Adjusting to Breast Reconstruction

As soon as my doctor recommended a bilateral mastectomy after diagnosing me with breast cancer, she quickly followed with a discussion about reconstruction, as if to soften the blow. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the idea of being rebuilt at age 40 seemed like the first potentially positive trade-off to the whole ordeal. Still, it turned out that deciding how to reconstruct was as difficult a decision as deciding whether to reconstruct. There are a number of options: saline and silicone implants, using tissue and muscle from the stomach or other areas of the body, or combination of methods.

Read more about breast reconstruction.