Reconstruction surgery – Malika

 

Malika wanted to decide later on whether or not to have reconstruction so that she could focus on her survival for now.

Transcript

Immediate reconstruction… The goal for me, I told myself: “I must save my own skin, my life. The esthetics, we’ll think about it later. But right now, it is my treatments, it is saving my own skin…” I am trying to survive this and will see after.

Interviewer: It is a question of priority?

It’s me… For me, I am pragmatic… It is a question of priority. The esthetics will come after. Frankly, I didn’t know how I was going to react. I didn’t know. And I don’t know because I am telling myself that some people are living without arms, legs, without… And the breast, I can… we can live without… We can live without it. I was more scared of the reconstruction because I didn’t know if I was going to have radiotherapy, knowing that I had something inside me… I had many questions because… But even the reconstruction it is still two surgeries. Well it was… Even if it was immediate but I had to be operated a second time. Am I ready to undergo this and go every week, go to inflate the expander that they were going to install? What… I didn’t have enough strength for all this. So, I told myself, as well… I must first save my life and then we will think about the esthetics later and knowing that I would have to undergo another surgery; because I must have the ovaries and the fallopian tubes removed because I am a carrier of the Hubert gene.

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