Page 85 2023 PAINT THE PAPER PINK Lincoln Daily News Oct/Nov 2023 her breasts were to lay, more or less hanging through the bottom of the table. She said she had been asked what kind of music she wanted, and she chose show tunes because they were happy with upbeat rhythms. The work done eventually determined that Andrea’s tumor was about one inch in diameter, slow growing, and had been in her body for possibly as many as 14 years. That final recommendation was that Andrea undergo a radical mastectomy with both breasts being removed, and a complete hysterectomy removing the uterus and the ovaries. In essence, the end result would be surgical menopause. Afterward, she would not have to have chemotherapy or radiation, which she says was the luckiest part of her diagnosis. She would have to take medications to compensate for what she had lost, and she had to take an aromatase inhibitor because her cancer was estrogen-positive-HER2-negative. This meant the cancer was estrogen based and therefore could spread into other regions of the body. It was such a hard blow for Andrea. She explains that it was about no longer being anatomically correct. She was not going to be a woman anymore; she was not going to be anything at all. Andrea did decide to have breast reconstruction surgery. She said it wasn’t about vanity as much as it was about doing what was best for her mental health. “a lot of me felt like I wasn’t much of a woman anymore.” She said her surgery was about not thinking about what had happened to her. She said she didn’t want to walk by a mirror every day and be reminded of what was missing, and today, she doesn’t. “I had everything reconstructed, by breasts and my nipples, so when I look I don’t see the scares, I don’t see what I am not.” Andrea said John was a rock throughout her entire course of action. And, he had urged her to get a second opinion. Andrea said at that time, she was not in the right place to go through it all again. She didn’t want a second opinion; she just wanted it all to be over. John insisted. “I finally told him if you can get figure out how to get me a second opinion where I have to go nowhere, talk to no one, they don’t feel my breast, they don’t take my shirt off, and they don’t inconvenience me in any way then you go for it, and he did.” Andrea explained that her husband was working as a project manager for the Continued --
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