Single Mastectomy on “substantial” boobs
Hi all. I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer at the end of last year. It’s a rare aggressive cancer which means my entire right breast and lymph nodes are cancerous and it’s only detectable once it reaches stage 3, so that’s where I am currently (thankfully I noticed the changes and immediately went to my doctor so it hadn’t spread further). I’m halfway through accelerated chemotherapy (week 10 of 20) to shrink the tumour before surgery. After surgery I will have radiotherapy.
I have what one breast consultant described as “significant” breasts (I wear a 32JJ UK / 32N US) so the removal of one will make me extremely lopsided! They are not able to do a reconstruction at the same time as the mastectomy because of the radiotherapy I will have afterwards, and it will be some time before I can have any further surgery because of the severity of the cancer. So I’m going to be rocking one enormous boob and one flat half. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Are there prosthetics in that size?! And when/if it comes to reconstruction, how on earth will they match the size? I feel like to recreate a breast that large will be frankly horrific and will look really mismatched. They mentioned that they can do a reduction on the unaffected breast to make this easier but I’m not sure when that would be done. I will have an appointment with the breast surgeon once my chemo is over to discuss all of this of course, but I just wondered what others have experienced so I can see whether there’s a precedent for reducing the unaffected breast during the same surgery as the mastectomy, for example.
Thanks for any advice.