Before going to my follow-up appointment with my surgeon today, I noticed that my right breast felt smaller than my left one.

When I arrived at Dr. Lee's office, I mentioned this to her nurse, who agreed that my right expandable implant seemed smaller and flatter than the left one. When Dr. Lee arrived and examined me, she stated that it's possible that I have a ruptured implant—what I described as a tire with a slow leak.

There doesn't seem to be any medical concerns with a leaking expandable implant, but it could impact next steps. The original plan was to increase the amount of saline solution in the expandable implants every two to three weeks until the desired size was reached, pause for 6 to 9 months, then do another surgery to replace the expandable implants with more permanent ones.

If my right expandable implant is, indeed, ruptured and loses fluid faster than the biweekly augmentations add, Dr. Lee may have to move more quickly to the second surgery, using the largest size of implants that my body will accommodate.

When I heard this news, I felt deflated (no pun intended). With everything I've been through over the past four years, I've never asked myself, "Why me?" But today I did. Why can't the reconstruction proceed without complications?

I asked Dr. Lee whether there was something I had done that led to this possible circumstance or whether there is something I need to do because of it. She said no.

I had been looking forward to getting back to normal—being able to lift and work and exercise. In a couple of weeks, I should have been able to resume all regular activities. Now I feel like I'm driving a car with two spare tires, one of which is punctured.

When I got home from the doctor's appointment, I retreated to my bed and put on an episode of the podcast Wiser Than Me. I chose the one in which host Julia Louis-Dreyfus interviews writer Anne Lamott. Among the many profound things that Lamott said was this:

By a certain age, we have all had unsurvivable losses.... I know what helps and I know what doesn't help.... Bumper stickers and platitudes don't work. What works when somebody's going through unsurvivable loss is that you show up and you sit with them, and you are willing to feel like sh*t with them. And you don't try to get them to feel any better than they do for as long as it takes them.

But what really stood out for me was Lamott's statement that:

Your mind is a bad neighbourhood, and you shouldn't be in it alone.

She explained that when she was struggling with sobriety, her friends—whom she called the "sober women"—would come over to be with her.

At this moment, I feel like my mind is a bad neighbourhood, as I question past decisions and actions, worry about the present and wonder about the future. I debated whether to share this information now, or wait a few weeks until I had more information. (Maybe I don't have a rupture. Or maybe it's a tiny one.) But my daughter encouraged me to be forthright, saying that people appreciate when others share both the good and the bad of their lives. With Mel's wise counsel and Lamott's words ringing in my ears, I decided that I shouldn't be alone right now in the negative neighbourhood of my mind.

Regardless of what comes next, tonight's post reflects my state of mind at this moment. I will probably look back on this day at some point in the future and realize that it was a minor speed bump on my road to recovery.

I took one more thing from Lamott's interview on Wiser Than Me. She quoted Thich Nhat Hanh's breathing mantra: "Breathing in, I calm myself. Breathing out, I smile." I may not yet be at the point of smiling, but I can remind myself to breathe and calm myself.