BOOBS, BOOKS, & BLESSINGS!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What do boobs, books, and blessings have in common?  You’re about ready to find out as I tell you about my dear friend Patricia Haakonson’s newest book, My Waltz with Breast Cancer – How I learned to thrive while battling breast cancer, and my recent surgical removal of forty-year-old ruptured silicone breast implants.

Many of my readers and subscribers know Patricia as the Canadian rockstar of my Arbonne team.  What you may not know is that she was recently doing battle with cancer and is also a gifted writer.  She wrote All New Easy Low Carb Cooking and co-authored the best-selling lifestyle book, Slow Carb for Life, with her husband, Dr. Harv Haakonson.

I am thrilled to report that Patricia has been cancer free for a year now and is entering 2024 filled with zest and vitality.  I highly recommend her book, not only for women with breast cancer; but for anyone struggling with a debilitating disease, diagnosis, or treatment.  My partner Brian, a lymphoma survivor, read the book in one sitting.  He said he just kept wanting to turn the page.  I felt the same way and was able to apply many of Patricia’s strategies in her book to my own challenges and struggles with Parkinson’s Disease.  The mindset she was able to maintain for more than a year was simply astonishing!

This is what Amazon has to say, “This book was written to help women understand and cope with breast cancer. Any woman faced with a breast cancer diagnosis will find helpful and easy-to-implement strategies to cope with this disease. Patricia’s surprise diagnosis and her year-long treatment program led her to develop many coping mechanisms that enabled her to remain relatively healthy and happy during her treatment. The author describes how she used strategies, ideas, and tools she had learned over her lifetime, to cope with the rigors of treatment.”

Patricia and I have been friends for seventeen years.  It was scary for me while she battled the “c” word.  I could not imagine how she or her dear devoted husband Harv, were coping.  Then I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease about the same time that she received the cancer prognosis.  She gave me strength.  She reminded me that there are no excuses, and we need to be grateful every day for what we do have.  She modeled it.  She was my rock.  And then as she was completing her radiation, my breast implants ruptured.

The Di of 2024 has now forgiven herself for the reckless decision she made to have breast implants when she was in her late twenties.  Patricia’s book and experience helped me to cross that forgiveness bridge, so in the event that I might be able to help someone else, I will relate my “boob” journey and how I came to absolve, love, and appreciate my body and myself.

The only person on the planet that I ever knew who had boobs smaller than mine was my sister.  At twenty-eight years old I wore a size 32 AA bra.  You cannot find that size in the women’s lingerie department.  It’s a trainer bra in the children’s section.  (I know this because I was just looking for one for myself last week!  Today I am the same height, weigh the same, and wear the same size bra that I did when I was twelve.)

I am deeply ashamed to admit that I always hated my body.  Not because my boobs were so teeny, but because I thought my legs were so big and out of proportion to my body.  I had a “Barbie Doll” vision of what I was supposed to look like.  As I stated, it shames me now; but I did not have the consciousness, wisdom, or appreciation for what I had back then.

Growing up in Michigan in a conservative family, it never crossed my mind to get breast implants.  Not ever.  It was my legs that burdened me along with my butt that I thought was also too large for my petite frame.  None-the-less, when I moved to southern California it seemed like women got breast implants like they got pierced ears.  My sister, who now had children, ended up getting implants.

I was flabbergasted with her stunning results!  I was astounded!  I was dumbfounded!  It was miraculous.  I had never seen anything like it.  My then fiancé offered implants as a birthday present and I said yes without thinking much about it.  I figured the larger boobs would balance my “out of proportion lower extremities.”  I deliberated more about what to order for dinner at a restaurant than I did about having foreign substances implanted into my body.  What was I thinking!!??  I wasn’t!

I didn’t do any research.  I didn’t know that the implants had a shelf life of ten years.  No one ever told me that.  I didn’t know that they had a likelihood to get hard as rocks a few months after they were “installed.”  I didn’t know that when I did yoga I would have to “move them out of the way” to do many of the poses.  It was like having two pool-table cue balls attached to my chest. I didn’t know they would sag and droop as I aged.  I didn’t know I would have such anxiety before a mammogram that I would have to warn the technician that I might need to breathe into a paper bag because I could hyperventilate. I thought they would erupt and explode like Mt. Vesuvius from the pressure of the mammogram machine.  I didn’t know about scar tissue, the evils and dangers of silicone, or that they could rupture.

Other than the above-mentioned scenarios, I didn’t have any major problems for forty years.  My sister, however, had four different sets of implants during that time frame because of all the issues she encountered.  The ones she has now had the tag left on them and you can see and feel it through her skin to this day.  (She plans to have them permanently removed.)

Once an MRI confirmed that both implants had ruptured and were leaking silicone into my tissue, I wanted them out.  And like everything in my life, I wanted them out NOW.  I had to wait almost a year before a plastic surgeon was available.  My situation was a bit tricky because of all the scar tissue over four decades.  Additionally, the doctor explained something to the effect that the capsule could be attached to my lungs and the possibility of puncturing them.  I received two opinions, and both informed me of the same thing and both concurred the result would “not be pretty.” Both also were emphatic about no possibility of a lift, reconstruction, or additional implants, as there was no elasticity in my skin to support any future surgery.  The consensus was that weightlifting and exercise would not make any impact either.

On November 3, 2023, I had my surgery.  I was more apprehensive about this surgery than I was of my two recent heart surgeries.  I had always been such a perfectionist.  How was I going to handle the resulting disfigurement?  I had spent months preparing myself.  I prayed, I meditated, I read, I surrounded myself with love and loving thoughts.  I spoke affirmations, I practiced gratitude, I visualized, and I incorporated many of the strategies Patricia recommends in her book.

Below is a picture of me a few hours after the surgery.  I was bound and had draining tubes that I laughingly referred to as “my balls.”  It would be a week before I could remove the binding and see the result.  I didn’t know then that I was going to need a mighty big set of balls to deal with what I was going to see.

On the positive side, the surgery was successful and I am healing well.  I am back to yoga and working out after my forced six-week break.  That was hard for me because it is highly recommended with Parkinson’s that you work out every day.  But I feel great!

Back to the physical result…Nothing had prepared me for what I would see.  Forty years of stretched scared skin along with the natural aging process had left its indelible mark.  And indeed, it was not pretty.   I played the “would have, could have, should have” game.  If I would have never had the implants, I could have had small perky perfect boobs now.  I would not have had to undergone surgery, pain, recovery, financial loss, and embarrassment.  I should have been smarter.  Patricia’s book and my spiritual beliefs were my saving grace.

As I read about the nitty gritty details of Patricia’s chemo, radiation, the uncertainty, the hair loss, the brain fog, the nausea, the trauma – I thought, how dare I be upset about a vanity issue!  I had no cancer that I was warring with.  I didn’t have to think about a mastectomy, or regular oncology checkups to ensure the cancer demon was still at rest.

Patricia speaks about her dear friend Marilynn in her book.  I had the extreme honor of being a house guest in Marilynn’s stunning home this past July in Victoria, Canada as we all celebrated Patricia and Harv’s fortieth wedding anniversary.  She was larger than life and I understood instantly what a remarkable individual she was.  Yes, I am using the past tense as she shockingly passed away just recently.  She was so vibrant, it’s hard to imagine that she could be gone from this realm so quickly.  She was my age and it literally caused me to get down on my knees and thank God for my life, my health, and my non-perfect little boobs.

I recalled a story Dr. Wayne Dyer, a spiritual mentor of mine, told about his youngest daughter Saje and the flat warts she had.  She affectionately referred to them as her bumps and sent them love every day.  I have adopted her practice.  I lovingly refer to my “new” boobs as my bumps and I send them love every day.  It’s working!  I feel grateful and at peace.  I am happy in my own skin.  I feel authentically me.  I even learned that some people (including my partner) prefer little boobs to larger ones and big thighs to skinny ones!

I am certainly not against all plastic surgery, but I do hope that you might be able to share this blog with someone who might be able to make a more informed decision than I made and with less consequences.  It can start with loving our unique bodies and ourselves just the way we are.

I have garnered numerous lessons from this escapade and others that I will share in my upcoming book.  Yes, the book that I have been working on for years is finally making some headway.   It is my intention to have it completed by my seventieth birthday this August.  It is my deepest desire that the blog and the book will make a positive impact on at least one soul.  Maybe it will be yours!