand sign for knockers.  They both kindly refused my offering of the cards explaining my predicament.  And, it turns out that the scanning devices in both airports did not take issue with the medical devices in my chest.

In Columbus, the scanner did ask the agent to stop me to check my compression sleeve.  Oh, that’s another thing: I have a compression sleeve to wear while flying so that fluid doesn’t build up in the arm where they removed a few lymph nodes during surgery.  I still just have the surgical default one, in this strange flesh color that evokes Spanx for your arms, but I hope to upgrade at Christmas.  (Dear Santa, I do not want lymphedema. Please bring me three lymph nodes or something kicky from Adidas. Your friend, Meghan).  But after a quick explanation of the sleeve, the agent let me go with no issue.

Traveling is different now.  Everything is different now. October, especially, was different.  I wasn’t ready for all the pink everywhere.  I’m not ready to form an opinion on the sexualization of breast cancer or the hypocrisy of the companies making money off of  people who have already suffered at the hands of this disease.

I do know this: early detection saved my life, humor made treatment bearable and we need to demystify cancer as a whole.  Women in cancer treatment are offered Look Good Feel Good classes, so that we can better hide the battle raging in our bodies.  (Because I’m a stubborn asshole, instead of taking the class, I just stopped wearing makeup entirely. Though really, my go-to move is mascara, and I don’t have eyelashes right now. But I digress.)

This shouldn’t be a Hallmark holiday.  It should fit more with Halloween.  Breast cancer is a scary motherfucker.  I propose Exorcist PSAs for mammograms. That would feel less weird to me then the Dallas Cowboys hiring Greg Hardy one month and the next month outfitting their boys in pink, ya know, for the women.

Talking about all of this is important, so even though I wasn’t ready for it, I am grateful for the discussion.  I am especially grateful for whatever someone wants to do in an effort to encourage self-exams or raise money for research or perhaps in some way honor someone lost to the battle.  There are a million ways to contribute solidarity.  I am grateful for the pink.  But it was different this year.

I am different.  Even as I chase sameness and seek out moments that feel exactly like my old life, the ground has shifted beneath me.  I am encountering the world from a different spot.  My new spot.

Which may not may not set off the metal detectors.

#tovictory