Why I spent $10k to get some weight off my chest
THE selfie went out soon after I woke from an anaesthetic.
I couldn’t help myself. I only took the one, and if someone else had taken it I would have complained that my mouth looked ugly despite the Cheshire Cat-like grin. I’m vain like that. But I didn’t care. I just wanted those dearest to me to see the difference.
I look proud as punch all dressed up in the hospital-issued compression bandage and the surgeon-issued bra and I look utterly transformed.
A breast reduction will do that to a woman.
The bra I (still) have to wear day and night for four weeks is a size 14C. Just a few hours earlier I was a 12GG. After having about 350g of fat removed from each breast, the difference couldn’t be more astounding: I look half my size.
One friend described me as petite and, as an overweight, short woman with giant knockers, I’d never been described as petite. Voluptuous yes, but never petite. My day couldn’t get any better.
A breast reduction is no walk in the park. It’s a highly invasive, three-hour surgery with a long recovery period.
Your nipples might come out uneven or actually die, your wounds might fester and leave ugly keloid scarring, or the end result could be breasts of vastly different sizes. Hell, you might even cark it during the anaesthetic.
It costs a lot — about $10,000 if you go private and choose your surgeon — but I’m yet to meet a woman who regrets having it done.
It’s the kind of life-changing experience that women love to talk about once they realise you are embarking on the same journey.
“You’ll never regret it”, “It’s the best thing I ever did” and “I wish I did it sooner” were all repeated over and over as I sought solace from the niggling fears as surgery approached.
What if I didn’t feel better about myself? What if I still hated what I saw in the mirror?
Would I still cop the endless leering from those creepy men who have always found it appropriate to report that I’ve either got great tits, or huge ones? My reply since this started when I was 17 has always been a resounding “I know”. Cue awkward men skulking off.
Losing weight had prompted me to take the step from simply talking (for years) about having a reduction, to actually finding a surgeon and booking an appointment.
A 10kg drop in weight had caused my breasts to drop as well, and for the first time in my life I was repulsed not by the fat on my body — and something I knew I could deal with — but by a part of my body that no amount of dieting or exercise was going to fix.
On the day I decided to seek a referral I was admiring my naked self — noticeably toned from intensive pilates reformer training — and I realised my pecs were prominent. I’m talking obvious enough to flex them, which I duly did, channelling my inner Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Terry Crews.
Then it dawned on me that pecs should be covered by breast tissue. One’s jugs should not be languishing around the waist, nor dangling just a smidge above the belly button.
Despite the drop in weight, I’d not lost cup size. I went from a 14G to a 12GG and the perkiness I could always rely on, from not having children I suspect, was gone.
I felt awful, both physically from the neck and back pain, and mentally from the self-loathing, despite being slimmer than I’d been in years.
I’m not talking about golf balls in socks, I’m talking about melons in socks.
The weight loss was pointless if I still looked like two-tonne Tessie from the front with the posture of Quasimodo.
No amount of self-love was going to fix the loathing. Going under the knife was the only solution.
The first words out of my mouth after waking from surgery was “I can breathe”. It was so immediately obvious that a huge weight had been lifted, literally and figuratively. I nearly cried.
My chest was practically flat under the compression bandage and when I first saw myself naked in a full-length mirror a few days later I felt like it was the reveal at the end of an episode of Embarrassing Bodies.
I thought I’d still look fat but with nice (expensive) breasts.
But that wasn’t the case. I didn’t look like I ate all the pies and needed a month at Fat Camp.
I just looked like plenty of women do: Rubenesque with perky boobs — which hadn’t looked like that for 20 years.
And I look bloody magnificent.