Grateful child draws a picture to thank surgeon for mastectomy **MNHQ content warning for upsetting image*

[Haworthia]

Tweeted by Janice Turner and Keira Bell.

How upsetting is this?

They are painful. But the main reason would be they feel wrong and like they shouldn't be there. You could argue that is cosmetic. Everything about them causes me upset. They even dictate how I lie to sleep, as I hate lying on fat. Equally, I'm not trans. And I can't have it done.

@LoveMySituation are you sure you can't? Only I have a friend who had a reduction. She had to lose a certain amount of weight first, but once she'd done that and they didn't naturally decrease it went ahead.

We're all said this before, but this movement couldn't have got anywhere without complicit and unethical doctors. Doctors are the ones with all the supposed expertise and training so I hold them more responsible than I do zealous activists.

That's interesting actually @LoveMySituation. It seems similar to what some people describe as their experience of gender dysphoria. I know lots of people would like to change parts of their body for comfort reasons or aesthetic reasons but your feelings sound a bit different to that.

I have a physical disability, not a really severe one but not insignificant, and my feelings about the part of my body affected are quite similar to what you describe and always have been.

Certainly not whilst the peri hormonal merry go round is happening, I'd be worried they grow back! I'm not that big, I'd not get a reduction on the NHS. Also I live in the middle of nowhere with no transport. So not now

What a strange thing to put out on social media. As a doctor promoting your services wouldn’t you want to only promote evidence of your patients’ good understanding of what they’d consented to?

Rather than revealing a patient’s fantasy image of a serious, permanent, painful procedure? This looks like a very childlike unrealistic conception of what is actually going on, the doctors involved etc

I know chatty.

Why would you put a picture of woman having her breasts removed on SM

Oh dear none of that sounds fun. I think that's a bit poor on the NHS to provide cosmetic surgery for one group, but not another when there's pain and a need.

Or a picture of the woman’s cut off breasts dripping with blood

Aspiring, I'm finding it interesting to read about your experiences. Is it getting easier as you get older? I have another part of my body that a lot of people have 'expected' me to feel as you do about yours, and as I do about the other parts I was talking about, yet I don't. It feels part of me.

To feel so at odds / distressed with your sexed body that you surgically remove those body parts , probably without having adequate psychological exploration of the reasons why you would feel like this, is not something to celebrate. We will look on this in the futute the same way as we view lobotomies, and all the other horrendous methods that doctors used to treat people for mental health disorders, having a child out of wedlock or being a 'loose' woman.

This

Prices start at 6000k for a mastectomy

LoveMySituation it has become easier in a way. It used to take up more headspace I suppose and I felt more angsty about it. I do still have that internalised feeling but like most people I don't have the time or energy to devote to making a big deal of it! But I suppose it might give me some insight into the trans thing. Hadn't made the connection before but thinking about accounts I've read, I would describe it in very similar terms. Much more so than, say, feeling bad about my weight and wanting that to be different.

My breasts ache from looking at that. It reminds me of the same feeling I had in my feet when reading Snowflower and the Secret Fan when the author describes the foot binding scenes.

@WildishBambino
I’ve had a full double, with lymph removal. It’s a physically brutal operation, with weeks of physio afterwards. I doubt ‘top surgery’ is anywhere near as thorough, as it’s a cosmetic procedure so it doesn’t need to be, but a lot of the side effects will be the same. I’d be interested to know how many women who’ve had ‘top surgery’ develop cording, which is a type of scar tissue which causes painful immobility of the arms. There’s extensive and unavoidable nerve damage, too.

And to follow on from that Vermeil, if the cosmetic “top surgery” version of double mastectomy doesn’t completely remove all tissue, that would mean there would still be tissue at risk of developing breast cancer throughout their lives. I wonder if any thought has been given to how these women will be screened for and breast cancer detected in the remaining tissue, and what advice has been given to them. Are they told they will still need to be vigilant? Is family history of breast cancer risk factored in to surgical approach?

Interesting Aspiring, I'm glad it's got easier for you. I'm the opposite, the longer I've had to live with them, and especially since having to use them for their purpose(bf, hated every second of it, plus they couldn't do it very well) I've found it harder and harder, and in the last year or so, the anger caused by the hormonal hell that is peri is more often than not directed at them(ironic considering the hormones are the reason they're there in the first place!)
And thanks Not bad, for making me consider another aspect of this. My mother died of b cancer(she got it a a young age as well) , and I hadn't thought of anything being left behind, but that's an important point. Vermeil does your procedure still cause you problems can I ask?

I feel so sick about this that I even woke up thinking about it from yesterday.
I had no idea that this was going on (and being celebrated) in the Harley St area by supposedly reputable surgeons. This man Berry makes me feel ill. That drawing of amputated healthy breasts dripping with blood is horrific.
I feel like reporting him to the GMC, but I suspect it's all perfectly fine with the private medical profession, as long as these immoral narcissistic surgeons are coining it in. I hope there is a special place in hell for them come judgement day.

@Vermeil I appreciate your sharing the extent of what you endured. I am so sorry you had to go through that. I just hope young women considering double mastectomies will listen to women like you about the realities of such a major surgery.

Vermeil
I’m still recalling that doctor’s Instagram with all the breasts and torsos too pearlkent, it’s such a disturbing and dehumanising approach to patients unfortunately it really sits with you once you’ve seen it.

Vermeil
Almost a year on from my right breast mastectomy (cancer) and lymph removal - the whole of the right top side of my back and the back of the top of my right arm is still totally numb.
So if it feels itchy and I scratch it I actually cannot feel my scratching on the skin in those areas - because as you say part of the procedure is to remove all nerve endings there. I believe this is permanent.
You are absolutely right is it major surgery.

Re the questions on side effects: a cosmetic mastectomy would not involve removal of lymph nodes or clearing the axilla (armpit) of all breast tissue. It's operating on the axilla that tends to cause lymph fluid build up (seroma or lymphoedema) and nerve damage post-operatively.

But, of course, any operation can lead to side effects like infection, pain and severe scarring.

Utterly horrifying, but fear not, Mr Berry is all about the ethics

first do no harm ???