Smaller, but healthy
Why I disappeared without a word and what the surgery left behind
8/15/20263 min read
Before I wrote this post, I stared at an empty screen for an hour. The stress is overwhelming me. My disappearance in March was long and I know I let many of you down. In private messages you first asked whether everything was okay, and then you started to get upset. I do not blame you. In this industry, disappearing for that long is a risk. This post is meant to explain my disappearance and my absence. I need to get out what I have been carrying inside.
A few months ago I went through a series of tests. Afterwards I heard news that shook me. Tumors were found in my breasts. Luckily it turned out they were only benign changes, fibroadenomas. The problem was that the tumors were growing very fast, getting large and hurting more and more. I felt fear and pain. The doctor did not sugarcoat it… he said I had to have them removed right away. I had to go in for surgery and have the tumors cut out.
I was afraid of a classic operation. I looked for a doctor who would remove the tumors without cuts and scars on my breasts. In the end I found a surgeon. The surgeon performed the operation endoscopically, through the armpit. It sounds complicated, but in practice it meant that the incision and the scar are in the armpit. On my cleavage and my breasts there is no trace of the scalpel at all.
Although I managed to avoid scars, things were hard after the procedure. Because the tumors were very large, cutting them out left a big hole inside. My breasts shrank a lot every day. The skin, which had been stretched tight by the tumors before, lost all of its former firmness. Before I could come back online, I had to get through painful days with drains. I had to get through weeks in a stiff compression bra. The doctor told me to take it easy. I had to cut myself off from everything, because I wanted to focus on my health and on healing. I felt like every breath hurt, but health and healing were the most important thing. That is why I was gone.
After all of this, when I was changing my dressings, I saw myself in the mirror for the first time. It was really hard. I had to work hard to get used to the new reflection. The reflection felt foreign. Over the past weeks I took hundreds of photos. I took hundreds of photos, looking inside myself for my old confidence. The confidence kept slipping away, and I kept looking for it in every photo. I cried, I poured out a sea of tears over what was left of my old asset. That asset used to be strong, and now it was only a shadow.
In the end, slowly, what I had missed in my despair started to get through to me. I focused on one point. That one point is the fact that my assets are not only my breasts. My assets are also my long legs and my behind. That fact has not changed. I understood that my attractiveness had not disappeared. I understood that my femininity had not disappeared. Attractiveness and femininity did not disappear along with my old bust size.
I have prepared a new set of photos. It is the first set since March. In the photos my breasts are smaller after everything they went through, but they are natural and, most importantly… healthy. My mind keeps throwing different scenarios at me. I am a little afraid of your reactions. I do not want to run away anymore and I cannot. I am pressing publish. My hands are shaking, but I am doing it anyway. I am back.
