Of course cancer is never what you expect it to be. You feel like you’re thrown into a situation with a loan shark where you are bargaining for body parts.

Please let me keep my hair, a little bit of estrogen, my boobs, damn what about my nips.

Yes, you’re grateful to be alive to have treatments that make you better even as they make you sick.

But, I have to draw a line. I’d like to keep my nips. I realize that I’m lucky to be able to have that option. It’s not as easy as you would think to find a surgeon willing to do a nipple sparing mastectomy. And, when you find one there are no guarantees that it will work out.

There’s so much sacrifice in dealing with cancer including the ignorant bliss that is my precancerous life. Having breast cancer already feels like reverse puberty, you lose your boobs, estrogen, and oftentimes fertility. It seems like such a small thing to want to keep your nips.

They won’t function as before and would be purely cosmetic. But they’re such small reminders of what life was like before having poisonous boobs.

Besides, if I get to keep them maybe once this is all over I’ll throw some pasties on them in celebration, even if I can’t feel a thing. At least they’re mine.