As much as I have sought to understand cancer itself at the most microscopic level, I remind myself every day: the insidiousness of this disease is not in how deadly it is, but how it destroys a woman’s life, her sense of self—externally, internally, and everywhere in between. For some patients, the biggest milestone in their treatment is not a clean scan, a successful surgery; it’s when they wake up to find that their hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes are finally growing back. It’s when they finish getting nipple tattoos on their reconstructed breasts. It’s when they look in the mirror and see
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