Boobs.

I know my last few posts haven't really updated you on my progress so today, my friends, is all about boobs! (I am shimmy shaking and cheering, I hope you are too)

Since we've talked I've taken the first major step towards my reconstruction. This is good because my chest no longer looks like two shriveled up prunes. I was able to get my first tissue expander fill as of the first week in January. Here is a little diagram of what that looks like.

Basically they use a magnet to find a metal port that is underneath my skin and connected to the tissue expander. Once they find that they stick an insanely thick needle into my skin and through the port. They then inject me with a saline solution. This slowly pumps up the expander inside my chest.

The first time I went I thought I was superwoman because I got 90 cc's in each breast. The next time I went I could only take 40 cc's. The sensation is super duper weird and I won't even try to explain what it feels like to have your chest stretched because there are no words. It's just plain weird y'all.

As of today I have had 3 fills... well 6 total if you count both breasts. I am finally to the point where things look normal and with a shirt on it looks like I have normal boobs. (insert shimmy shake here). With a shirt off they look semi-normal, except that my chest is pretty much at my neck and I do have small scars. They will drop a bit once I have my exchange surgery and get the implants in. I've been going crazy with Mederma on my scars and I can actually see a huge difference in the color of them. Not that I really care about the scars, you wouldn't be able to see them unless I decided I wanted to sport the trendy side boob look. Not happening.

Good news, I went to Washington D.C. last month and my robot boobs did not make the airport metal detectors go off. I was so worried that I would beep. I even asked my breast surgeon to write me a note that said I had these special things in me. He did. He's so nice. I didn't have to pull it out THANK GOD.

  

 In other news, I got cleared to start going to the gym again. I'm pretty sure that didn't mean jump right into zumba after not working out in 3 months but hey I am all for a challenge. I went to my first zumba class last week and it went well. I have to say it's the weirdest thing jumping around with these rocks in my chest. I dreamt last night that I woke up and one boob was sagging to my belly button because I jumped around too much at zumba. Yes I went to the restroom and checked in a mild panic.

Other than that all is well in the boob world.

Thanks for reading.

Half-Sister Part Dos & Surgery Pics!

It's been a hot minute (I've always wanted to say that) since I've posted, I've been busy and stressed AKA school is taking over my life and my classes are getting harder and I actually have to try now that I'm getting into my 3rd year, who knew?

 Last post, I shared the wonderful news of finding out I had a sister. I've had a few people pressure me to write this next blog with the rest of the story and I am SO sorry that I haven't gotten to it yet! The wait is over my friends. SO what you know from the last blog is that I have a big sister and we're going to meet her in Houston for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving came QUICK. As in, it was 3 days after I found out I had a sister. I think back on it and I do really feel like it was all a dream.

Sidenote: In my last post, I mentioned that my sisters adoptive parents gave her a note from my mother this past Easter. I think I made it sound like she had never seen the note before but she had. That piece of information was relevant because this past Easter seeing the letter again prompted the search for my mom. Just to clear things up...

Funny story: On the way to Houston, my sister and her family were driving towards San Antonio, which means they would be passing us on I-10 at some point. We ended up coordinating where we were through mile markers and we all got to wave at each other in passing. We hadn't even met yet so it was kind of funny and kind of weird. At one point, my dad told me to get my barefoot 'Walmart' feet off the dashboard because they could probably see how black the bottoms were from across the highway. You get Walmart feet when you walk around Walmart barefoot, preferably in a small town where there is a Dairy Queen next door. I don't like wearing shoes outside, it happens.

So we get to Houston and spend a lovely Thanksgiving week with my mom's side of the family. At this point, the only person who knows that my mom has been in contact with my sister is my Aunt Yana. This is rare because we have an insanely large Mexican family and things never seem to stay a secret for long. Mom had planned on sitting all of the girl cousins and aunts down and announcing 1)that she had a child that she gave up for adoption and 2)that we had been in contact and were meeting her that Sunday. Her sister's knew about the child, but no one had ever brought it up since it happened. The first night we were there I pressured my mom to spill the beans. I wanted so badly to be able to tell my cousins and for all of us to share in the joy of it but I knew it had to be my mom's decision. That night she finally sat all my aunts and cousins down, made the announcement and showed the pictures. Everyone cried, everyone hugged, it was insanely therapeutic to share such a raw moment with the people you love. That kind of stuff definitely brings a sense of closeness.

Sunday comes around and we are packing up the car, getting ready to head to my sister's house on our way back to San Antonio. Talk about surreal. During the ride there I could tell we were all a little nervous. When we pulled up to the house, my heart was nervous. I was wondering what on earth my mom was thinking and what she was feeling. She was probably WAY more nervous than me. We got out of the door, walked up the sidewalk and rang the doorbell. Omgomgomgomgomgomg not even really sure what I was thinking at this point but my sister's husband opened the door and greeted us and we walked in and there was my sister. Mom and her hugged first of course. I kept my composure but I was literally biting my teeth together to keep from crying. Then it was our turn. I hugged my sister for the first time. I don't really know how to explain this but before I even met her I felt a connection. I stalked her facebook many times and just cried. As weird as it sounds, it's an overwhelming feeling knowing that we share the same blood. Someone I never knew for 25 years has the same DNA in her body as me, it's really mind blowing. The rest of the day was perfect. We sat down us 4 and my sister and her husband and got to talking. After a while of getting to know each other, the neighbor brought over my sisters two kids, an energetic precious 6 year old boy and the sweetest, prettiest 9 year old girl. I literally just looked at them and thought to myself, these little people share my DNA too. It's so crazy. We all got to have lunch together and then after we watched my sister and her husband's wedding video. It had a ton of pictures of my sister growing up and it was soooooo awesome to see. After that we all went outside and took a TON of pictures (you know my mother) and then we said our Goodbyes. It was such a surreal moment that I will never forget for the rest of my life.

Here are some pictures from the day:

  

This one's my favorite...

  

  

My sister had her genetic testing results appointment the next day. Thankfully, she did not have the gene mutation! We were so happy.

My surgery time came around and my sister and her husband surprised me at the hospital! I was so surprised I cried. I was semi jealous when they all went out to eat that night because I was stuck in my hospital bed but I just clicked that morphine pump and watched TV with my lovely boyfriend and all was well in the world again.

Here are some pictures of us at the hospital:

So that pretty much sums up all that fun stuff. I am working on another blog with an update to what's going on with my recovery and all that jazz. I wanted to keep this one separate because it's special to me :) Till next time!

I'm the middle child, no wonder!

Happy New Year friends! I look back on this past year and still don’t even believe that I am 3 weeks into my recovery. It feels like I’m still back in August trying to decide when to have my genetic testing done. Time has seriously flown by y’all.


First, I want to address something I've been hearing lately from a few different people in talking about my surgery and it's that "everyone is going to get cancer anyway". This bothers me to hear because I feel that it completely discredits my choice to get a preventative surgery and the severity of it. Yes, everyone has a chance of getting cancer, depending on your lifestyle and many other things, absolutely, and people will continue to get cancer but no, not everyone has the genetic mutation that I have, in fact only 5-10% of women have this genetic mutation that causes breast cancer. This does not change my risk for other cancers but it does give me peace knowing I have eliminated my 87% genetic risk of breast cancer in my lifetime. If you don’t have the genetic mutation, YES you still have a chance of getting cancer BUT a woman who has the gene mutation is about five times more likely to develop breast cancer than a woman who does not have a mutation… If 5-10% do have the gene then that means 90-95% of women DO NOT HAVE THE BREAST CANCER GENE. So my surgery was absolutely for a reason. Do your research please. Get educated!!


Now, I will get into my NYE status that everyone got so confused about! I am so excited to share this awesome news with y’all. I have a big sister! In searching for my mom, she found my blog and she was able to find out about our family history and get tested for the breast cancer gene. Here is the story :)             

All of this began back in November. I got a text one Saturday morning from my mom that said I needed to come home today because they needed to tell Lauryn and me something important and that it wasn’t bad. I immediately called my sister in a panic and we brainstormed about what it could be. We discussed the option of my mom being sick again. We thought maybe they were just saying it wasn’t bad so that we wouldn’t worry. We thought maybe they were going to lecture us about our church attendance (normal) or that someone lost their job. We literally made a list of things it could be. Did we win the lottery? Nothing was making sense. We had no idea what to expect. We both immediately went home. Of course my sister was late. I was texting her while I was sitting in the living room with my parents, telling her how they were acting so extra happy and weird, I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. My sister finally got home and we both sat down in the living room. My parents started beating around the bush and then started arguing about what music channel to put the TV on, mom wanted holiday music, dad wanted Christian, are you kidding me?? My mom finally left the room and came back with an envelope. She pulled out two separate stacks of paper, handed them to us and said "Girls.... you have a big sister." The first thing out of my mouth was WHAT followed by hysterical crying. Lauryn was quiet. I sat there and read through the recent emails that were exchanged between her and my mom. And then I got to the pictures. Cue loss of all composure.             

Below is my mom. Can you see the crazy resemblance?!

Saw the above picture first. Saw mom so much in her. Kept reading and looking at pictures and kept trying to fathom in my head what I had just been told. I am not the oldest anymore. I’ve thought one way for 25 years and it’s all just changed in an instant. I have to say I was truly shocked to the core. Not in a million years did I think this is what they were going to tell us. After the initial shock and crying calmed a bit, my dad encouraged my mom to share her story with us. We shed a lot of tears that day, all of us together as a family, even my dad :) We laugh about him and my uncle Graig because they are very emotional and they are probably going to cry again reading this. It’s ok guys.

Mom proceeded to tell us her story with tears streaming down her face. She was 18 years old. She found out she was pregnant. She chose to live at a special home for girls during the pregnancy, had a little girl, and gave her up for adoption. I admire her greatly for this decision, especially in that day and age when things weren’t as relaxed as they are now. She still chose adoption. I look at my mom in a whole new light. I can’t believe that she carried this secret for 34 years. I think back on the times that we watched teen mom together and the episode of 90210 where Dixon tries to find his birth mother. I know she was probably thinking about her daughter during all those times and I thought we were just catching up on our guilty pleasure shows.

My big sister was given a letter this past Easter weekend from her parents that my mom had written in July of 1978, before she was born. After they got back from out of town, her husband started doing research online based on the information given in my moms letter. On April 9, he compiled a list of 30 women that had gotten married in Bexar County from 1979-1985 that all had my mom's birthday. They started looking up the women on Facebook and found my mom. Upon further research into my mom's pictures they knew it was her. They look like twins to me, I still can't stop staring! Weeks went by and my big sister periodically looked at my mom's page. At one point, she saw that mom posted about my Aunt Mini's passing from breast cancer.  She found the obituary and saw that it mentioned that she had 5 sisters. My mom's letter to her also mentioned that she had 5 sisters. She ended up finding some of my aunts on Facebook and matching their graduation dates with the ages mentioned in the letter. This is when it became real for her and she knew she really had found her birth mother! In the next few months, she researched further and saw pictures of Lauryn and me at Race for the Cure on Facebook. It was at that time she realized my mom's name was on our shirts too, not just my Aunt Mini's. She realized that my mom must have had breast cancer also. A few months later, on July 6 she came across my blog YES! She learned through it that my mom was diagnosed with her first breast cancer at 34. This freaked her out a bit because she learned this the night before her 34th birthday. She truly felt that this was a sign from God telling her to get more information for herself and her future as soon as possible. She tried to contact my mom a couple of times through Facebook (mom didn't notice because it was going to the 'other' box instead of her inbox since they weren’t friends. If you’ve never checked your ‘other’ box go now! I found a bunch of old messages from people who wrote me about my blog that I didn’t know and felt sooo bad about never seeing them!). She also tried old email addresses that my mom never checked. As she waited for a response she kept up with my blog. It is so crazy for me to think that as I was posting each month, my very own sister- I had no idea about- was reading it.

My sister met with a doctor and decided to proceed with a mammogram and genetic testing. On October 12, she had her first mammogram and got a dreaded call back a few days later saying they found an 8mm mass. She got an ultrasound and it turned out to be a normal lymph node, thank God. She decided to pursue genetic testing but when she received all the paperwork, her heart sank because she had so many family history blanks she didn’t know how to fill in. This was her push to finally send my mom a letter in the mail. She sent a letter, with all the paperwork on October 31, 2012. My mom received a package a few days later. She opened it up and immediately broke into tears. When my dad got home from work she called him into the room and told him that she received a letter from her daughter. The next few weeks they would try to decide how to tell my sister and I and that my friends brings me back to the start of this post.

This is becoming a book, so I think this is a good place to stop for now. I feel extremely blessed. Can't wait to share the rest of this story and tell you about our first time meeting :) Happy New Year!

-Eryn