Feelingless Boobs (and Other Things No One Prepares You For)

Feelingless Boobs (and Other Things No One Prepares You For)

🌼 Date: Friday, December 19, 2025

⚡ Energy: Low

💔 Status: Alive – I think

😒 Outlook: Holding steady, but we keep going

Some days, the phrase “we keep going” sounds motivational.
Other days, it’s just a fact.

Today was a fact kind of day.

The numbness nobody really explains

I went down a Google rabbit hole trying to understand why everything from my collarbone to just under where my breasts should be is numb. Not “a little tingly.” Not “asleep.” Just… gone.

Turns out, during a double mastectomy, a whole lot of sensory nerves get cut. They run right through the tissue that gets removed, so there’s no way around it. The nerves that supply sensation to the breast skin, nipple, areola, chest wall, and even into the armpit area are often severed or damaged.

That includes nerves coming off the ribs (intercostal nerves), nerves in the armpit where lymph nodes live, and nerves that run along the pectoral muscle — the exact areas my physical therapist worked on this week.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I realized I was having one of those days in full-on leopard pajama mode. No armor. No pretending. Just soft clothes, a tired body, and the quiet decision to keep showing up anyway.

If you want the medical receipts, I’m putting all of that information over on The Science of the Shit Show because it helps me to understand why my body feels the way it does — even when I don’t like the answer.

Physical therapy:

progress I didn’t expect

Here’s the part that surprised me.

I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t done every stretch every day. And yet… my range of motion improved — in some movements, almost doubled. That felt like a small miracle.

My physical therapist worked deeply in my armpits (where lymph nodes were removed), and in that strange no-man’s-land where the armpit turns into the chest muscle. She also worked lower — right over the expanders themselves.

It wasn’t painful, but it was… weird. Pressure without sensation. Like my brain knew something was happening, but my body couldn’t fully feel it.

Feelingless boobs and other things no one prepares you for

Will I ever get feeling back?

The honest answer: maybe a little, maybe not much.

Nerves can regenerate, but slowly. Sometimes sensation returns partially. Sometimes it doesn’t. I already know that when nipple reconstruction happens, there will be no sensation there. Permanently. High beams on forever.

But realizing that large parts of my chest — and my boobs — may never feel anything again? That’s a lot to wrap my head around.

What does it mean to live in a body where parts of you are permanently offline?

I don’t have a poetic answer yet. I’m still processing that one.

When “different” suddenly feels like “wrong”

Fast forward to the shower.

I noticed my right side now feels flat and hard at the top of the expander — just like the left. The left side had the larger tumor, so I was told it would look more recessed until final implants go in. Fine. I had adjusted to that.

But now the right side looks and feels different too.

Cue the spiral:

• Did physical therapy push fluid out?
• Did a seroma finally absorb?
• Did something rupture?
• Or is this just… another normal-but-unsettling phase?

Right now, I don’t know. I just know something changed, and when your body has already betrayed you once, change doesn’t feel neutral.

And then there’s the nausea

If I had to rank chemo symptoms, nausea wins. Every time.

Hair loss? Hair grows back.
Fingernails falling off? (Yes, that’s a thing with my chemo.) They grow back too.

But nausea? Nausea is relentless.

Yesterday afternoon, it won. I can’t keep anything down — even ginger ale wants no part of this. I have multiple nausea meds, and sometimes even mixing and matching them doesn’t touch it.

This is one of those symptoms you don’t power through. You don’t fix it. You just… ride it out.

And that helpless feeling? That’s not my favorite place to live.

Before cancer (BC), I’d just sleep when I felt sick. Now my sleep is so broken I can’t even escape that way.

It’s a solid –15/10, would not recommend.

So… we keep going

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I realized I was having one of those days in full-on leopard pajama mode. No armor. No pretending. Just soft clothes, a tired body, and the quiet decision to keep showing up anyway.

No big lesson today.
No silver lining neatly wrapped with a bow.

Just this:

My body is healing and hurting at the same time.
Progress and loss are happening side by side.
Things are changing — sometimes for the better, sometimes just… different.

And even when I don’t love it, even when it’s uncomfortable, scary, or exhausting —

we keep going.

💗 Tina –
One Badass Day at a Time