H OW TO L E A R N TO
love your new body FOR WOMEN DIAGNOSED WITH BREAST C ANCER, SURGERY C AN BE A PARTICULARLY HARD PART OF THE JOURNEY, BUT YOU ARE NOT ALONE Accepting how your body looks after surgery can be challenging. A new survey, by Future Dreams and its partner Amoena, manufacturer of post-op swimwear and underwear, reveals there is much to be done to make women feel more confident. More than 2,600 women took part in the survey, and six in 10 said breast cancer surgery left them feeling less attractive and feminine. Seven in 10 said they now felt limited in the clothes they could wear. And four in 10 were worried their breasts looked uneven.
struggles women have and says many breast cancer survivors think they are being shallow and ungrateful when they find it hard to come to terms with their new body. But, she says, they have every right to be concerned and must feel able to talk about these issues.
Other women in the survey were worried their scarring or – if they had not had a reconstruction – that their replacement breast forms, would show. One third chose to wear baggy clothes to camouflage their problems.
‘Women think it is vain to worry about how their breasts will look after they have had surgery, but it is not,’ she says. ‘Even with the best surgical techniques, their breasts may not be the same size or shape as they were or they may have had to have mastectomy without reconstruction, especially during the current Covid-19 crisis.
Not every woman felt this way, however. The survey showed that two out of 10 women felt the same or even more confident after surgery. So how do you learn to embrace the new you with confidence?
‘It is not vanity. It is about encouraging women to feel good about themselves after their surgery.’
Joanna Franks is a Future Dreams trustee and one of the UK’s leading consultant breast and oncoplastic surgeons. She witnesses first-hand the
Ms Franks says many patients are unaware that symmetry surgery is available on the NHS. The operation, which makes breasts look balanced,
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