I had my third lumpectomy on 1st July (one benign lump three years ago) and the two cancerous ones. I was told I didnt need a mastectomy because I have large breasts. I really did not think I would notice a difference, but my cancer boob, is considerably smaller than the other one. It doesnt sit right in my bra and I have to keep adjusting it so it sits right, and when I am naked it really does look alot smaller.
I had friends arrive yesterday for a night out, and I showed them and they all said oh yes, its definintely smaller! Is this normal, I feel quite upset about it. Probably sounds daft, but I feel like a freak now.
I’ve been warned about this. My surgery will be soon and i’ll more than likely have a reduction in size and some denting. In all fairness, i’m quite happy about it.
I dont actually mind being smaller if I had had a reduction to make them the same. I just dont like having one a lot smaller than the other. My friends said, don’t worry nobody will know when you are wearing a bra, and maybe you could get a chicken fillet!! The trouble is I know, and feel like a freak about it.
My surgeon said before she sliced and diced me that the cancer one was smaller to start with, but I hadn’t actually noticed. Now they are definitely a bit different and the cancer one’s rather dented and bashed, but it’s not too bad. If yours is noticeably different you might be able to get a reduction on the other side to even things up. I don’t think they necessarily offer that as standard because not everyone wants to undergo yet another op when they’ve had so many treatments already. I suggest you have a word with your surgeon and see what he or she says.
i have only had one lumpectamy rather than three, so my result is quite good with not a bad scar(early days yet) and no dent.
however it is just above my nipple so that side is quite perky looking now, compared to the other side that has pointed more and more south as the years go on. Not a huge difference but one i can notice standing stock still in front of a mirror.
but as i am in a thirty year old marraige where although we are still interetested in each other, I dont often dance round the bedroom with just a feather duster between my teeth, i doubt if my other half has even noticed. I dont think i would go through surgery to even it up.
I did wonder if they send any material they get from this sort of surgery off to be analysed. I suppose it would be reassuring to get reults that the other breast was cancer free as an added bonus of gettting a better cosmetic effect
I had a non cancerous lumpectomy 20+ years ago, and had a WLE on 3rd June. My lopsidedness has improved dramatically over the past few weeks as the internal healing has progressed. My breast is a bit smaller than it was but it doesn’t show too much, but it still makes me self-conscious. Could your BCN help with a prosthesis to go inside your bra if it’s bothering you? Even temporarily, as you’re not long after your op?
I was left very lobsided after I had a lumpectomy combined with mastopexy (breast lift & reduction) on the BC side. I was warned that this would happen and that I could have the healthy side reduced to match later on. The surgeon wanted to wait several months for this in case I got a lot of rads shrinkage but I was so upset by being so asymmetrical that she operated 3 months after the first one. I’m delighted with the result, it’s given me my confidence back again.
I was very fortunate that I had a plastic surgeon in theatre who did a reduction on my non cancer breast and she also did the tidy up of the cancer breast. This was all done in the one operation and I have had a very fortunate cosmetic outcome. I can absolutely understand the feelings you have about this aparent difference. We have enough to cope with without having a visual reminder of it. I would discuss with regards reduction on ‘good’ breast for good aestehtic outcome. Thinking of everyone at their varying stages. Take care. J.
Hi I fully understand how you are feeling. I had a mastectomy and a reconstruction a year ago. The reconstructed breast is considerably smaller than the other and my surgeon mentioned that sometime in the future it may be possible to have the larger breast reduced (not that I am very big anyway), but he was not offering it any time soon. I have been so self conscious and with low self-esteem for the past 12 months, changing what I wear to disguise the noticeable difference. Apart from size it is also the way clothes hang like v neck tops and dresses. This past week I went for a follow up appointment and it was mentioned to me by the senior breast care nurse that I could have a partial prosthesis. 2 days later I was back at the hospital to get one fitted to sit in my bra. Magic, all though it is still not the real deal, I am transformed woman, back to wearing normal clothes and feeling a million dollars. Why I wasn’t told that this was possible a year ago is a mystery. I hope this is of help.
Six months ago my surgeon discussed doing a reduction on the good side and a cleanup of the wle side. Went to the next six month appointment last Friday expecting to get dates for the op as I had psyched myself up to decide to have it.
He didn’t mention it at all! When I asked about it he said he’d have to ask his boss - funding cuts. See you n 6 months!
I feel absolutely gutted having psyched myself for an operation I’d never have considered normally! The WLE was on the smaller side to start with and they took away quite a bit as they cut the guide wire out as well. Now I have a cloven breast because some of the skin has grown onto the chest wall causing a fold. It looks hideous.
Never mind the hole in my nipple where all the slamming around of the plastic cage during the second biopsy smashed a piece out!
And I can’t have a proper conversation with him because english isn’t his first language!
I feel so frustrated!
Also before the appointment and the previous one I was handed a badly photocopied sheet of paper with a set of questions like had the operation affected my sexual image and so on and so forth. When I said I’d filled it in already I was told I’d have to fill it in at each appointment.
My spouse is in his eighties for goodness sake and I’m not going to dance on table tops with a feather in my teeth either! I felt demeaned and insulted - especially as it seems they don’t have any funding to rectify body image issues anyway.
I’m not sure who to complain about the questionnaire either but I just wanted to screw it up and throw it in the bin and walk out!
Thanks OAL,
I have just googled PALs and found an email address. My next appointment is 6 months away and the hospital is an hours drive away as well so I’ll start with email.
I just wish he hadn’t raised my hopes at the previous appointment.
It would help if we had some comparisons - like images of WLE’d tits so we could judge how bad our own ones are.
If I was asked to repeat the questionaire and I didn’t want to I’d say -very firmly- "I’ve have already done it once and I’d prefer not to do it again thank you - they can hardly force you to do it.
Have a few similar issues. I had a WLE on each side, one under left arm - horrible scar but boob not much changed in size. Other near the front - and nipple is now pointing skywards! I think right boob is now smaller but am waiting till it all heals before I decide how to proceed. I also have the surgeon who doesn’t speak English very well and have been near tears of frustration trying to get my message over.
But feather duster - that’s another thing!! I may not be in my first flush of youth but I did get remarried just 3 years ago so would like to have kept my bits intact for a while longer. I never did have much conceit about them until recently when I watched that Sex Education show for kids and they bring out lots of ‘body examples’ and I realised then mine were pretty damn fine - for this to happen 2 months later.
I’m also sure these pills are draining every last hormone out of me. I’m trying to take a ‘shxt happens’ view. I do remember near the beginning being so terrified of dying I thought I’d be thrilled if I ever got to the point where vanity kicked in again.
you have to be carefull nowadays what you say in case you are accused of not being politacally correct. But I do think that health care proffesionals should have better language skill requirements, especially those having to advise patients on treatment.
The first doctor i saw at the clinic did not have good language skills. He had the vocabulary but a very thick accent and odd pronunciation so not only was i struggling with new concepts (intracystic papillary carcenoma, wide lateral excision, margins, sential nodes etc) but having also finding it hard to understand what he was saying. I had to keep asking him to repeat everything and felt very rude making it so obvious that there was a comunication problem.
We got through it, but it was so much easier on the next appointments speaking to doctors with a good commmand of english.
Ragamuffin,
Pathetic I am, I didn’t want to offend the lovely nurse who was only doing what she was told - in the waiting area with other patients - and I did want to emphasize how much I hate my present look - and I always decide what to do too late!
I will follow up probably through PALS as I do think the wording was inappropiate and that the groundhog day approach is really insensitive if there is no funding for repair work.
Sheil,
I was very lucky in that the first thing the surgeon said after the diagnosis was that I had a good prognosis (then I had to look that word up) and after the op it looked OK as there was a lot of fluid in there keeping it puffed up. But after a year I had kind of accepted the manglement (except the nipple as they did that) but then the surgeon brought up the option of a clean up so unexpectedly and I’ve unrealistically spent 6 months dreaming of new small tits. I’ve always had a pair that pointed south varying from FF at peak fatness to famine shrivelled A for a brief 6 months in my 30’s so this was going to be a bonus.
I hate appointments though as I can never relax as I’m not sure my antipodean use of words has been understood and his stuff doesn’t come out in complete sentences. I enjoy chatting to the English nurses though.
Eltiks,
I call it cancer brain as I didn’t have chemo and my brain has been shot since diagnosis and the realisation that BC is a disease for life.
Hi Surfie
Glad you got some good news at the start. Knowing what I know now I feel they could have given me a lot of reassurance but didn’t. And that’s the point you need it.
When I was having a stereotactic biopsy, which I think was the worst bit of the whole thing - 10 shots in one tiny area, they could easily have said it is this awful because the area they are trying to target was so small. But no, blank faces all round which just made me think the worst. It was my GP who told me it was ER+ which she informed me was ‘a good thing’. I felt it was some kind of masochistic policy to keep anything which might make the patient feel better to themselves. When I was told it was ‘lobular’ it was with a look of such pity I nearly fainted. What stopped them saying but this is not any worse than the most common type and usually treatable.
Sorry, an off-topic moan, but they were talking of this on the local radio this morning and I almost called in.
I also went through the angst of not wanting to appear anywhere near racist, but I got to the point where my surgeon just wasn’t getting what I was trying to say so I eventually put it all down in an email. Its just too important to have any vagueness. And later when I wanted to have the Oncotype test done, knowing all the time that I’d have to pay for it (and had discussed this) but the surgeon would have to initiate it, I waited a month and then they came back saying they wouldn’t pay for it.
I just found this aspect a very big additional stress which I don’t think is considered.
S
Sheil,
Rather than risk being thought racist and emailing PALS I’ve made an appointment to see my GP next week. At her suggestion she wrote to the surgeon a year ago about the hole in my nipple and that resulted in an extra appointment at the hospital but as I had just had a mini stroke type thing, probably from tamoxifen, I was more concerned with that when I saw him. It was a treat watching him when I asked if he’d read my hospital notes (he hadn’t)and then explained what had happened.
I emailed him 6 months ago after the next session saying I would like the cleanup and uplift surgery he’d spoken about but nowt was said about the email at last weeks appointment and he didn’t ever acknowledge it so I don’t think email communication is going to happen.
Last week I also asked if he had the results of the FISH test mentioned on my path report as the pathology showed HER-2 ++ status which is borderline and they do another test to decide. He just said they wouldn’t give chemo for anything so small - which wasn’t what I asked!
Grr!!
The most physically painful part of this whole journey so far for me was the needle for the anaesthetic in the breast for the first biopsy it was agony. The results, on another day after a 3 hour wait were inconclusive 'cause they missed the lump!
I was then booked in for day surgery for a wire guided excision biopsy so I left home before 6am to go for that and waited round and went to the clinic to get the wire put in late morning when a doctor came rushing in and said that they’d cancelled the op and would do another biopsy. He was lovely, making me a cup of tea and putting the anesthetic in really slowly but I think the assistant got fed up cause she was slamming the plastic box things round and that is how I lost part of the nipple. I didn’t notice for a couple of weeks as I was sore and shell shocked but when I dared look I saw a little triangle of flesh hanging by a thread.
I had the same chap put the wire in on the day of the surgery and both times I could see the whole thing on the screen and he answered questions as he guided the wire in.
I was so ignorant at that stage I wouldn’t have had a clue about different cancer types but you are right it was a comfort to have had ‘good prognosis’ said. The surgeon is a very kind man and the actual scar for the incision is practically invisible so I’d not want to change him - the ugliness is because of the amount he had to take out with the wire.
