Chapter 1, Page 1

Boobies, ta ta's, tits, breasts, whatever you want to call them. I remember being 11, when I couldn't WAIT to get them. They held out on me until I was about 13, but I had a bra anyway, purchased at TG&Y - a humiliating experience with my mother and a sales lady that I've mostly blocked from my memory. (I do remember hearing the words, "28AA is the smallest we have.") My boobies were never deal makers. No one would ever say they were the first thing you noticed about me when you met me. Not even in the top 10 things you might notice. Okay, or the top 50 things you might notice. I didn't notice them much, either, once I got them. 

When I was in my late 20s, I got the first hint that my boobs could actually turn on me. I found a thick place in my left breast that led me to a surgeon and my first mammogram. The surgeon eventually removed a small, benign lump and several small cysts and pronounced that my breasts had fibrocystic tendencies. I would probably always have areas of dense breast tissue, cysts, and tenderness. Just what you want to hear when you're 27!

Pregnancy and nursing in my 30s gave me "C" cups for the first (and only) time in my life. I wasn't sorry to see them go back down two cup sizes when it was all over, but did the very LIFE have to be drained from them as well? 

A few years ago, my fibrocystic tendencies became full-blown fibrocystic disease, starting a cycle of painful lumps, ultrasounds, mammograms, cyst aspirations, needle biopsies, and follow-up. The follow-up ultrasound would find yet ANOTHER large cyst (or two, or five) and the cycle would begin again. None of it fun. All of it leading to the next chapter....