Eleven rounds of Taxol done, and then came the part of the treatment I had been dreading the whole autumn: the operation. If you read the last chapter, you know I skipped my final chemo round partly because the gap between chemo and surgery already felt so long. Now the day was actually coming.
The plan I hoped would change
Here is something I haven’t told you yet: the doctors leaned towards mastectomy from the very beginning of my treatment, months before the operation. My tumor was big, and the area with carcinoma around it was big too, so it would be hard to get clean margins with a smaller surgery. The oncologist was careful to say it was only a plan, they would follow up and see how things went after chemo.
I was disappointed. I didn’t know much about mastectomy versus breast-conserving surgery back then, I just hoped I wouldn’t lose the whole breast. But at the same time, I wanted to stay on the safe side. If removing everything meant no cancer cells left behind, I could live with that trade.
The chemo worked, the tumor shrank, but the plan stayed the plan: remove the whole breast, plus one sentinel lymph node to check if the cancer had spread.
Meetings, decisions, and one nipple
In October I met the breast surgeon, and later the plastic surgeon. At the first meeting I was told the nipple could not be saved (they can make a new one later, which was a strange sentence to hear in the middle of an ordinary weekday). Then the plastic surgeon looked at everything and thought it could be kept after all. In the end they saved it, even though the margin was thin.
I got immediate reconstruction, an implant placed in the same operation. The team recommended it, explained the risks, and I trusted them and followed their advice. The main risk they warned me about was capsular contracture (kapseldannelse), where scar tissue around the implant hardens, and radiation afterwards increases that risk. Remember this word, it comes back later in the story.
There was also the option of staying on the list for a DIEP reconstruction, where they rebuild the breast with tissue from your own belly. But that’s a much bigger operation with a lot of scars, and I wasn’t ready for it. I’m still OK with my decision today.
The day before: suddenly radioactive
The day before the operation, the hospital called early in the morning and asked if I could come in as soon as possible to get the radioactive tracer injected, because their stock was a bit low that day. So that became my morning: four small injections around the breast, with a needle so thin I barely felt it. The tracer helps the surgeons find the sentinel node during the operation.
Then I ate lunch at the hospital, had a coffee at a shopping center, went home, tidied the apartment a little and tried to relax. It was a strange feeling to do completely normal things while being slightly radioactive and knowing what was coming the next day.
Was I scared? Yes, of everything, honestly. All the uncertainty at once: will I wake up from the anesthesia, how will it be to live with a fake breast, what will they find. Not one specific fear, just all of it in one pile. Somehow I still slept OK that night.
Operation day
I had fasted since the evening before. At the hospital I changed into hospital clothes, got a needle in my hand and compression stockings on my legs (the operation would take over two hours, and the stockings prevent blood clots). A nurse gave me some calming tablets, and then I lay in a bed and waited.
Around lunchtime the two surgeons came to draw on my breast with a marker. Small funny detail: they introduced themselves and had exactly the same first name. I chose to see it as a good sign, double confirmation.
Then a nurse came to get me, and here is something that surprised me: I walked to the operating room myself, on my own feet, in my hospital clothes. No dramatic rolling bed like in the movies. In the room there were several nurses, control questions, sticker sensors on my face, and then the anesthesia doctor placed the breathing mask.
And then nothing. My next memory is waking up in the recovery room around quarter past four. The operation was done, a whole breast removed and a new one built, and for me it was a blink.
The night that was my whole hospital stay
I woke up with no pain. That genuinely surprised me, I could use my phone almost right away. The nurse gave me paracetamol through the IV (“liquid paracet”, as he called it), I drank some water, and after a while I was moved to the ward.
The evening was surprisingly undramatic: the catheter came out (didn’t hurt), I walked a few careful rounds in the corridor with a walker, and around eight I sat in the ward kitchen and ate dinner. At nine a nurse gave me antibiotics and said it was the fourth and last dose. I had no memory of the first three, so they must have happened while I was under anesthesia. There was something funny about getting my fourth dose of something I never noticed receiving.
The night was so-so, the drain (dren) made every position impractical and the nurses came in several times to check on me, which I didn’t mind at all.
Sent home, whether I liked it or not
The next morning the surgeon came, looked at the wound and said it looked fine. And then the first good news: no cancer in the sentinel node they took out. The cancer had not spread to the lymph nodes.
Then they sent me home. One night, that was my whole hospital stay for a mastectomy with reconstruction.
I’ll be honest: I wanted to stay one more night, and I was disappointed. Not because I felt bad, I was actually OK and walking normally. I just felt safer with the hospital around me. What calmed me was that I live close to the hospital, help was minutes away if something happened. But if you come from a country where you stay in hospital for a week after an operation like this, the Norwegian version can be a small shock: they trust your body to do the recovering at home.
Ten days with a plastic tube
Recovery at home was mostly about logistics, not pain. I felt quite normal right away, but daily life was uncomfortable in small ways: the drain had to be emptied and measured every day, the compression stockings stayed on for ten days, and I couldn’t shower. Luckily it was winter (if you know what I mean).
After ten days the drain came out, completely painless, and the next day I took the first shower. That shower deserved its own celebration, honestly. From that point my life felt back to normal.
The one thing that stressed me was the exercises: I had to train raising my arms over my head, because that position is a requirement for radiation, the next stop on my treatment plan. Every day I stretched and wondered if I would get there in time. But that story belongs to the next chapter.
The news I hoped for all the way
In early December, five weeks after the operation, the pathology results came: Pathologic Complete Response. In normal language: in everything they removed, they found no living cancer cells. The chemo hadn’t just shrunk the tumor, it had killed it. It was the best possible result, the one I had quietly hoped for through the whole treatment.
And here is the strange part I want to be honest about: when I heard it, I was really, really happy, but not as happy as I had expected to be. I told some people close to me, and I realized nobody really understood what it meant and how fantastic it was. They were happy for me, of course, but the emotion was hard to share. The biggest news of my year landed a bit quietly.
My breast and me, almost two years later
So how is it now? The cut is under the breast and the result looks very natural. When I first looked down after the operation, it honestly didn’t look much different from before. Just harder. It felt like a constant mild discomfort in the beginning, enough that I got an ultrasound four months later, which found nothing. Then it got better and better.
Funny detail: the new breast actually looks better than my untouched one, because it keeps its shape. Nobody warned me about that kind of asymmetry. Bras are a bit uncomfortable now since the two sides are different sizes, and strangely, the compression bra I had to wear after the operation is still the most comfortable one I own. Many people say the opposite, but I wear it whenever I can.
At my one-year control this spring, I mentioned the mild discomfort and the hardness, and the plastic surgeon confirmed it: I do have capsular contracture, the risk they warned me about, caused by the radiation. If it bothers me too much, they can operate again. It’s my call, no deadline, I just contact them whenever I want.
I’m still thinking about it. I’m not afraid of operations anymore, and I do want a more “normal” breast. But I also don’t want surgery that isn’t necessary. When I decide, I will of course update you here.
Gradually, the new breast became a part of my body again, even though I still catch myself protecting it like a wound. Maybe that never fully goes away, and maybe it doesn’t need to.
If you’ve been through a mastectomy: how long did it take before the new breast felt like yours? And did you also find that the biggest news of your treatment was somehow the hardest to share? I’d love to hear from you.
I’m not a doctor and I won’t give any medical advice. All I share is my personal experience based on my own treatment plan.