A complex tale of a girl and her body

This is a hard one to write because I don’t know if my thoughts will flow - more than likely they will be scattered because that is a reflection of the complexity of this topic.

I mentioned in my “It’s only been two weeks” post about the fear I hold for what my body will be like and the connection to my body and boobs. These thoughts are constantly running in the back of my head. What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to feel like a woman? Where did these constructs come from? Are these constructs making this process a much harder process? Why is there such an emphasis on breasts to define womanhood? Why can I not be okay without having breasts? I hate social constructs, and I hate how embodied they are in our culture and in myself. I’ve been doing research on “should I reconstruct or not.” It is evident that there is an increase in depression and decrease in quality of life after a bilateral mastectomy. What helps decrease depression and increase quality of life is reconstruction - to allow people to feel like themselves again. So much that there are federal laws put in place to mandate insurance companies to cover the cost of any breast reconstruction where a mastectomy was needed! For someone who has lived experienced with depression, I don’t want to go down that path. So I’m using that data to ground my decision in getting reconstruction.

In doing that research, every article I read made sure breast cancer survivors understand the difference between cosmetic surgery and reconstruction surgery. What I’m about to go through is not cosmetic surgery but reconstruction, it’s about trying to put my body back together due to the strong social constructs our society has on identifying as a female body. I don’t know if I could mentally go from being a “J” to an “A” - it’s like living on two sides of the pendulum. So I now have an opportunity to find life in the middle. At times it feels like I’m cheating the system. So annoyed that that thought is even in my body. But today as I was laying on the table getting a lymphatic message (optimizing my body for surgery), I realized I’m not cheating the system or myself, I’m living life that was dealt to me. If someone looses an arm or leg, society does not think twice about their decision to get a prosthetic (or at least I hope not, I’ve never been in that experience so if I am misrepresenting, please let me know) and that’s how I am viewing my chest. Yes, we don’t need boobs to function in life, but yet we kind of do…

This thought also led to body acceptance and trust. A topic that comes up quite frequently in the work that I do. As I mentioned early in “It’s only been two weeks,” I took a 6 month body liberation course. During that time I was struggling to accept my body and all the changes it went through during pregnancy and birth. One of the changes I experience was breast growth that happened to start right after breast feeding. If you know me, you know my boobs have always been a constant big. They never fluctuated in size when I was on my period or with weight - they always just stayed a constant big, until June 2020. That was when I first noticed a size increase, but there were excuses to the size - just finished breast feeding (hormones changing), pandemic, no longer exercising as much, depression, etc. So the thought process was - must be your body changing and hormones adjusting along with current lifestyle. Well, from that moment they continued to grow slowly but surely. I was having to buy new bras about every 6 months, which became annoying and expensive. Then the back pain came, then the neck pain, then came frustration because it was hard to find clothes that fit and looked decent. (I was super grateful when wearing the XL t-shirts over leggings trend came into style! ) I was disappointed in myself for allowing this to affect my self image and self esteem, but it did. When I was doing a body trust assignment, I learned I never really had negative thoughts towards my body, there was always pressure from society to be “skinnier” but never thoughts that negatively affected the way I perceived myself. I always had the wishes of being skinnier and not having a gut, but it never really interfered with my life. These ever-growing boobs were starting to interfere with my life and I was really struggling on trying to accept my “new mom bod!”

I finally brought the attention to my OGBYN to see if she could figure out why they keep growing. She didn’t have an answer, but referred me to breast specialist who said they should know. So I called each one of the referrals and on one would see me because I didn’t hold any type of diagnosis. I felt deflated and realized I was on this mystery path alone. I went to a holistic doctor and her hypothesis was that maybe it was the birth control that I was on (nexplannon)- a research study said that the breast can retain water while on Nexplannon. So she suggested going off of birth control (a tale for another time on that family decision to go off birth control). About 6 months ago, I went off my birth control in hopes the boobs would go down, and they did not. #bummer. Two years ago, I started Pilates - maybe that will help. Maybe it is due to weight gain, even though my OBGYN said the proportion of weight gain to breast size didn’t add up. Pilates has been amazing!!!! But there was no decrease in breast size, but an increase. Ahhh.

So I’ve been on this journey of body acceptance and playing clue to figure out why my body is behaving the way it is.

Then it dawn on me today, during my lymphatic message - I was struggling to accept my body because all these years my body was telling me there was something up with it. I was trusting my body, I just couldn’t find anyone to validate what I was feeling and noticing. And let me tell you, the day I found out I had breast cancer, my body was flooded with relief, “I KNEW IT” “I knew there was something going on, just didn’t know what (and I definitely never thought it would be cancer). It’s ironic that I felt so much relief and validation when I found out I had cancer - not what one would expect. My biggest fear in getting my biopsy result was not cancer, but this, “Ms. Delgado, so good news, you don’t have cancer, bad news, it is something, but we don’t know what it is, so good luck,” because if you know the McKenney family, that tends to be the rhythm of our life.

So today I felt this extra deep validation, that maybe I haven’t been struggling with accepting my body, maybe it’s been my body telling or yelling at me that there’s something wrong for. It is finally being heard and action happening to get it fixed.

When working with medical trauma, you help people learn to trust their body and to advocate for their body. It’s hard to trust your body when the door has closed so many times in your face. My sister and I have already reached out to the doctors who did close the door in my face and educated them on my current diagnosis in hopes that will encourage them to not close the door so quickly at the next person that comes knocking.

It’s inconclusive if breast cancer causes breast growth. It may or may not. Right now, breast growth is not a criteria or symptom of breast cancer. It’s inconclusive on how long the cancer has been in my body since this was my first mammogram. Can the size of my tumors make my breast grow that much? Who knows. I have learned through this process, there is a condition called Hypertrophy of Breast and I have been given this diagnosis as well. (Google it, my story aligns!) Another reason why I didn’t want to do a lumpectomy with reduction, because with this condition, my boobs could keep growing even after the reduction. The mastectomy should take care of this condition as well!

This revelation today has taken a load off my shoulders that I have been carrying for so many years. I no longer feel afraid of the struggle to accept my body after these upcoming procedures. Through all these years, I’ve been listening to my body and trying to trust it, it was telling me there was something wrong, and I was consistently trying to figure it out or find ways to make it better. I perserveared

I have no idea what it will be like to live with a smaller chest - something I am looking forward to experiencing! I know there are going to be hard days, and days where I will struggle to accept my body, and days where I will be angry at my body, but I’m hoping there will be more good days and more celebrations of the imperfections of life and hopefully in the near future, no one will feel the need to hide scars or feel less like a person or woman due to their body size or shape. Here’s to celebrating the imperfections of life!