I heard a soft voice above the beeping machines and pop music playing in the background. I had a hard time opening my eyes.

“Emily, wake up. Justin and JC are out in the waiting room and they want to see you.”

With all my might, I flopped my head over toward the nurse, Debra, and opened my eyes. She smiled as she petted my head and repeated her statement once more, “Justin and JC are here to see you.”

Even under the influence of the remnants of seven hours worth of general anesthesia, I knew very well that my two favorite *NSYNC members weren’t down the hall waiting for me to come around.

“I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” I mumbled, my throat scratchy and irritated from the oxygen tube that had just been removed. Debra no sooner placed a pan next to my mouth than my eyes closed again and I was asleep.

***

I felt someone squeezing my foot and this time I immediately opened my eyes.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to an *NSYNC concert in two weeks!” I had barely been out of the operating room for twenty minutes when my doctor started yelling at me. My mom must have let my secret slip—that I was going to three *NSYNC concerts in a row two weeks after the operation.

“She’ll be fine,” said the smiley nurse to the surgeon, who was also her husband. “And they’ll be the first to see her new and improved self!”

I fell asleep again, this time for awhile. New and improved.

***

I’d always half joked, half complained that I wanted plastic surgery—a breast reduction, to be specific—and my friends told me I was crazy. “Well, can I have what you don’t want?” they’d say, not understanding why anyone would want to get rid of her breasts.

If you were already a size D by the time you were in seventh grade, you’d understand.

I was always a little bit taller than my peers, a little heavier than most of the girls in my class, but everything was in proportion. Except for my chest. I was healthy but forget about running the mile in gym class. Wearing a strapless dress for my senior prom? BIG ORDEAL. Who makes a strapless bra in an FF cup size? It almost seems inconceivable.

Not to mention the pure physical discomfort. Poor posture, back pain, permanent grooves in my shoulders from my bra straps.

I mentioned the thought of surgery to my parents numerous times throughout high school, usually while in the mall doing back-to-school clothes shopping or shopping for something spectacular like a prom dress or a new bathing suit. A specific moment sticks out in my mind—my senior prom dress had to be special ordered four sizes too big to accommodate my chest, then fitted extensively to make it small enough to fit the rest of me. My father’s motto regarding his extensive tool collection fit that experience perfectly: “It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it!” But somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

The inability to wear trendy clothes and skimpy bathing suits wasn’t the only drawback to my oversized breasts, though. During my junior year of high school, I started developing back problems. I thought I was just out of shape but I had been involved in (at least) semi-athletic activities all my life, including marching band and drum & bugle corps. When I couldn’t even enjoy the relaxing stretches we had to do at winter drum corps rehearsals without feeling twangs of stinging pain down my back, I knew something was wrong.

After visiting a chiropractor for several months without full relief, I was sent to have an MRI just to make sure everything was all right with my spine. Sure enough, everything was not all right. I had two herniated discs in my lower back, and short of back surgery, nothing could be done to correct them. An orthopedic surgeon put me on Celebrex®, an anti-inflammatory medicine used to ease the symptoms of arthritis. I also had to lie on ice packs for thirty minutes twice a day, and was told that I could no longer march drum corps. My passion was taken away.

That summer I watched my friends and younger sister at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wis., marching so strong and proud and ultimately placing among the top ten best drum corps in the world. I watched from the stands that night with my parents, trying to hold back my tears. The previous summer, that would have been me on the field.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that my mother called me and told me that she had spoken to another nurse in her hospital who had had breast reduction surgery. The plastic surgeon the nurse recommended actually worked out of the same hospital and my mother called him for a consultation.

In the several weeks between the initial call and my first appointment, I received literature in the mail from the doctor’s office. It included pamphlets that described the procedure and who the best candidates for the procedure were: those who had fully matured physically, and those who were mentally mature enough to have realistic expectations about what the surgery could do for them.

Realistic expectations? My only expectation was that the doctor would make my chest smaller! I found out at my consultation that breast reduction surgery could do even more than I’d ever realized.

It may have been snowing the day I walked into the office with my mom and dad, but maybe I was just shivering because I was nervous and excited all at once. The waiting room had crisp, new issues of “Modern Bride” and “Highlights,” my two favorite doctor’s office magazines.

I was called in shortly after my arrival and my parents came with me. Dr. Cimino didn’t leave us waiting in a cold examination room for a long time like a lot of other doctors do and I liked him immediately if for no other reason but that.

He entered the room with a nurse (who was also his wife, how cute! I thought), introduced himself and Debra to us, and then proceeded to ask me a lot of questions about what I wanted out of a reduction mammaplasty, the technical name for breast reduction surgery. I told him everything I could think of: I wanted to help get rid of the stress on my back, I wanted to look and feel better about myself, I wanted to wear normal clothes and feel youthful. My health was suffering from my large breasts, and I wanted to do something about it so that I could enjoy the so-called best years of my life.

“All right,” he said, but then he launched into a speech about the serious risks and drawbacks involved with such a surgery: general anesthesia for six or more hours, extensive scarring, drainage, possible disfigurement, infection, possible loss of sensation, inability to breast feed… There were a lot of drawbacks that probably have deterred people before me. But my mind was made up.

My parents were still supportive as well, so Dr. Cimino pulled out some slides and gave us a nice little picture show of some of his previous masterpieces. At first, it seemed that a lot of the women in the “before” pictures had no reason for a breast reduction, at least in my opinion. But as he went down the slides, I saw how well the surgery turned out for all of them, even the ones with breasts as large as mine and larger. I was very impressed and so were my parents.

After looking at slides, it was my time to get undressed and put on a robe so that Dr. Cimino could make some preliminary markings on my breasts in order to show me what he would be doing during surgery. After I was covered with graffiti, I stood in front of a full length mirror and watched as Dr. Cimino very gently and very professionally showed me where he would cut, where he would sew, and how my breasts would look when he was finished.

Even more impressive, he told me that he could take me from my current FF cup down to a D, or even a C or smaller if that’s what I chose.

Before the end of our consultation, my father was quick to ask about costs and insurance coverage because this type of cosmetic procedure is not cheap. Dr. Cimino said he would write up a letter explaining my situation (in his medical jargon) to send to the insurance company requesting coverage and that we should try to get as many other letters of recommendation as possible from my chiropractor and orthopedic doctor. He told us that the more professionals I had stating my case, the better chances of the insurance company covering the $18,000 surgery (includes physician’s fees, plus anesthesia and other hospital fees).

So it was set. My surgery was scheduled for May 16, two weeks after the end of my sophomore year of college. Two months after my initial consultation in December, we received notification that the insurance company was going to pay for the surgery because they deemed that it was not purely cosmetic and that I needed it for health reasons.

Several months and several visits later, I was in the plastic surgeon’s office once more with my mother, the day before my surgery. Dr. Cimino came in and meticulously made the final markings on my chest, the ones that he would use as his guide the next morning in the operating room. He quoted the carpenters’ motto, “Measure twice, cut once.” He asked if I had any more questions or concerns and briefed me on what to do and what not to do between then and my arrival at the hospital the next morning. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight and I had to be careful while showering so as not to wash off the markings. If I did wash them off, I would have to get to the hospital even earlier the next morning so that he could re-mark me.

The next morning I woke up before the sun came up, said goodbye to my dad and sister (who were half asleep anyway) and drove to the hospital with my mom. After all the technical stuff was taken care of, I was whisked away to the waiting room, which kind of reminded me of an airport terminal. There were lots of tiny rooms with all kinds of people in them and the people were just waiting around, watching TV and waiting to take off, one by one.

After meeting my anesthesiologist and putting on my skimpy hospital gown and fashionable white anti-embolitic stockings (to keep the blood in my legs from clotting) a nurse asked me if I wanted anything to relax me, but surprisingly enough, I felt completely relaxed. I was excited to get started because I couldn’t wait to finally look and feel better.

As they wheeled me out of the waiting room and into the hallway, my mom—with a few nervous tears in her eyes—jokingly told me to give her a call on her cell phone if I had a break during the surgery. My mom, the strong and nonchalant critical care nurse who has seen it all, was scared for me, and it was only then that I felt remotely nervous.

A nurse wheeled me to an operating room at the end of the hallway, complete with a privacy curtain over the window so that no one could peek in while the surgery was taking place. It was comforting to know that Dr. Cimino truly had his patients’ best interests at heart.

For some reason, I was under the impression that at no point during surgery the patient actually saw the operating room, so my nerves were a little bit wracked when they steered me through the doors and parked me next to the narrow operating table. I was told to “scootch” over and make myself comfortable on the table, where I was then covered with warm blankets. As he was poking and prodding a needle into my arm, the anesthesiologist was telling a nurse how his son didn’t get to play the snare drum in his spring concert the previous night and there was a lot of other muttering and giggling going on throughout the room. I didn’t think until after the surgery that performing those tasks was daily routine for the doctors and nurses, and chit-chatting while hanging an IV bag or giving a needle was the same as “water cooler” chat in an office.

They didn’t even tell me to count once they put the oxygen mask on my face—I don’t remember falling asleep. The time I spent in the operating room seemed as quick as the blink of an eye, and I was soon waking up as I faintly heard Debra saying my name.

I regained a state of semi-consciousness just in time to experience the discomfort of the oxygen tube being pulled out of my throat. I felt like gagging but I fell asleep again.

As soon as I got into recovery I was bombarded with beeping machines and questions from people I had never seen before. I was in and out of sleep, so it didn’t matter. When Debra and Dr. Cimino came in to check on me, I started crying. Debra said that anesthesia sometimes makes you cry for no reason but maybe she was just saying that to make me feel better…

When I arrived in my room, a single, thanks to my mom’s connections to the hospital and the nurse who did bed assignments, I slept for awhile. Seven hours of general anesthesia is no walk in the park. My mom stayed with me all night and helped me eat yellow Jell-O® and bland chicken broth. We watched some reality TV and I got to meet a lot of the people she worked with at the hospital, who all came in throughout their shifts to see how I was doing. It was a real bonding experience, although I continually had to apologize to my guests for my anesthesia-induced narcolepsy.

My chest felt really hot and was covered in layers upon layers of white gauze sterile dressings. A nurse put a cold pack over the dressings to keep the swelling down but I couldn’t really notice a difference right away. I couldn’t wait to see my new self but when I finally tried to stand up to see myself in the bathroom mirror, I felt like the bandages and my boobs were going to fall off. I tried to sleep that night but every few hours a nurse would come in to take my vital signs and empty my drains. Plus, all the Ringer’s solution being pumped through my IV to keep me hydrated also sent me to the bathroom about once every hour during the night. Aren’t you supposed to be able to rest in a hospital?

The next day, Dr. Cimino and Debra came in to see me before I was to be discharged. He said I did great and he couldn’t wait for me to see myself. They helped me sit up and removed the sterile dressings—one by one they came off and my new breasts, although black and blue and covered in tiny pieces of tape to keep the stitches together, were revealed to me. Dr. Cimino and Debra helped me into a surgical bra that I would have to wear 24-hours-a-day for the first several months of my recovery, and I finally walked into the bathroom to look at myself.

I had a midriff.

I could see my stomach.

I was “perky.”

I started to cry again, this time not blaming it on the anesthesia. Despite the burning and the scarring I knew I was going to have, I was finally normal. I was happy.

The day-after-the-day-after is always the hardest and I sat around in my bed all day ringing a bell for assistance when I needed something. I had to keep my elbows at my sides all the time, which made things like reaching, eating, combing my hair and getting dressed alone a problem but my family was so helpful and understanding that it didn’t matter (even though they said I looked like a T-Rex with my little arms!).

Three days after the surgery, though, I was up and about. Immediately, I noticed a difference because of the surgery. The strain on my back was eased significantly and my posture improved 100 percent. I got to see my boyfriend for the first time after the surgery, and he was in awe. He helped me climb into his car, gently fastened my seatbelt for me and took me to see a movie. The day after that, I was out with my family, (carefully) cheering on our favorite local hockey team.

After taking the non-dissolving stitches out the next week, Dr. Cimino asked me how I was liking myself so far. “Boobular,” I said. He looked at me, confused. “It means they’re excellent boobs, and I love everything you’ve done to help me. Thank you so much.” He smiled and said, “You’re welcome. Boobular… do you mind if I use that?”