I'm a married mother of 2 ~~ages 32 & 26. I have been happily married for 33.5 years to a wonderful man, I'm 52 at the time. In February 2012 in a routine mammogram they found something suspicious~~took several biopsies & turned out to be stage 2 breast cancer. As far as I knew, no one in my family had ever had breast cancer. So off I go to several appts to surgeons to set up surgery dates & in my head I am thinking lumptectomy. Surgeon comes in & in no uncertain terms tells me dead on, "YOU NEED TO HAVE A MASTECTOMY" ! Excuse me !!!!!!! I was floored, to say the least. He leaves, I cry, my husband sits there & tries to console me, we try to talk about this before the doctor comes back in, I compose myself & then I say well what the heck, at least I'll get new boobs out of all this. So I decided to do both breasts, even tho the cancer was only in my left side~~need to make them even, right? So on March 12, 2012 was my double mastectomy & my plastic surgeon was there & put in the expanders at the same time. Time for healing with the drains & tubing (my husband called me his borg).......I actually loved it !!!!!!! He helped me a great deal with the tubes, bandages, etc. as he's a nurse & took a week off to help me out. Six months of fills to expand my skin for the implants. September 10, 2012 I had my implant surgery (#2), January 30, 2013 was my scar revision surgery (#3) & May 31, 2013 was my nipple reconstruction surgery (#4). I was lucky because I DID NOT need chemo or radiation !!!!! I am very thankful for that! I was lucky to have the most awesome surgeons....... and I still have a great support in my family & friends now & forever ! Thanks to them !!!!!

Karen L. Brown
Loomis, CA