Decisions; decisions. It is not a case of one suits all.

When I had a mastectomy in September 1990 I was not immediately offered an implant. It was the accepted policy then to let the mastectomy heal first so I had at least 3 months to think about it.

Three things helped me decide. Firstly, I had not anticipated how violated I would feel whenever I saw myself naked in a mirror, or in the bath or shower. It was a daily reminder of my loss of femininity.  Secondly, I went back to my job of teaching in a boys’ grammar school, with, at the time, only 3 women on the staff. Back then we used chalk on a blackboard. Every time I raised my arm to write on the board I was aware of becoming lop-sided. My good breast moved. The one with a prosthesis stayed put. 17 year old boys probably notice these things. I was certainly acutely aware of it.

While I was considering the choice a lady who’d just had a similar mastectomy to mine, whom I’d been put in touch with by the breast care nurse specialist who had a hunch it would help us to talk to each other, (she was right), had decided emphatically that she did not want to undergo more surgery. She was less than my 34” and maybe that made it an easier decision for her.  I had the background of a much more major abdominal operation in 1977 and no longer feared that I might not wake up from an anaesthetic. That probably helped me to contemplate facing another one too.

The decisive moment came in the garden. I was bending over, weeding, and my prosthesis fell out. I was mortified but fortunately the only observer was a blackbird.  I actually laughed and said to myself, “That’s it! I’m having an implant.”  I told my husband and asked the hospital for a date in the school holidays. They kindly obliged with 31^st December.

Before then, but not long before, my husband went to a medical ethics lecture as part of a training course he was on.  The lecturer was recently back from New York where the newspapers were full of the dangers of some silicone implants leaking and so becoming toxic. He happened to mention it in his lecture. On hearing this I phoned the nurse specialist and she didn’t believe me. If it were true, she said, she would have known. I explained it was a new piece of research so maybe she could ask the consultant. She did and he hadn’t heard about it either.

Around Christmas the research made it into the British newspapers as well so the type of implant I received on 31^st December was a safe one.  It was quite a party atmosphere in the operating theatre as it was the consultant’s last op. before he retired from the NHS. The nurses had decorated the room with balloons. I felt like partying too. It was great to have a body that looked normal again.