玛丽 (Me, in Mandarin) and Breast Reconstruction

Last Sunday, a calligraphy student gracefully brushed my name—Mary—in Mandarin on red paper, during a festival put on by our area’s Chinese community. When I looked at the characters, I almost jumped out of my skin. I mean, look at it!  Doesn’t my name in Mandarin make me look, well, endowed?  And isn’t it odd that just last week I received a gift celebrating the artistic opposite—a sculpted woman without breasts?

I’m absolutely delighted with that sculpture, always welcoming celebrations and affirmations of women who have lost their breasts. I, however, did not lose mine. My tumor was small and I’d opted for a lumpectomy. Although I’m a little lopsided, one has to look more closely than is polite to notice that.

So why, I wonder, did my new and generous friend apparently assume that because I had breast cancer, I’d had a double mastectomy? (She’s out of town for a while, but I’m going to ask her when she returns.) Do most people share this assumption, unaware of today’s merciful alternatives available to many of us?

Maybe some of those beliefs are based on fact: PJ Hamel observes in her current post—Why Do So Few of Us Opt for Reconstruction?—that a large percentage of women who undergo mastectomies never opt for reconstruction. Furthermore, only a small percentage of their doctors refer them to a plastic surgeon. I couldn’t believe this. My father, a plastic surgeon, was doing breast reconstructions as long as forty years ago, and since then there have been wonderful developments and options.

I consider myself lucky to still have my cleavage, but as it turns out, luck can be dicey. Although I was unlucky to be diagnosed with breast cancer, I was lucky that it was found at an early stage. And if  I become unlucky enough to have to deal with cancer again, knowing what I know now I’d consider myself  lucky if it returned in a breast and not someplace else.

I hope I’ll be forgiven for being a little superstitious, but I’m regarding my name in Mandarin calligraphy as auspicious. I've decided that it means “Lucky me.”

You can check out your name in Mandarin at chinese-tools.com/names.