The itty-bitty-titty committee, that is.
Yes, you read right, on June 27th I'm kissing the DD's goodbye and saying hello to a pair of cute and perky B-C cups. That is if insurance is going to pay for it, which all of my doctors don't think is going to be any issue at all.
So yeah, I'm having a breast reduction. I'm not sure it's possible to this excited to have invasive surgery, but I am. So here's the story from the beginning, which will soon be followed by a (fairly) detailed itinerary of the precedings to the surgery.
I've been busty ever since I developed in sixth grade, but it didn't really start bothering me until late into high school. At that point, I started experiencing lower back pain and trouble buying things such as bathing suits and bras. As I got older, it really only got worse. Being a gymnast and a cheerleader, there was always extra strain being put on my back, and "the girls" didn't help the matter any. I would have to wear a regular bra under my sports bra to get any sort of reliable support while working out. Then in college it got worse. I started developing groves in my shoulders where my bra straps sit (in running your finger along my shoulder you can feel the muscle slant down and turn into bone), and the pain and discomfort was becoming constant. My posture was being affected, and because of that the pain started to crawl up into my neck. Since then, the pain continues to increase and I've developed other symptoms, such as numbness in my fingers that we thought was carpal tunnel, but turned out to be because my neck and the nerves in my shoulders are out of whack. There are days when all of the pain is manageable, and I can go about like a normal human being, but then there are days when the pain is so bad that the only possible comfortable position is lying flat on my stomach on the couch.
In addition to all of the physical discomfort, being large-chested created a gamut of emotional issues as well. I know some people might be thinking "Oh come on, Becky. You're blessed with a chest, most women would kill for your boobs," and I know damn well that some people go out and have exactly the opposite surgery (C-DD via implants). But it's not easy to shop for a bathing suit when you're fairly modest and on a modest budget. If I don't want my boobs hanging out all over the place, and I want a bathing suit top to fit me properly, I have to be ready to shell out between $70 and $100. And most of the time, they're not cute. I end up in bathing suits that look no different than a bra. Onto bras. They stop making cute bras when you get to around a D. So I'm left with huge grandma bras that cost me between $40 -$60 a pop, and some serious emotional distress. Clothes are a massive hassle as well. I can't buy any button down shirts, because I'm a 4-6 in the waist and a 10-12 up top. So what fits my tummy won't button over my top, and what fits my top looks HUGE on my stomach. This makes shopping for good clothes almost impossible, and is extremely demoralizing when I'd like to look like a young professional and cannot find anything reasonably priced that would make that possible. Plus the fact that in a lot of my clothing, I look much heavier than I am because of the way shirts sit on my boobs. It's a great way to make my body image go down the drain.
And there's nothing I can do about it on my own. Losing weight doesn't help because it comes off my waist and not my chest, which just leaves me more top heavy, and thus more uncomfortable than before. I was in PT for almost a year and it's wonderful while I'm going, but once insurance won't cover it anymore, I go right back to where I was. The chiropractor I saw recently even told me that it's almost pointless to do PT without "eliminating the problem" first. She said no matter how much I train and strengthen the muscles, the second I stop, I'm back to square one.
So yeah, I tried to schedule the surgery a few years ago, but my insurance was bad then. So now that I have really awesome Stony Brook insurance, I figured I'd try again. I have the summer off, so it seemed the perfect time to do it, so I scheduled a consult and now June 27th is the day!
More about the procedure and the events leading up to it to come!
<3 B
Yay! Good for you, Becky!
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