Eve Wallinga (00:05):
I’m Eve Wallinga and I’m a breast cancer survivor and I’m from St. Cloud, Minnesota, which is about an hour northwest of Minneapolis. In spring of 06, I found out I had breast cancer. I had found a lump in my left breast and went in and got the ultrasound and mammogram and was actually told everything was fine. I was good to go. And then they called me back and said, “Wait, the radiologist saw something in the other side.” I was home alone and got a phone call and I didn’t even have time to think who is this on the phone or the significance of it. And I picked it up and it was my doctor. And he said, “I’m sorry to tell you that the results do indicate cancer.” And I didn’t hear a lot of what he said after that. And I just wanted to get off the phone and proceeded to go into the bathroom and throw up.

(01:02):
And then after that, I called my husband and told him what I had been told.

(01:09):
And then really didn’t tell many people beyond that. I told my children because I felt I had to because obviously things were going to be going on, but I didn’t feel like talking about it with other people at all. I wanted to not think about it except when I absolutely had to. And I didn’t want them to be looking at me like I was sick. I mean, I know how I had thought it when I’d heard of other people getting cancer and you kind of look at them different. There’s this tragedy going on in their life and I don’t want them to be asking me about it all the time.

(01:49):
So I pretty much kept it to myself. And then the tests started up and doctor’s appointments and you just get kind of caught up in the flurry of that and the structure and keeps you going just day after day. I want women to know that there is life after breast cancer. It’s such a scary thing when you hear a diagnosis like that and it’s hard to get past that, but you do get past it and it changes you. I like to think that the changes I went through were positive ones. It changes you. It doesn’t have to define you though, but it’s certainly something that is going to impact you for the rest of your life. You look at things differently.

(02:39):
For me, breast reconstruction was another level of empowerment also. I wanted to take my body back. Cancer takes over and I wanted to take back from cancer what had it taken from me. So I did a lot of research on different kinds of breast reconstruction. I read books, some journal articles even got on the internet and there were techniques that were being used that I had absolutely no awareness of, one of which was using your own tissue to replace the breast. So in doing all my research, I determined that the place where they were doing most of this work, in fact, I’d done thousands of procedures using your own tissue, was in New Orleans. And it was a stretch for me to make the decision to come here because I was coming all the way from Minnesota, but I could see obviously that they were the most experienced and had done thousands of these procedures.

(03:44):
And I decided that’s where I wanted to go. I wanted to get the best. So that was an empowering decision for me because I was going outside my comfort zone, but I was going after what I thought would work best for me. As soon as I met Dr. DellaCroce, I felt totally at ease and it was obvious from the work that they do, from looking at photos and stuff, that they were real artists, but to have him actually come in and start explaining to me what he was going to do and he has this magic marker and he’s writing on you and he’s going to move this here and there. And it really felt like my body was a canvas. And I started to be able to see, I guess through his eyes probably, what I once was and what I could be again. And I could see it even beyond the scars and the wrinkly skin that I had left, which wasn’t very attractive.

(04:44):
And I started to see my breast and it was a very moving moment for me and came close to tears and it’s an amazing process. And when I went back to Minnesota and this still happens and I see various doctors and they will make comments, and this isn’t unusual at all, like, “Well, I thought she had a mastectomy. It says on here that she had a mastectomy.” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And then I explain, well, I went down to New Orleans and they were like, “New Orleans, yeah, they have the best breast reconstruction surgeons there.” And they’re like, “Oh, I never knew this. I didn’t even know that you could do this. ” They took your abdominal fat and being a breast out of it. They’ll say, “Do you mind if some other people come in here and see you? I’d like to call on some of my colleagues.” I’m like, “No, that’s okay.” And people come into the room and they stand around and they look and they’re like, “This is amazing.” This is the best reconstruction I’ve ever seen.

(05:53):
And it’s like, wait, you have a nipple there. And it’s like, well, no, this is a reconstructed nipple too. And you start to expect it. You really start to expect it.

(06:06):
Cancer is obviously an assault on your life. Everyone knows that, but it’s also an assault on your femininity, particularly breast cancer. Many women are faced with chemotherapy or various drugs you need to take, which will push you into premature menopause if you’re not there already. Your hair might fall out, they’re removing a breast or breasts. And my feminine has always been an important part of who I am, my identity since I was a lot younger. And I know that it’s more than just about these kind of peripheral things about your body, obviously, but yet those things are very important. And when this happened to me, I really didn’t exactly know quite who I was anymore. And to be able to have those things given back to me helped me kind of regain who I was again. I’m laying in bed and I look down and they have these very pretty feminine black lace bras and they could just have white, but no, it’s black, sexy.

(07:24):
And I looked down and my breast was back and it was absolutely magical. It was nothing short of a miracle to me. And the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And they’re monitoring it and they’re keeping track of the pulse and make sure the blood supply is working right. And it was very reminiscent to me of the fetal heartbeat of both of my children and they’re coming in and listening and seeing if it’s nice and strong and it gets kind of the pulse gets stronger as the time goes by. And I think I also never felt as sexual as I did after I got it back. One of the other things that I got out of having cancer, I guess, is that it gives you courage to take risks that you might not have taken before. And before this happened, I had sometimes entertained the thought of like, “What would it be like to go topless on a beach somewhere?” But I had never actually done it.

(08:29):
And my husband and I were in a vacation in a warm area, and this was, I guess, two years after I had the reconstruction. And so I decided, “Well, I’m going to do this. ” And so I did, and it just felt very affirming, and I wasn’t self-conscious at all, which is really somewhat of a testimony to the job that was done here, that I knew I could walk there like that and people weren’t going to think anything of it because it looked totally natural. And I think that’s one of the things that cancer does. It helps you get in touch with some of these things that maybe you’d wanted to do and kind of gives you the courage to go ahead and do those things.

(09:25):
Whereas if cancer had happened, I never would have done something like that. They need to educate themselves about these things because otherwise women are often kind of funneled into a procedure that just their plastic surgery, their plastic surgeon where they happen to live, what techniques that they are familiar with. And they’re often not told … I mean, there’s statistics, it’s like 70% of women don’t understand what all their reconstructive options are, and they really need to do that. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have been afraid of mammograms or of a breast cancer diagnosis, and I certainly wouldn’t have been as afraid of mastectomies because there have been so many advances and so many things learned since then that I just totally was unaware of. And I think most women are unaware of.