Comfort, Control, or Conformity: Women Who Choose Breast Reconstruction Following Mastectomy

Following breast amputation women commonly are presented with two choices: to wear a prosthesis or undergo reconstruction. Breast restoration is assumed to allow a full emotional and physical recovery from a breast cancer crisis. Surgical reconstruction is offered to women as the final step in regaining a sense of complete womanhood, enabling a sense of optimism that both body and self will “get back to normal.” This article examines 5 women's accounts of breast reconstruction and asks how breast reconstruction figures in the remaking of self following mastectomy. Issues pertaining to the reasoning behind seeking out the procedure, experiences of finding the right surgeon, and how women feel toward their reconstructed postsurgical body are examined. In conclusion it is argued that a number of contradictory expectations are held by women seeking reconstructions. While women suggest that reconstruction will restore lost femininity, sexuality, and normalcy in most cases it is not the procedure that enables this but the elimination of the hassles of prostheses. In contrast to the complete sense of self they expected to regain through reconstruction they articulate a restoration that is simply pragmatic. It is only once women have undertaken this last bastion of hope that they are forced to renegotiate their sense of themselves as women with or without breasts.

Notes

¹Participants were recruited through advertisements in three breast cancer support network newsletters: Bosom Buddies (Canberra), Breast Cancer Action Group (Victoria), and The Beacon (Breast Cancer Network Australia). In addition women were recruited though my attendance at the ACT Cancer Society Breast Cancer Support Group and the Bosom Buddies General Meeting.

²Bosom Buddies is one of many grassroots breast cancer support and advocacy groups in Australia. Based in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), it is primarily a fundraising organization with more than 300 members from the ACT and surrounding regions.

³For a more developed analysis of this case study see Crompvoets, 2003b.