The pastor at my church asked people to come up to the front of the room for prayer. I could hear the keyboard playing softly in the background. A hum of voices echoed through the crowd.
“Do you need prayer for something specific?” a woman asked me.
“I’m having surgery next week,” I said.
“How about you place your hand on the part of your body that needs healing.” I placed my hand on my left breast as discretely as I could. Her cheerful expression dropped. “I’m having a mastectomy,” I said. It was a phrase I’d been using a lot. I had to ask for an extension on my psychology mid-term paper. My RA and I talked about my course load, and I mentioned that I opted to take fewer credits because I was preparing to have surgery three times this school year. One was the mastectomy, then breast reconstruction, and finally nipple reconstruction. Most freshmen didn’t have such deep conversations when it came to talking about classes.
The prayers for my healing were not the first. I’d asked people in my church before this during my senior year of high school when I found the lump. I’d pictured God taking it out via a miracle like the ones I’d read about in the Bible. If a woman could touch Jesus’ clothing and get healed, I wanted this for me.
I asked for prayer every week. In my quiet time, I ask God to show me this one miracle. At the time, I didn’t want to have surgery at all. My doctor didn’t even know if I needed one. It was highly recommended because we had ruled out a cyst after the ultrasound. We wanted to be sure the lump was not malignant. There were fibroadenomas. That was probably the case, but there were no answers without samples of the infected tissue.
Breast cancer at the age of seventeen was rare. A mastectomy when one did not have breast cancer was even less common. There were not many reported cases of fibromatosis of the breast. Did the doctor say something like twenty-seven in my appointment? Twenty anything seemed like a low number when considering the whole state, country, and possibly the world.
When I found the lump, it was as if the thing had grown overnight. I was on a trip with my mom and dad touring colleges. The week before that, I had a sports physical clear me for my last high school season of cross country. The doctor examined my breasts. If there was something that felt like a one-inch rock in my breast had been there, I was sure this would have been discovered in that appointment. Instead, I was in the shower wondering why it felt like I had a paperweight below my nipple.
I prayed that God could change this situation fast.
“I pray that you be with Marion on the operating table. Place Your hands on the surgeon’s. Remove all traces of sickness in her body in Jesus’ name,” the woman continued to pray. I wanted to feel something. People talked about how parts of their bodies felt warm when Jesus was about to heal them. A guy in my youth group knew he had a brain tumor after an MRI. Before the surgery, he had to have one more to make sure the dimensions of the growth hadn’t changed. He used to get headaches that caused him to miss school and not be able to do much. I watched a group of people gather around him and pray. The MRI before his surgery showed no tumor. I didn’t realize the full importance of the miracle because I’d been detached from his story.
There I was with my hand over my breast begging God to give me that. Could I just go in and have no lump? What if I didn’t need the mastectomy? This would be my third surgery. I had two surgeries during my senior year of high school because the non-serious fibroadenoma wasn’t that. One was to figure out the lump was fibromatosis and the second was supposed to mean that it wouldn’t grow back.
There was not one ounce of warmth through my body during this prayer time. I could still feel the weight of the lump in my breast. The keyboard player stopped playing. The door began to open and close several times. Pretty soon, the church was almost empty. I thanked the prayer team members and walked back to campus.
In the operating room, the nurses joked about the socks I got to wear and the contraptions they wrapped around my legs to keep the blood in my legs circulating. The setting around me disappeared and before I knew it, a young guy wheeled me to my room. He looked at my chart and said, “I have to move you over to this bed. I want to make sure I don’t hurt you.” I could tell he wasn’t used to moving girls younger than him who had just lost a breast.
My parents joined me in the room with some gifts. They went shopping during my procedure. I didn’t have a button-up blouse to wear on the drive home. Lifting my left arm was going to take some time.
She handed me a cream blouse with hidden buttons. The fabric was soft. She also got me a cozy blue fleece jacket and a large bottle of Poême perfume. She sprayed some of the floral scent on my wrist. It took me back to my childhood bedroom as if nothing had changed.
When the doctor came in to check on my scar, I wanted to look away, but this was impossible knowing that there were three people looking at it. The hospital was a teaching hospital. He asked if I was okay with his students seeing my scar. If they could look, I should.
It was black and thick. It went from my armpit to the center of my chest. “Those stitches are tidy and clean,” he said. I guess that was good news. I swallowed. It wasn’t that I felt like crying or even that I was suffering from a loss. This was temporary because I was getting a replacement breast in a month. Until then, I got to wear this camisole with a pocket for a breast stuffed with cotton.
The second surgery took less time than the first. Looking at my new breast was like having a half-deflated balloon under the surface of my skin. There was a shape, yes. It didn’t hang off my chest the way a breast would. The top was full like it was showing off a look people attempted with a water bra. My other breast no longer matched. After three more months, I would have more saline injected into the expander.
The plastic surgeon drew me a picture in my appointment before the procedure. There was a line under the new breast to show the scar could be hidden. Flaps of my skin would form a mound to look like a nipple with a tattooed pigment to match my skin tone. I pictured my real breast when I saw this.
When I tried to get out of bed after this surgery, it felt like I’d been holding a push-up position for a day. My left pectoral muscle was now pushed out to act as breast tissue and to hold my prosthetic in place. Nobody told me it would be the worst pain of my life. I had trouble moving for three weeks.
On my way out the door to go to church, I puked. I hoped that maybe some healing prayer could work this time. Maybe I didn’t care if God fixed my breast. All I wanted was to no longer be in pain.
I couldn’t leave the bathroom. The force for all that came out of me made the pain even worse. I still wanted to believe God could change my circumstances. Perhaps healing was that the tumor should no longer grow back. I clung to this truth.
During my senior year of college, I woke up feeling like my body was rapidly changing. I placed my hand on the left side of my chest and it felt flat. All the saline solution from my implant leaked out in a matter of hours. All that was left was my scar that had never ended up hidden under the implant and the outline of a shape that once resembled a pathetic attempt of a breast.
Later that day, I planned to see this guy I loved. He was the one. Only, how does a girl tell a guy she doesn't have a breast?
I brought him up to my apartment. He sat with space between us. I faced him hoping not to break eye contact. One of my roommates went straight past us on the way to her room. I could smell the vegetarian stew I made for us on the stove.
“I need to tell you something,” I said. “My freshman year of college, I had a mastectomy. The doctor encouraged me to have reconstructive surgery, but last night it failed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had an implant filled with saline solution and it leaked.”
I couldn’t tell what Tim was thinking, other than the fact that he was taking all this in.
“Anyway, I am going to need to get this replaced over Christmas break.” I scanned his face for a response. His eyes softened. The pupils, had they been the consistency of ice cream, would have melted.
“Can I pray for God’s healing?” he asked. His voice was quiet.
This was the first time I’d thought about God healing me in over two years. Did he want God to heal me or was my news so shocking that he didn’t know how to handle being with a woman who had one breast?
“Of course,” I said. I didn’t go into the many times I’d gone up for prayer at church.
“When I was in high school, I hurt my ankle. The doctors told me I would probably never play basketball again. My dad took me to this church where several people prayed for me and I felt a warmth through my ankle. After that, I could move it. It was healed and I could play basketball.” Tim smiled. He had the same confidence in his voice that I’d heard in the woman who had his brain tumor healed. I hoped my roommates didn’t walk in on this prayer scene. They already thought I was crazy for wanting to court a guy. I listened to Tim say some of the same phrases I’d heard prayed over me in the past. I waited to feel this healing warmth, but it didn’t happen.
“It’s okay if it doesn’t happen right away. I still think God’s going to heal you.” Tim said. I made my way to the stove and began to fill two bowls.
I began to think about how I used to expect God to take the lump away. It made more sense for God to fix the disease when it was still in my body. At this point, that was no longer the case. I knew my body would be fine. Did God still want to heal something that wasn’t a major problem?
The night before my second attempt at reconstructive surgery, I asked my friend to take a picture of the flattened breast just in case God healed me on the operating table. The day before, I’d been at church praying with the pastor’s wife. I got a picture of a pool and Jesus standing inside. The room smelled like vanilla. It was as if I was going into the pool to be healed. The worship song in the background was about God being the air we breathe.
I went back to church the week after my surgery for more prayer. I saw the same picture. This time, in the vision, I walked into the water. The pastor and his wife left me alone in the church to let God finish His work. I was positive that at any moment, I’d have two breasts again. It was three hours after the service finished before I thought about going home. I had been there since ten in the morning.
Maybe there was a delay in the healing. I might go to sleep that night and wake up transformed. My heart was ready. Even if I wasn’t praying with a group, I kept praying. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted this so much. Part of my motivation was to feel whole again, but I also wanted my parents to know that God is real.
During my post-operative visit, the doctor did not end up looking at the regrowth of a body part he thought was gone. He was confused when he took off the bandage, and there were no signs of blood. Maybe that was a sign healing was next.
Looking at my second reconstructed breast was very different from the first. It was already filled with saline solution. I no longer had a port. Hopefully, I would not have to deal with a leak again. Unfortunately, the breast was smaller than my real one and had an unnatural circular shape. It looked like a small dome on my chest wall.
I had zero desire to go through the nipple flap surgery and I didn’t want a new nipple tattoo. The last tattoo wasn’t even the right color. Instead, my scar looked darker and wider from the left side of my chest to the middle. This time, the mastectomy felt more real. I had a shape, but I felt the same as I did when the last prosthetic breast flattened. My body, on that side, was lifeless.