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When breasts start to show more sag than shape - courtesy
of age and gravity - what's the answer? Seeing her future self
in her aged mother shocked Georgia Claremont into consulting one
of New York's top surgeons. The result? From "fallen angel" to
fabulous.
As a writer on matters pertaining to nutrients and fitness, health
is my business & maintenance is my concern. Although far from
vain (defined as looking into shop windows to catch your reflection),
I have always taken pleasure in hearing that I looked twenty when
I was thirty and feeling thirty when I was fifty. Over the years
I have played, as on a game board, with prescriptives for youth
extension. I have been able to affect every visible part of my
body — hair, skin, teeth, nails — by means of vitamins,
nutrition, exercise and meditation. And, judging by the infrequency
of visits to doctors, my body's inner workings appear to have
responded equally well. The one hold-out has been my breasts.
Flopping and shapeless after breastfeeding two sons for an extended
period, they became like islands, floating out beyond reach of
any preservative. Nevertheless, we had a truce, my bosom and I.
I would wear a bra at all times, foregoing the joys of strapless
gowns and bikinis, if they would stay within acceptable parameters
of sag. I was heartened by a lover who assured me periodically
that breasts were not his thing and that, in any case, mine had
a certain fallen-angel quality that he found appealing.
This delicate truce would have continued had it not been for
the sudden illness of my mother, which required of me intimate
ministrations over some months. I have to confess that I had never,
in conscious memory, seen my mother fully naked and the reality
of an eighty-year-old body that had never known a step machine
or even a vitamin, catapulted me into shock. By far the most disturbing
sight, however, was her breasts, which resembled the exhausted
mammaries of African women who had nursed two generations while
exposed to the punishing sun. Could that be me thirty years down
the line? I panicked — breast sag is genetic after all.
And so my thoughts turned to the knife, and on my mother's recovery,
my first gesture of self-indulgence was not a new dress, but a
visit to one of New York's top plastic surgeons. The research
was a little tricky. You don't phone around, as you might for
a broken wrist, to find out who's the best breast man in town.
But I was fortunate enough to have access to a short-list of New
York's top plastic surgeons and, after carefully reading their
dossiers, selected Dr. Darrick Antell. His biography detailed
a backlog of experience, but what convinced me were two quotes:
"plastic surgery is really about problem solving" and "you have
to pay close attention to proportions". After all, we're dealing
with two breasts here and it would be preferable if they matched.
So began my first venture into body transformation, a daunting
road that split before me at each turn: to the left, the mythology
of striving for an ideal; to the right, the no-nonsense rebuke
of a puritan upbringing (what the heck are you doing?). Unexpectedly,
the most fraught experience was the initial consultation. I had
showered twice, put on a new bra and allowed thirty minutes to
walk five blocks. I had rehearsed my questions until memorized:
how much would they lift? How much pain for how long? How invisible
are the scars? How soon could I resume normal life? In retrospect,
I think that what I feared most was rejection. Would my breasts
be the first inoperables? Told to strip (so much for the lingerie),
I remained shivering in my surgical gown for what seemed like
a weekend. Then, surprisingly, two doctors walked in — the
very handsome Dr. Antell and a very pretty Dr. Hamilton
(afraid of lawsuits? I asked her later —"male surgeon fondles
breast?" — yes, she confirmed). They took my history, then
pulled my breasts up and around as though moulding silly putty,
until they approximated Hedy Lamarr's. "is this how you'd like
them?" Wow! Absolutely! I was then given the option of two different
techniques.
One, the purse-string, involves a simple drawstring around the
nipple. It results in the minimum scarring but also the minimum
lift. The LeJour, a much-practised technique developed by a surgeon
in Belgium, gives more lift. It involves a vertical incision under
each breast to stitch slack tissue into new shapes. The nipple
is then excised by a cookie-cutter procedure that brought to mind
years of punching out ginger snaps for school fetes, with care
not to sever any nerve endings, and placed higher.
Did I have any questions? Did I ever. Although different from
the ones I'd rehearsed, they poured out like a mantra, the normal
concerns of a normal woman intent on remaining in the loop. How
soon could I exercise, party, have sex? Ride, drive, ski,
have sex? Go to work, drink wine, floss my teeth, have sex? I
should have picked up on the vagueness of the initial answers
"we'll have you exercising soon, you won't feel like sex for a
while" — but kept pressing until I got the statistics that
I was looking for: walking some distance, one week; a mild workout,
passive sex, two weeks; serious stairs, three weeks; riding, skiing
and responsive sex, six weeks. The big question took more courage
— would I retain feeling in the nipples?" Of course, the
major nerve endings are in the centre and well beneath the incision."
I felt relief that such pathways to pleasure were not in the hands
of even the most skilled surgeon.
So there it was, a fait accompli, as simple as a health questionnaire
to fill in, paying a deposit, a pre-op
check-up and a date placed on the calendar for what was listed
as my surgery but became, in the intervening three weeks, my new
self. I approached this watershed with my entire battery of skills.
I exercised massively, storing muscle as a camel does water against
post-operative deprivation. To minimize bruising, I supplemented
my vitamin regime with Bioflavinoids and, four days before, with
pellets of Arnica. I prepared foodstuffs as if for a siege, freezing
fortified soups, cubed fruits and grains and pastas laced with
vegetables in one portion jars. I set up a night table with magazines,
the television guide, videos and the four remote controls that
even my best efforts had never managed to combine into one. I
paid all of my bills, made long chatty phone calls to my mother
and sons and generally put my affairs in order as though I were
going to a place from which I might never return. The night before
the deed I was virtually catatonic, rigid with fear that wouldn't
sleep or would eat after midnight, a habit I haven't indulged
in since my youth but that worried me so much that I stuck notes
on the fridge and the sinks screaming No Water No Food! And, in
what seemed at the time a masterstroke, I photographed my breasts
in the mirror in a ritual of farewell and a document for future
comparison.
I'm not sure if I slept, nor do I know how I got to the clinic,
but I remember snatching at straws of limp excuses to postpone:
surely I had a cold, perhaps even a fever! There was the last
minute conference with Dr. Antell about procedure —
was I absolutely sure that I didn't want the pursestring (well,
what do you think? He thought, no) - a reassuring, if rudimentary,
felt-tip pen drawing on each breast, a kindly anaesthetist who
said I'd be conscious the whole time and to signal if I felt pain.
Two hours later, I looked up groggily at a nurse who kept saying
it was time to go home. What?! Couldn't I please just lie here
for a week? But, in true American fashion, I was prised out of
bed, folded into my clothes and delivered to my aunt who saw me
home and eased me into my bed, fully clad minus coat. And there
I remained for the rest of the day, dehydrated and bound tightly,
so it seemed, in a bodice of bandages.
Little did I know that the roughest part of the day still lay
ahead. Not in the confrontation with pain or discomfort, which
were minimal, but in the mustering of courage. Post-op instructions
were vague and distressingly few. I mean, could I lift a kettle,
pull up trousers, heave myself into bed with or without use of
my arms? What about opening drawers? Would coughing or sneezing
rip the stitches out? There was no advice about food intake, sleeping
position, bandage removal or appropriate soap - all I was told
was not to bend, which turned out not to apply in my case, and
to shower on the third day. Having a shower proved to be the ultimate
hurdle. I was frightened of peeling away the bandages, of seeing
the wounds, of meeting my own blood. And I was frightened about
how my breasts would turn out. Would they look pretty? Would they
be even? When concerns about hygiene finally prevailed, I taped
over my bathroom mirrors before stripping. Far from restored,
I felt damaged; far from transformed, I felt mutilated. I obsessed
about losing body tone. And, increasingly, worried about losing
my lover. Nevertheless, I had no desire to take up my life. Parties?
Forget it. Stairs? Two steps loomed like Persepolis. Exercise?
I wouldn't care if I ever did it again. And sex? Well, ditto.
When both doctors called to check up on my progress, questions
of ultimate survival — food, sleep and muscle rebuilding
— were at the bottom of my list. Forget health, forget orgasm
— my priority was preservation, how to protect my new vessels.
From now on I was a curator, as sensitive to the delicacy of my
charges as if I were calculating how to keep two priceless items
from sliding off a slope. Happily, there is nothing less permanent
than a misfounded perception, nor as rapid in healing. I remember
as clearly as the markers on a marathon the first time I tickled
my nipples and they tickled back; the first time I raised my arms
to put on a turtleneck; walked ten city blocks; washed my hair;
climbed one flight; took the tape off the mirror and reached through
the sheets for my lover. If the healing was slower than the guarantees
that I had forced from my doctors, it was complete. My breasts
now have a lovely shape, they are soft and they are even. And,
yes, I do look like someone I knew well when I was courted and,
yes, I do feel sexy in strapless and comfortable when braless.
Soon the scars will have faded completely and I will, in some
magical way, be transformed.
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