I could not have felt in better hands than in Brustzentrum Vivantes am Urban. I felt surrounded by top-notch competence as well as kindness all the way through. The atmosphere there is relaxed and pleasant. (I can remember a time when the head doctor did his rounds followed by an entourage who clicked their heels and made notes of his – it was almost always a he – words of wisdom. There is none of that kind of bullshit any more, at least not in that clinic).

So far, I have none of the problems many others seem to have (swollen arms, etc. etc. etc.) and although I am not allowed to lift my arms all the way up over my head yet, I think I could if I wanted to. I am quite sure staying in hospital for at least two nights after surgery (in my case four nights), and the care you are given during that time, has a lot to do with avoiding post-op complications. In some countries, women are sent home on the day of surgery (I am guessing insurance issue). Quite frankly I don’t see how that is even possible. It is major surgery, after all, and personally, I felt very weak and dizzy the first 24 hours. I am so thankful that I was allowed to stay four nights, but I would say that two nights should be the minimum.

Don’t get me started about the food – I think that is the same everywhere and a whole other issue, and I eat everything anybody serves me, but geared towards healing and regaining strength it is not.

But now I am back home, stuffing myself with salads, vegetables, pulses, and a little bit of meat or fish, berry smoothies, and one piece of fruit per day. I walked home from the hospital with a friend of mine schlepping my suitcase. We stopped for a coffee on the way, to celebrate that both my drains had been removed. The rest of that day I tried to keep still although I did not feel tired, and did not have much pain. Yes, I can feel that something is going on in the scars, probably trying to heal, but pain as such – not really, more like a burning feeling. At the hospital, if and when I took any of the painkillers they offered me, it was more in order to be able to sleep despite the discomfort in neck and shoulders from being so inactive.

While in hospital, I had a visit from a psychologist. She seemed mildly surprised by my general attitude – that a double mastectomy is not the end of the world, that it may have saved, or at least prolonged my life, and I would rather lose a pair of sad, nearly 70-year-old boobs than an arm or a leg. Once that had been cleared up, we had a very nice chat about this, that and the other. Although I did discover one thing: I still can’t talk about Max (my ex-dog) without crying. Perhaps I am channelling all my trauma, sadness and post-op melancholy out through that one aspect. I don’t know – the psychologist said I was welcome to contact her again should I feel the need, so if the inability to even think about Max without crying continues, perhaps I will.

I was also given a prescription for prosthesis – something most staff at the hospital seemed to take for granted that everybody wants (those who do not opt for reconstruction). I am still undecided whether I do. It sounds so impractical and bothersome to me, but there is a chain of those ergonomic shops which has a branch that specialises only in all kinds of breast … whatever … bras, inlays, … I don’t know what it is called, and I will certainly go along to see what the options are. My feeling is that I will prefer a life without bra straps, and in fact, on yesterday’s walk the weather was so lovely that I hugely enjoyed parading an off-shoulder, “look-no-straps”, blouse I bought just before surgery 😊. I think I shall just keep looking for clothes that camouflage the flatness a little bit. Or not. Part of me also wants to contribute towards breast cancer awareness raising, not to mention demystifying mastectomies, and that is not done by conveying the signal that we need fake boobs  to feel like real women.

I don’t want to turn myself and everybody else into chronic hypochondriacs but I can’t help thinking that perhaps we should pay more attention to our general well-being. I think I should have known that something was wrong somewhere in my body. Not that I had any pain anywhere, but I used to wake up with a kind of heaviness and demotivation, performed more and more “overspringshandlinger” – I can’t find the right words for that in neither English nor German but used the mañana-mañana delusion a lot, (like – “I’ll do better tomorrow”) especially when it came to exercising my dog properly, for example. Also, I needed a nap almost every day, and went to bed earlier and earlier in the evening. On the rare occasions that I really thought about it, I put it down to “spring fatigue”, and to getting old.

It is the kind of thing that sneaks up on you so slowly and gradually that you do not really notice it until it is gone again. So it is purely on hindsight and comparing that to how I feel now that I can see that I should have known. Now, I wake up with a feeling of lightness and motivation to get out of bed that I have not felt since late spring or thereabouts. My surgery was a week ago tomorrow, and apart from the first 48 hours or so where I slept A LOT – basically whenever I was not eating … – I have not needed to sleep during the day – not even yesterday after walking ten-thousand-and-something steps 😊.

This morning, I plucked up the courage to remove the bandage and compresses and look at my scars. They are still covered in sort of transparent strips of plaster, my entire upper body looks badly bruised, and there is a tiny bit of swelling here and there, so it is impossible to predict the end result, but from what I can see now, it looks as good as that kind of scarring will ever look. And above all quite symmetrical, which for some reason is important to me. I have seen some horrid photos on the web that makes one wonder what on earth the surgeon was thinking. Some scars are a complete mess, looking as if no effort whatsoever was made to make them look remotely neat or straight and definitely far from symmetrical. So far, I am contant with mine.