***Okay, put down the beverages before you read guest author Toni V. Sweeney's blog. You were warned, lol.***I was one of those women who always envied anyone who had cleavage.) A
s a size 32AA, I had a right, I felt. When I was in college, there was a British Model named Twiggy, with the remarkable measurements of 21-21-21. Not to remarkable…so did I. Not that I was a famous model or was British or anything like that, but sharing Twiggy’s measurements was kind of a claim to fame. I was one of those poor, deprived girls whose dresses fit everywhere except at the top, whose lingerie drawer was filled with bras that didn’t fit unless they were filled with those abominably embarrassing foam rubber creations called falsies.
Even when I was a dancer, the falsie was a major part of my costume wardrobe. (jpg#1) Not the pasty, which was a teensy little nipple-covering, all sequined and glittered and hiding hardly anything, but a breast-shaped piece to fill the front of my costume and make my bottom and my top symmetrical. Sometimes, if I lost weight, I actually had to double-up and wear two—one inside the other—on each side! My mother, who was a stage mother par excellence and a Mommie Dearest in her own way, always made certain I wore a padded bra when I was measured for my costumes, bringing me up to a 34-A. Otherwise when they were completed and I went to try them on, they would be too large and loose at the top.
With the advent of Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield, all ladies whose acting talents generally were ignored in favor of their well-endowed upper stories, I felt even more slighted. But, I would sigh, what can I do? Big boobs just weren’t in my genetic material. In that d
ay and time, in my neck of the woods, breast enhancement, which would’ve meant silicone injections, just wasn’t done by the ordinary woman in the street. And after the news story of one fatality occurring when the silicone was injected into a lung instead of a breast, I wasn’t certain I’d want to. (That may or may not have been an urban legend.)
Let’s fast-forward a couple of decades.
Now I’m sitting in a doctor’s office, wearing a paper gown and waiting for the awful news. I found a lump. Yup, it’s cancer. Do the biopsy. Have the radation therapy. Hug what’s left of that pitiful little knot and pretend everything’s A-OK. So I did that, but I was also thinking: Nowadays, people who have breast surgery can have breast reconstruction surgery also. Well, I’d had one…so why couldn’t I have the other?
Answer: I could. (Yay! Or not. Let’s proceed…)
So I began the reconstruction process and believe me, it was probably just as painful as the one the South went through right after the War Between the States!
The actual convalescence wasn’t so bad, other than the fact that I couldn’t use my right arm for a while and had to give up swimming. Giving up doing housework wasn’t so bad, however. Now I had the excuse, “I can’t sweep with one hand,” or “How can I wash dishes with just one hand?” or “I need someone to carry in the groceries for me.” Good way to get volunteers all around while I sat there looking helpless and invalid-ish.
It was what came after the convalescence, when the bandages were removed and the stitches came out, and I was dismissed from care. No one had prepared me for what going from 32AA to 38C was going to involve after I was once more pronounced able and fit. And that was the first thing I noticed.
Nothing fit any more.
All my clothes were suddenly too tight in the bosom. To be more precise, I couldn’t even get some of them on because I suddenly had so much up front. It was like trying to cram a Roman legionnary’s breastplate into a skin-tight leotard. Though the skirts of dresses fit, the tops didn’t, so I soon found myself buying new dresses and blouses. A whole new wardrobe. That wasn’t so bad. And bigger bras. But at least now, when I invested in something with a plunging neckline (and I suddenly find myself with a whole closetful of those), there was something there to see.
Then, another problem revealed itself.
No one had bothered to point out that when you have large breasts, they have a tendency to fall against each other when you roll over. I found that out the hard way. By doing it. And you know what? It hurt! There is nothing to describe the pain When Boobs Collide. I solved that problem with pillows. Now, there were three instead of two on the bed. One for me, two for the girls. It became a routine. If I went to turn over, no matter to left or right, I had to wake up, place one pillow under the outside of the breast to be laid on, tuck another between my boobies, then ve-e-r-r-y gentle…roll over. The pain gradually went away as I got accustomed to what I was carrying around up front but for a few months, I didn’t get much sleep.
The third problem also made itself known when I tried to sleep. I had trouble breathing. Whenever I lay flat on my back, I would soon start to do a Big Bad Wolf imitation, huffing and puffing and gasping the longer I lay that way. I tried to ignore it, convinced it would go away. When I went for a check-up, I asked surgeon about the weight of the implants. The average implant weighs 12 ounces, she said. Mine were probably closer to 16. So I had two extra pounds inside my chest wall, putting that much extra weight on my lungs.
Having now abandoned the pillows, I always sleep on my side nowadays.
Doing surgery on the breasts can also involve cutting nerves. At first I thought the numbness in my chest was simply from invasive shock. I soon found out it wasn’t. Even after six months, my entire chest had no feeling. I found this out in an embarrassing way…by wearing a tube top. With no sensation, I had no idea it had slid down around my waist until I passed by a mirror and happen to glance at it. My desensitized boobs were happily bouncing above what appeared to be a red elasticized cummerbund! Hasty grab. Pull it up. Swear from now on to never wear anything that doesn’t have straps.
At this date, ten years after surgery, I now have 50% sensation in my breasts. The day I had that surgery, I lost my second-best erogenous zone. Bummer!
The last problem is a more ridiculous one: Crumbs in the cleavage. I love potato chips, crackers, and all those crispy, crunchy things. BI (Before Implants), if I dropped a piece of chip or bit into a particularly crumbly cracker or cookie, or there was a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, I knew exactly where it was going to fall. Right into my lap. So I’d pick up the chip and finishing eating it, brush off the crumbs, or hope my napkin had caught the soup, coffee, sauce, whatever. AI (After Implants), where does everything fall? You guessed it. Right in the cleavage! I’ve fished out so many fragments of Pringles and Doritos (sometimes with salsa), peanuts, popcorn, pulled my blouse away from my body to shake out crumbs, and mopped up so much sphagetti sauce and other semi-liquids from between the Valley of the Dolls, I’m reminded of the famous “Hunt for the Dumpling” scen
e from Hello, Dolly! On occasion, if there’s no one else around, I actually tie a dish towel around my neck and let the food fall where it will!
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t swap these babies for what I used to have, nor would I chose to go back to being a one-and-half boob wonder, nor do I wish to be 32AA again. I just wish someone had warned me about all this, so I could’ve been prepared. It would be nice to have a veteran of the Reconstruction Wars sit down with a would-be candidate and tell her what exactly is what.
I still have to go back for the final phase of reconstruction and I don’t even like the sound of it: nipple re-positioning.
I don’t even want to think what new and adventurous avenues that’s going to open up!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Toni V. Sweeney was born in the South but has lived the past two-score years in the mid-West and the sunny state of California. She’s the author of 30 novels, written in various genres depending on her mood when she sits before the computer. Approximately one-third of those were written before her surgery and the other two-thirds afterward (not that this is an incentive for creati
vity). Her current offerings are Runaway Brother by her pseudonym Icy Snow Blackstone (Class Act Books, http://www.classactbooks.com/Runaway-Brother-by-Icy-Snow-Blackstone-Trade_p_308.html) and Bride of the Beast under her own name (Smashwords, http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/88085) All joking aside, Toni urges all women to do self breast exams to help detect breast cancer.
