The following month, that implant was replaced.
At the beginning of 2022, Pike had her fifth breast surgery — a common revision procedure in which fat would be liposuctioned from her abdomen and grafted onto her reconstructed breasts to fill in the visible rippling from her implants.
“I had just gone shopping for a new wardrobe, and the fat-grafting was supposed to be my last surgery,” Pike says. “I was excited to [be done].”
But things didn’t go as planned.
— Laura Pike
Again, Pike developed a post-surgical infection in the breast that had been radiated during cancer treatment. As a result, that implant had to be removed in yet another procedure, leaving her chest asymmetrical.
Coping With Clothes and Body Image
Pike says the side of her chest where the implant was removed isn’t flat, as it would be with an aesthetic flat closure. Instead, there is excess skin that has a lumpy appearance. “I tend to wear tops that are a bit higher up so when I bend over you can’t see [my chest],” she says.
She also deals with being asymmetrical by wearing a breast prosthesis on the side without an implant for special occasions, when she wants to avoid unwanted attention. But for her regular day-to-day life — running errands or hanging out with friends — she doesn’t wear it.
“Coping with how my wardrobe aligns with my current body has been a challenge,” Pike says.
Dating and Intimacy
Pike is single, and one of her biggest struggles has been worrying about how her body will be perceived by intimate partners. But the advice she received in a breast cancer support group helped her face that fear: “[A support group member] said, ‘Just start off wearing a super cute bra,’” she recalls. “‘And then set the boundary [to not] take it off until you’re ready.’”
Pike remembers being nervous when she was about to be intimate with a new partner after treatment. “I still had radiation burns and expanders in my chest,” she says. “I was like, ‘I have to tell you something before the clothes come off! I had breast cancer and my chest is really weird.’
“And he said, ‘I don’t care what your chest looks like … Don’t ever let that inhibit you,’” Pike continues. “I think somewhere in my head I already knew that, but having an intimate partner tell me that was an exceptional moment for my self-esteem.”
Still, there are challenges. “I don’t know that anybody gets through [cancer] without some times of deep despair and grief. Even the people who seem like they’re doing well have really low moments,” she says. “It’s okay to sit in that and grieve.”
Making Meaning and Finding Community
In 2021, Pike’s sister, who is also BRCA2-positive, was diagnosed with breast cancer, too. The two sisters were talking about how hard it was to find images of mastectomy results online. That led Pike to create Empowered Mastectomy, a website where people who’ve had a mastectomy can submit photos of their surgical outcomes, and people who are planning to get a mastectomy can search a gallery of the results, categorized by type of procedure — such as implant reconstruction, aesthetic flat closure, flap reconstruction, prophylactic or preventive mastectomy, and male breast cancer.
In addition to helping others through her website, Pike has discovered another unexpected positive: connecting online, primarily through social media, with others who’ve experienced body image struggles, whether as a result of a cancer diagnosis, another disease or condition, or some kind of accident.
“Everybody coming together and talking about it — I find a lot of joy in that,” she says.
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