[Laurel]

Dianne,

I chose to go the bilat mastectomy route for the same reason you did. For me there was never a moment that I did not desire reconstruction. My young, skilled plastic surgeon fashioned new "girls" for me with retention of my breast skin and silicone implants to fill in for the lost breast tissue. He fashioned nipples, too! Nice kid, that pc! They are soft and look pretty, darned good. The nice thing for me is that they are comfortable. Rarely am I conscious of them at all! I will tell you the expanders are not much fun, but once you have the exchange surgery you are really nearly normal!

I suggest you visit BreastCancer.org. They have threads there that deal with all types of breast reconstruction and non-recon issues such as prosthetics. They discuss various types of nipple recon and if you send a PM to "tintam" after visiting the site for a bit (so she knows you are not a lurker) you will be given a password to a private site where women post before and after photos of their recon. I found that site to be very help to me in my decision to proceed with reconstruction and really encourage you to visit it.