When writer Allison Sweet Grant was diagnosed with breast cancer, she faced a long list of decisions about her treatment. One of them, she soon learned, seemed to invite opinions from everyone around her: If she needed a mastectomy, would she have breast reconstruction? In Lump: A Memoir in Ineloquent Reflections, Grant writes with candor and humor about living through cancer. In this excerpt, she recalls the unsolicited advice she received about her appearance — and the issues swirling around how women make this complicated choice.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, I did not make an appointment to see the reconstructive surgeon — it was made for me. Automatically. Like getting ketchup on a hamburger, I had to opt out. Which I didn’t do in time, which is how I ended up in their office, crying for being made to feel less because I didn’t want more.
From the outset of my diagnosis, there seemed to be a growing number of people concerned with the potential for my post-chemo, post-radiation, post-surgical, post-cancer hot girl summer. More specifically, concern for my level of comfort in a swimsuit. It was impossible to ignore.
The jokes came from well-meaning friends, at first. Why not get a new set of boobs out of this if you can? they asked. As if cancer was camouflage for what might otherwise be considered plain vanity. As if it was an opportunity that I should take strategic advantage of. How could I explain that hearing the words you have cancer quickly deflated any desire to create an illusion of perfection when the reality was so flawed?
Next came the critique from the expert, and it came in many forms. Wouldn’t I feel self conscious? Unhappy? Like less of a woman? The reconstructive surgeon was quick to remind me how difficult it would be to fill out a cocktail dress with imperfect breasts. Or how embarrassing it might be to be playing pickleball and to have to worry about something flopping about (or, God forbid, flopping out). And what about my partner? Had I considered how he felt about the options before me? Surely, even small changes to the body could cause a rift within any relationship. And to think, I assumed it was the cancer itself interfering with the potential for romance — but what did I know? The surgeon did not hide her disappointment when I told her I didn’t play pickleball before cancer and had no intentions of picking up a racket any time after. Nor was I concerned with any external opinions about how my body made other people feel. But infuriatingly, I was repeatedly told, You probably haven’t given it enough thought.
Well, OK, maybe the surgeon was right. Maybe I was too preoccupied with the threat of dying to make any rational decisions about anything else. Maybe in a few weeks, months, years, I’d feel differently. Maybe after coming out of the cloud of cancer, I’d be less consumed by the crisis before me and more focused on my figure. Time was of the essence, she’d assured me — she was helping me to avoid making decisions I’d likely reconsider in the future.
For many women with breast cancer, looking normal in a bikini is a top priority. And luckily, there are choices available to them. I considered these choices. Briefly. But from the earliest stages of my treatment plan I knew that none of them were choices that would make sense for me. The last thing I wanted to do (while undergoing chemotherapy, no less) was subject my body to yet more chemicals in the form of implants, or surgically rearrange healthy parts of my body purely to look closer to someone else’s idea of normal. That sure didn’t feel normal to me. The truth is, nothing about breast cancer (or any type of cancer, really) is normal. Not the chemo, the way it vandalizes your body. Not the radiation, the way it frazzles your mind. Not the insidious nature of it, the way it decimates your life, every aspect of it, and the lives of those around you. My body had been through something — something real and irreversible — and I didn’t think it was the worst thing in the world if I, and anyone else who cared to look, could see that.
Choosing between my preferences and the surgeon’s preferences felt like having to choose between what felt right for my life and what felt right to the people holding my life in their hands. There was a part of me that worried my doctors would assume I wasn’t all that interested in living if I wasn’t interested in living the way they wanted me to live. There was a part of me that felt like it was a choice between living with my own disappointment or potentially dying with theirs.
Call me selfish, but I chose me. And in the end, there was relief.
You go ahead and worry about your hot girl summer — I can promise you I won’t be worrying about mine.
Allison Grant is a novelist and poet. This is an excerpt from her debut memoir Lump: A Memoir in Ineloquent Reflections.
