The Scar Project

May 30 – The Scar Project

I just watched a video and looked at pictures from the Scar Project (www.thescarproject.org) and I was amazed at the courage and honesty of these women and this photographer (David Jay). I highly recommend you go to the site.

This video and the pictures he took made me feel like part of a group of women – like I’m not alone. I go to Breast Cancer Group and we all talk, but it’s not the same. Our feelings of depression are the same. Every cancer survivor asks “Why me?” or “What do I do with this life I’ve been given?” and there are no easy answers to those questions. But talking is not seeing and seeing has made me feel not so alone.

I look at my scars every day. I check the incisions to make sure they are healing. The glue is coming off now, so it looks kinda weird – like when you take clumps of glue off the back of a product that’s been stuck to its packaging. It comes off in clumps or long ribbons of stickiness. The good news is – its coming off and with it the dried blood from surgery.

I always wondered if my scars look like everyone else’s scars. They don’t. It seems that surgeons can be as creative with incisions as an artist can be with a canvas. The human body reacts to being cut in different ways. Stretching the skin to prepare it for silicone implants can affect the scar in different ways. So, it’s amazing to me that even though everyone’s scars look different, they are all the same.

I wear layers of tops now, even though it’s over 100 degrees in the Sonoran Desert. I don’t want anyone to see what is hiding beneath the T-shirt and cami. I hide my scars with a T-shirt that says “Under Construction” and people praise me for my courage. I just want to hide them – the incisions that stretch from one arm to the other with a small space in between along my breast bone.

 I worry how they’ll look after the next surgery. Will my plastic surgeon be more careful with his lines? Will they heal evenly? Will they fade? I can’t look at another woman’s scars and predict how mine will appear.

Before I got breast cancer, I was always angry that so many pink ribbons were everywhere. Looking for a lime green or peach ribbon was impossible and everyone asked me when I said I was a cancer survivor – “Breast Cancer?” Assuming it was the only cancer that women got. Advertising is a wonderful thing, but it leaves in its wake a huge amount of forgotten people. I was one of those. I honestly must tell you, and I hope you do not judge me; I had a small moment where I finally felt like part of a group. Like in high school when you are no longer an outsider waiting to be noticed – I became part of the in crowd. It was a fleeting moment of insanity, but it existed. Now I have more pink things than I ever had before and scars where my breasts used to be. I would trade all the pink ribbons in the world if I could have my breasts back.

Breast Cancer is not a pink ribbon. It is fear and crying. It is courage and devotion. It is sharing and tears. It is radiation, chemo, and surgery. It is death and survival. It is knowing that your life will never be the same and desperately trying to come to grips with that reality.

It is scars.

I am one of the lucky ones. I didn’t have to have chemo or radiation. I don’t have lymphodema. My scars (so far) are not separating and my skin is not dying. I have a great team of doctors who take care of me. I have a wonderful support group who hears what I say and understands what is behind the words. I have angels who watch over me. I have the most wonderful spouse in the world. I have loving friends and caring family.

I have scars.