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Topless

I’ve done the research and I think I’ll be trying this idea out at a local level. Maybe at Daytona Beach first. According to local ordinance in New Orleans, lewd behavior constitutes exposing their genitals, have sex, masturbating, urinating or defecating in public.

The reason I state the local New Orleans law is that I have been considering going topless ever since I got the new Twins. I’m currently investigating what, specifically, constitutes genitalia. Of course there is the obvious penis and vagina. When it comes to women, is it JUST the nipple? Is it the nipple and areolae? How MUCH of the breast can be exposed without falling into the “lewd’ category?

Since I don’t have nipples or areolae, CAN I get away with going topless in public? The woman in this photo was at a “Naked Bike Ride” and did not get arrested.

None of the (nearly) naked people during World Naked Bike Day were arrested. Of course you can tell by looking closely that nothing is showing. So the question becomes this: if I don’t have anything that needs to be covered, do I still have to cover the place where they would be?

I’ve contacted the Daytona Beach police department since this is going to be my test area. I’ll put up an update when I get an answer. And of course, I’ll be announcing my topless adventure when I do it.

UPDATE:When I talked to my DH about going topless last night, he asked an important question. That question being “Why?”. It occurred to me that many readers are probably asking the same question.

It has always been my intention in writing BoobCast to be a support system for other women who have gone through botched plastic surgery. One of the biggest issues I had was not feeling as though I were “normal”. Since I still don’t have nipples and areolae, I’m still not “normal”.

By going topless I want to be a visual example to others that it’s okay to be “in process”. Most importantly, it’s okay to go out in public WHILE you’re in process.

I felt SO self conscious before my breast reconstruction that I didn’t really enjoy being in public much. I was convinced that everyone could see how deformed I was no matter how baggy my clothes were.

It’s also an opportunity to talk about BoobCast and what can happen when plastic surgery goes wrong.

Clothes Shopping-A BoobCast Flashback

31 Jan

Originally written on Oct. 26, 2009

This is another one of those issues that comes with being mostly boob-less. Clothes shopping is frustrating. I feel more comfortable in the Men’s section than the Women’s. The women’s section, even if there is no one else there, is a constant reminder of what I don’t have.

It’s also more difficult to find clothes that fit. Anything that fits tightly across the chest shows the outline of my deformity. And lets face it, most women’s clothing is geared to fit close to the body and accentuate our breasts. Even the camisoles with foam cups give a minor indication that something isn’t quite right because of how the cups move since they’re not filled with breast tissue.

The men’s section offers a better selection of loose-fitting clothes. So I shop at Goodwill because I know that when this is over I can take the clothes back and donate them again. Someone else will be able to get use out of them when it’s all done.

Aside from this mangled thing that once was my chest, I think that shopping in the men’s section is one more reason I just don’t feel feminine. (see other Girly Girl posts).

Now in the movie “Dogma” the character called the Muse talked about how what defines a woman falls between two things…her legs. From a biological standpoint that IS true. Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina, after all. From a societal standpoint, however, women are judged by their breasts. If I don’t have breasts, am I still really a woman?

Breast cancer patients go through the same thing WHILE fighting a disease that could kill them. That’s why I can’t begin to compare myself to a breast cancer survivor. Not in the physical sense anyway. Mentally we go through much of the same thing. We question if we’re still actually women. We feel diminished; as though we’re somehow not fully human and wonder how our partners will EVER find us attractive again.

Yes, that complicated ball of emotions comes with clothes shopping. In the men’s section.

Bounce

21 Jan

I know that many of you are still up to your hip pockets in snow or freezing your assets off. Here in central Florida, it’s 81 degrees. Trust me. This IS relevant and it’s not (just) gloating.

Since it’s so warm I put on my favorite cami with a shelf bra. As I turned towards the mirror, I noticed that, thanks to the Twins, I have a distinct bounce in my step. So I raised myself up on my toes and experimented with a few tentative bounces.

I was mesmerized. For a good five minutes I watched the Twins spring up and down in a steady rhythm. And then I started to laugh. And cry. At the same time.

I am so grateful and SO relieved that there were minimal complications. Now even months later I am still occasionally overwhelmed by the simple fact that I have breasts instead of the magled wreckage I dealt with for so long.

If anyone wants to see a video of the bounce, let me know. I’d love to put one up.

The 200th Post

18 Jan

As the title says, this is the 200th installment of BoobCast. Today I am writing about you, dear reader. Today’s installment is all about the support and the stories that people have shared with me since I first started this blog on Oct. 11, 2008.

When I first started writing this, I was also fairly active on a website called All About Plastic Surgery (http://www.allaboutplasticsurgery.com). When I posted what had happened to me it didn’t take long before I was inundated by questions about various aspects of the surgery. You can find that entry here: http://boobcast.net/2008/10/14/questions/ People expressed a great deal of concern about how well I had checked out the surgeon, what indications I might have had and what legal recourse I might have taken. During that period so many people gave their support and I am grateful for it. So my thanks goes out to the women of the All About Plastic Surgery forum. They were the ones who inspired the idea for BoobCast.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, “Gee Maria, why do you call it BoobCast? Were they wrapped in plaster or something at one point?”

No, dear reader. There are reasons this site is called BoobCast. In 2007 the podcasting community lost a precious member by the name of Joe Murphy. He died of a vicious type of cancer that took him quickly. During his medical treatments he talked in vivid detail about what was going on, the testing and all of it. His strength inspired me. I wanted to be as strong and as brave as Joe Murphy. So I planned to podcast what was going on with my breast necrosis. The name of that podcast was going to be BoobCast.

I never met Joe but his life inspired me. It just turns out that I’m not that strong or that brave. To honor that bravery I have kept the name.

I also owe thanks to a very dear friend, Tee Morris. When I was trying to find the strength to create BoobCast, He was there for me. He gave me mental and emotional support by letting me know that I *could* do it. I’m sorry I disapointed you Tee but want to thank you for being a friend when I needed one.

In the time I’ve been writing BoobCast I have had people email me directly for advice. Of course, after reading the email, my advice was always “Contact your PS (plastic surgeon) and ask for [fill-in-the-blank]. Whether it was about bruising, skin texture or pain, I advised talking to their doctor. If they couldn’t get a decent answer from that doctor, talk to another one.

The one that really broke my heart was the husband of a woman who, a few days previous the email, had the same procedure I had. According to her husband, the pain pills her PS had given her weren’t doing much and she was in constant pain. She couldn’t eat or sleep and she was suffering. I told her husband to call her PS immediately and insist on different pain meds and not take NO for an answer. i explained that, right now it was his job to advocate for his wife since she couldn’t do it herself.

A couple days later I got an email from him saying that her PS had changed her meds and she was doing MUCH better. It’s emails like those that made BoobCast well worth the emotional pain of writing those early posts.

I also want to thank everyone who talked to me about BoobCast at DragonCon last year. Being told in person that I’m making a difference means the world to me. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

Finally, my thanks to Carol Montoya, Lolly Daskal and the Woman At Denny’s. I promise that once I’ve had nipple reconstruction and recuperate from that, I WILL write the book. The foundation is in the works already.

My thanks to you all for reading, commenting and talking to me. Here’s to another 200!

More of The First Two Weeks

12 Jan

This is another BoobCast Flashback episode originally dated Oct. 8, 2009. There are a few more drafts that I will continue to flesh out and post over the next week or so. Then I will really start more on the medical aspects of plastic and reconstructive surgery.

As the days passed, I saw that there were places where the bruising was getting lighter. There were other places that the skin just got darker and turned black. In the black areas, the skin felt a bit like rubber. It was slick but firm, a bit like what a dolphin’s skin feels like. It’s rather like thick, slick rubber if you’ve never petted a dolphin. Normally my skin has a slight grainy texture to it. These areas didn’t.

It was also about two weeks in that I noticed that my chest felt heavy. Yeah, I know. It seems obvious that my chest would feel heavier with two big water balloons shoved under my skin. My chest was insensate though. It wasn’t weight. It was pressure. For those of you who have read previous installments, you know what the cause of the pressure was.

For those who are new, there was a build up of 300ccs of serous fluid in each pocket. At one checkup one of the HiQ’s nurses even pointed out a place about two inches long on the outside of my left breast where it looked like there was a big bubble.

There was also another point where I took off the post surgical bra because I was having difficulty breathing and it felt better without the bra. So my husband called the after-hours line. When we explained to the HiQ what was going on, the doc actually had the nerve to suggest to Ken that I needed a Valium rather than try to figure out what was REALLY happening.

This person had all the bedside manner of flesh eating bacteria and most assuredly suffered from MDiety Syndrome.

HiQ stands for Hack in Question since I can’t legally reveal the doctor’s name.

The Movies In My Head

11 Jan

Originally Drafted on 9/24/08: This is another post in the Flashback series.

We all have these movies that play in our heads: Telling off the boss; That comeback we *should* have thought of 10 minutes ago; Kissing your favorite movie star. We all have a million “what if” moments we stockpile and replay on a regular basis.

My movies go something like this:

FADE IN on our bedroom. DH sitting on bed:

DH: I’m sorry. We just can’t afford to pay for your reconstruction surgery.” FADE OUT

Scene 2: Location: Bridge at Night. Camera follows human silhouette plummeting from bridge. FADE TO BLACK

Yeah. Really stable.

From a logical standpoint I know that we’ll be able to get the financing for the surgery. As a last resort we can take the money from our investment account. So it IS going to happen. But thanks to the latest release from What-If Studios, I’m still imagining being stuck like this for the rest of my life.

I’ve been dealing with this for 14 months now and I’m looking at another five months before the first surgery. Then probably another three months before I have nipples again. After all that, there’s at least a year of healing. Fortunately there are good drugs and I’m getting in shape. I’ve already lost 12 pounds.

I’m just emotionally wrung out and more than ready for this to be over with.

Why May? Scheduling conflicts abound. December is obvious. January is my birthday. February is my youngest son’s birthday. March WOULD be okay, BUT April 4 is our wedding anniversary and April 25 is DH’s birthday. Then, we have BaltiCon in May. That gives me 11 weeks to recover before the rigors of DragonCon. So THAT’S why I’m waiting until May.

In the mean time I’m trying not to buy tickets to more of the What-If Studios productions.

Better

23 Nov

My right eye is feeling better. No one is dragging barbed wire across it anymore. So I think I’m going to start making plans starting this week for my new project that I’ve been talking about.

But first…a bit about nipples.

I know I’m not mentally ready for another surgery. I don’t even want to think about planning for it. Even after nipple reconstruction I’ll have to have them tattooed. After all nipples aren’t the color of Pale White Chick.

I also have to consider that if I DO have nipple reconstruction am I going to be looking at nipples that point at the ground again?? The Twins are big and they hang a bit. Dr. Elliott feels that a lift won’t do much of anything unless I lose at least 30 pounds. But then the Twins will shrink. That thought still freaks me right the fuck out because I still equate shrinking with losing them.

Yeah. I gots me some issues to work through still.

As it stands, I’m still debating the nipples vs no nipples debate. I may want the surgery eventually. I don’t know if I’m going to go back to looking at prosthetics for a temporary fix. I’m starting to feel like I’m sliding backwards.

Again.

It took us 5 years to decide that we’re moving to Orlando next year. I don’t make serious decisions easily. So I’m waiting again.

Maybe I’ll get the fake nips just to see. But then I’d know they’re fake and I feel like that would be lying and kind of demeaning to what I’ve survived and conquered thusfar with the plague-level botch job the HiQ did on me.

It’s times like this when I’m in free form blog mode that I wish I could reveal that quack’s name so that others don’t get hurt by him. Maybe if I just reveal the latitude and longitude of the practice?

I really need to find that agreement I signed and figure out a way around it.

My point in this rambling diatribe is that I will eventually figure out what to do. In the mean time I’m still wading through a bunch of mental crap. Wheee!!

Surgery #2

01 Nov

As my regular readers know I developed necrosis two weeks after the October 2nd breast augmentation and lift surgery in 2007. After several weeks of Hell I was scheduled for a second surgery on November 2. This surgery was for the purposes of removing the implants and the remaining necrotic tissue. We showed up in the afternoon at the surgical center – which we had to pay the fee for – I was prepped and before I knew it, part two of my nightmare had begun.

When I was able I looked at what had been done. It seemed, in retrospect, Frankenstinian. The line of vertical sutures looked like someone had whip stitched the skin together. I also found out that, on the left side, there had been a half inch spot left open.

I also found out that over 300 ccs of serous fluid had built up in each pocket. The implants were both intact. That explained the pressure and the bubble under my flesh. Fortunately this time the HiQ put in what passed for really crappy drains. He had inserted open-ended surgical tubing. The outer ends were covered in gauze to absorb the leaking serous fluid that my body produced. Compared to the closed-system drains I had after my reconstruction, these things were positively primitive.

I was also an A cup now down from a DD cup and before that a C cup. This wasn’t nesecarilly a bad thing. I finally had the ski slope breast shape I had been after from the beginning. By ski slope I mean the breasts that are heavy and rounded on the bottom and on the top the breast gently slopes down to be capped by a pert, rosy nipple.

I was just missing the nipple.

The HiQ assured me that after i had healed, we could do reconstruction. At this point I was already starting to have my doubts. But I’ll talk more about that later.

For those of you joining me from NaNoBloMo and reading my blog for the first time, please go read the first post for more information about what BoobCast is all about.

Zombie

31 Oct

While I was doing the wet to dry bandages before the debridment, I frequently felt like I was a zombie. No, I didn’t want to eat brains, though I DID want to severely damage the HiQ.

***WARNING! GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD***

No what I mean is that when I would peel off the wet to dry dressing and pull away bits of dead flesh, I couldn’t help but feel like I was, at least in part, an undead zombie. Here I was dropping bits of flesh. And that’s what zombies do…walk around, eat people and drop bits of their body.

Instead of eating people, I felt like this situation was eating me alive. And not just in the literal sense. I began losing myself to this situation. I WAS a bouncy, vibrant, spur-of-the-moment type of person before I became Zombie Maria.

It has only been in the last month or two that I’ve come back to myself. I’m not there yet. I still shamble a bit, though there are no brain cravings. And unfortunately I still haven’t gottten past the point of wishing the HiQ ill. I really couldn’t actually do anything myself. I’m not that kind of person. But you can damn betcha that I wouldn’t be feeling bad if he were to accidentally get his hands crushed.

What Is The Sound Velcro Makes?

15 Oct

This is going to be a slightly more graphic than usual post about wet to dry dressings and what necrosis looks like as it develops. So those without strong stomachs are cautioned. I will do my best to inject humor into this as I go. Humor and my support system are really the only way I survived this in the first place.

That, and I rediscovered the analytical part of myself. I mentally separated myself from the situation at hand. I used the phrase “THE breasts” as opposed to “MY breasts” and I never looked at myself in the mirror. So I dissociated to some extent while I was changing the wet to dry bandages.

Initially I didn’t really understand HOW wet the gauze was supposed to be. I was told by the nurse that the gauze should be damp. *I* thought that meant it should be dripping just a little bit. After a couple days I noticed there was little to no progress with the wet to drys. Progress would mean the removal of dead tissue. I was pulling off the occasional fleck here and there but nothing meaningful.

Let me explain a bit more about wet to drys. Once the gauze has been dampened in sterile saline solution, it is laid flat in one or two layers over the area to be debrided. It is molded to the body part so when it dries it is a bit like plaster. A successful pull makes a soft sound akin to velcro being pulled from its fuzzy moorings.

When I went back in for the next check up a couple days later the HiQ complained that there was not enough progress. I explained what I had done and was given the moisture level corrections. It seems that instead of dripping slightly, the gauze should be just slightly damp. Previous to this I had done what is called “packing” where the area is kept moist with wet salined gauze. Thus my confusion, I suppose. We’ll go in to packing later when things have gotten REALLY bad.

Once I had been given better information I was sent home for a couple more days. I was also told that I should only be changing the wet to drys one to two times a day. I HAD been changing them 3-4 times because that was what I had done when I was packing. No one told me to do anything different as far as changing went. Isn’t it amazing how nothing changes when there is no communication?

With the new changes I was getting more dead tissue off. When I pulled off the dried gauze it was definitely pulling away the blackened tissue. The HiQ had me do that for about a week and a half. In that time I still forbade Ken to come in during bandage changes and showering. No one should have to be exposed to that.

I had started crying at least every other day at this point and I was really depressed for obvious reasons. Pulling bits of dead flesh off your own body tends to do that. I was angry because I couldn’t get a straight answer out of the HiQ. The man had all the bedside manner of Dr. Mengele. Which was pretty evident by the “don’t scream” comment when he was sewing cadaver skin onto me and telling me that it was an extremely expensive treatment.

Really folks that all I can manage for today. Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you the Valium story.

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Boobcast

Category Archives: emotional scars

Topless

Clothes Shopping-A BoobCast Flashback

Bounce

The 200th Post

More of The First Two Weeks

The Movies In My Head

Better

Surgery #2

Zombie

What Is The Sound Velcro Makes?

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