I Am Not My Boobs

Note before launching into this topic: I am writing about my experience with my breasts and conversations with my medical team about choices I made about my body. Every woman facing these types of decisions should have their own conversations and make her own choices about her body. I made choices that were right for me, and those choices may not be right for you. And that’s okay. In fact, that’s great! Because it’s your body and you’re living in it.

One of the common responses to the decision to have a prophylactic mastectomy is, “Why would you remove healthy breasts?” That response isn’t just from normies. Medical professionals question it too. My short answer: “I am not my boobs.”

Now for the long answer, because goodness knows I have never met a topic I’m passionate about that I didn’t want to expound on in great detail.

Rewind to April 2025 and my routine annual mammogram. The radiologist found an area of calcification in my scans and recommended a needle biopsy to determine if it was anything more. The biopsy diagnosed it as atypical ductal hyperplasia (ADH). The way I understand it, ADH isn’t cancer, but it’s considered a possible stepping-stone to it. It’s also possible it was a one-time thing. My breast surgeon performed an excisional biopsy, removed the area, and I could have lived the rest of my life with perfectly clear mammograms.

But, man. The percentages. When all the factors were weighed, I was given an almost 40 percent chance of developing breast cancer in my lifetime.

My breast surgeon went over several scenarios with me. She enrolled me in a high-risk breast clinic, which meant additional screenings. Instead of a routine annual mammogram, I’d now alternate every six months between a mammogram and a breast MRI. She also gave me the option of going on medication that would drop my estrogen to zero and put me into early menopause. Another option was a prophylactic double mastectomy. I could also do nothing.

I spent a couple months waffling about it, looking up lots of options, and reading the stories of the myriad women who had gone through exactly what I was going through. Then I found a lump.

The lump turned out to be nothing, but those two weeks until I could get back into the testing center were excruciating. I spent them kicking myself for not moving faster. For needing to do more research. For waiting, when all that waiting might now mean chemo or radiation, both of which scared me far more than a mastectomy.

That lump told me what I needed to know. That my breasts were not worth the emotional toll of the uncertainty. The emotional toll on my relationships, not only with my partner and family but also with my work. And I knew that every six months, I’d feel that same fear. The fear that this time would be the time they’d find something.

I am more than my breasts. My femininity is more than my breasts. My mental health deserves as much weight as my physical health. My health is holistic, and every part of me should be in the conversation.

Kathleen the mother, the wife, the artist – she doesn’t need breasts to be those things. And I love being those things. I love being them fully. I won’t hand over a month of every year to the fear of losing them.

And if you’re somewhere in the middle of this, I’m not here to tell you which way to go. We make these choices out of fear and love and where we are sitting in our own lives. Whatever you choose, I hope you choose it with all of you in the conversation.

Photo by Alisha Browne/Atlantic Boudoir