I’ve been feeling a bit back to normal, to Pre-Cancer life feelings. I have mostly forgotten that I had it and I have longer periods between moments where those emotions burble to the surface. I was scrolling through FB and IG posts one day, pausing only for pretty pictures of landscape or brightly colored food, a dog doing something funny or a cat snuggling up to a monkey when a headline caught my eye.
"FDA Warns About New Cancer Risks Linked to Breast Implants”
Well, shit. My heart hit the floor and I immediately added this to my internal list of things to worry about.
At first, I thought maybe it was an old article – maybe one from early 2019 that stated certain textured implants led to a particular type of blood cancer. But nope, this was new.
The FDA is warning that a small number of squamous cell carcinoma and other lymphomas have been linked to scar tissue around breast implants. What to Know About Cancer Risk Due to Breast Implants (healthline.com)
The article seems to state that 72 people have developed cancer related to scar tissue. That’s 72 people in about 5,000,000 people who have breast implants in the world (the number of breast implants in the world are not well documented but range from 5-10 million). That is 0.00144% of people who develop cancer from implants. While I understand why the FDA needs to study and publish this information, this is an extremely rare cancer. It’s a lower risk than me developing cancer again, with my risk being associated with having had cancer.
Actually, I waffled about how I felt about this for several hours. I mean, there are so many things every day that are risky. Walking across a busy city street. Riding in an airplane. The risk of this particular cancer is low. Breast Implant & Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) Statistics (breastimplantcancer.org)
News like this overwhelms me. It feels like my blood turns to sand and my whole body becomes too heavy to lift. Sometimes its hard to breathe. It feels like you never really walk away from cancer. It follows you, like a rock tied to your shoelace.
Let’s talk about the mistake I made by clicking on the comments section of the news article. Now, I know I shouldn’t have clicked, but we make those mistakes out of curiosity, right?!
Most of the posts were focused on how karma is biting the vain females who have chosen to enhance what God has given them. The rest of the posts agreed to some extent while making a dig at the women who chose implants, knowing that they cause cancer. It's amazing to think that the social discourse about implants still centers around enhancements rather than reconstruction. And while I understand that some women who have mastectomies choose not to do any form of reconstruction, I feel like those who choose reconstruction are lumped in with women who choose enhancements, which comes with a LOAD of social baggage.
I know two women who chose not to reconstruct post mastectomy and I respect their choice as they respect mine. We should not be put in the same category, nor should someone who chooses reconstruction post-mastectomy be put in the same category as women who choose augmentation/enhancement.
Part of me feels that there should be no categories at all and that we should either not know about implants or we should just all respect anyone and everyone’s choice regardless of what it is. No one deserves cancer.
But society doesn’t let the female body just exist. We must analyze every part of it. We must make sure all women (and even girls) understand what is beautiful: size, shape, etc. of breasts, butts, even upper arms!
This is a topic for another post, but in the meantime, I have a life, interrupted.
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