Me, a few minutes before surgeryToday I will lose both of my breasts to a double mastectomy. This is, without any doubt, the most difficult day of my life. I don’t think that I am afraid that I will hate how I look without breasts, or anything quite so mundane. And in some ways, its odd that the loss is what I fear so deeply when really, the only thing that matters in this scenario is whether or not the cancer has actually spread, setting up the scenario for metastasis. No, I think it has something to do with the impending reorganization of the topography of my body. I have inhabited this body for 48 years, and although I didn’t ever feel like I was particularly fond of my breasts, they are part of what Miller called the “temple of the familiar”. My body. My shape. And all this is about to change profoundly. It feels like I am about to participate in some kind of enforced phenomenological reorganization that could only ever come much too quickly. I could never be ready for this. I am terrified.