Introducing: Seven Bodies

And a multitude of brains.

A few months ago I was talking to a woman at an estate sale and somehow our conversation went from discussing bamboo chairs to breast cancer.

Lol “somehow.” Because I brought it up! How could I not? I think about it all the time, like “yo, I had cancer! Like cancer cancer.” I felt similarly after I had my child, I would just walk around all day everyday for a year thinking “a baby grew in body! Like a baby baby.” I also felt the same way when I got divorced, was on TV for the first time and drowned at Water Country in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Like “wow I saw God in the wave pool. Like God God.” Life, what a trip.

The thing I find myself talking to people, that often didn’t ask, most about is how wild the reconstruction process is and how it drove me totally insane. I think many can agree that mental health is easy to overlook when you’re in crisis mode. So much so that on my birthday in 2024 my sister was calling psych wards and treatment centers to find someone to help me. I had survived cancer, but wasn’t sure I could survive my own thoughts. It was scary as fuck, to say the least.

When I was first told I needed to get a double mastectomy my doctor casually rattled off reconstruction options like a waiter listing the specials:

Breast implants that come with improved safety and comfort. The most popular item on the menu.

or

DIEP flap our gold-standard with a tummy tuck on the side. Made with all natural ingredients.

But all I heard I was:

A plate of shit.

or

A bowl of shit.

She didn’t even mention the totally valid option of going flat, the assumption was I would want boobs no matter how horrendous the process may be.

And I did want boobs. My boobs. But no one seemed to acknowledge that part of things. No one prepared me for the grief, the overwhelm of choice and the fact that I was having a part of my body removed. Instead doctors, as well as others, often minimized things. Some well-meaning people even tried to spin it like I was getting a “free boob job” despite that being one of the absolute worst things you can say to someone getting a mastectomy. A few weeks before my surgery I ran into an acquaintance at a party who assured me I’d be “fine” because his aunt had a double mastectomy and it was “no biggie.”

I get it, the reason so many medical professionals and well-meaning dudes at a BBQ act like reconstruction is “no biggie” is because it is a biggie, a huge fucking biggie, and they hope by minimizing it they can pacify the pain. It’s like when a kid scrapes their knee, you’re not supposed to freak out or else they’ll freak out. When my daughter scrapes her knee I don’t freak out, but I still acknowledge that scrapping your knee sucks and hurts and I give her space to cry. I think that if a doctor at some point before amputating my tits said to me “this fucking sucks and it’s unfair and you have every right to be devastated” then maybe I wouldn’t have gone so crazy when I lost my breasts. Maybe.

A doodle I did 3 weeks after my double mastectomy

But this isn’t about criticizing medical professionals (well, except for one I plan to write about). Overall I had excellent medical care, I mean I’m still here right? And thanks to that excellent medical care I was able not only to get reconstruction but I was able to get it multiple times! That’s right, I tried it all- temporary implants, flat and flap surgery. I also got radiation, super sick skinny, forced into medical menopause and extremely depressed.

That’s what this new Substack is about: my experience over the last two-ish years in which I had seven bodies and multiple brains. I keep being told I should do a solo show about it and maybe I will, but right now I want to work it out here in the hopes my stories find the people that need to hear them. It’s about everything I told that that lady at the estate sale. It’s about everything I wish someone told me at an estate sale, before I got breast cancer. It’s me saying to you, no matter what kind of grief you’re going through that “this fucking sucks and it’s unfair and you have every right to be devastated.”

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