"Sandra, it's cancer. We have to remove both breasts."
After undergoing a double mastectomy, her reaction to seeing her new body for the first time went viral. Sandra Monroy tells Brut the story behind the emotional image.
After undergoing a double mastectomy, her reaction to seeing her new body for the first time went viral. Sandra Monroy tells Brut the story behind the emotional image.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You're too young to have no breasts.
00:02You won't be able to wear a bra, you won't be able to wear a bikini,
00:05and no one will love you, right?
00:07Because you're incomplete.
00:09And if I don't do this, what happens?
00:11I mean, really, no one will love me.
00:13I mean, really, I'm going to look like an ugly doll.
00:16I don't even know what cancer is, nor what's going to happen to me.
00:20Much less what comes at the aesthetic level.
00:24I've been attending FUKAM for 12 years.
00:31The only year I didn't do the ultrasound was in 2020, when the pandemic started.
00:38And when I got there in 2021, the radiologist checked me and said,
00:43Sandy, everything is still fine on the right, but there's something on the left that I don't like.
00:48I never had a bruise, I never had red, I didn't have orange skin, I didn't have a bruise.
00:54The results arrive, and that's when the oncologist says,
00:58Sandra, it's cancer.
00:59At first, it was believed that they were only going to remove the bruise,
01:03or they were going to do both breasts, for the following reason.
01:06Being so young, you have more years of life, and therefore, you can return,
01:13or a new cancer can appear, much more aggressive, on the right breast.
01:18There, you don't think if it's a breast, you think about your life.
01:21My breasts need me, not me, my breasts.
01:24But I also found, from the term bilateral mastectomy,
01:28the fact that being flat didn't happen at all.
01:32And I found women with a new aesthetic, where for me there was absolutely nothing missing.
01:38I met Sandra because she makes super pretty, personalized monkeys.
01:43She and I clicked, and well, the results came out as we would have liked.
01:53She started doing things to say goodbye to her breasts,
01:57and that's when we agreed to take some pictures so that she would say goodbye to her breasts.
02:03What you see in the photograph are the women who have been around me all the time.
02:09My mom, Sasha, Gina.
02:12When the bets fell, the look of all of them, of Gina, Sasha, and my mom,
02:17it wasn't like, oh, poor thing, but it was a look of seeing me come out of the cocoon, right?
02:26I mean, of the metamorphosis.
02:28What that scar is leaving you, at least in my case,
02:32were two beautiful survival messages.
02:36But she never saw the photo.
02:37No, I never saw it.
02:38Until it was published.
02:39It was the first flat in Universal, and well, it has traveled the world.
02:46It is the vulnerability open to the service of all.
02:50So I think it's a debt that had to be paid by thousands of women.
02:55When you grow up, they tell you, oh, no, he doesn't have boobs, he's flat, right?
02:59Oh, he has boobs, look, he runs and they move, ha ha ha.
03:04And suddenly, when you're older, they tell you, your breasts are your currency.
03:09It's like, look, you're never going to need to pay for a drink, right?
03:11You're a woman and you have to breastfeed.
03:13And if you want to breastfeed and you can't, it's also wrong, right?
03:17If they had told me before that this was happening to me,
03:20well, I would have taught more about boobs, right?
03:22The process is not over, right?
03:24I mean, because, for example, Sandra has to continue taking a drug,
03:28which she will have to take for five years.
03:31And during that time, obviously, she has many plans, right?
03:35Like for her scars, for her body.
03:39Don't tell me, do it.
03:41Don't tell me, poor thing.
03:42What helps me is your support and your money.
03:46Because it's one of the most expensive diseases out there.
03:49We don't talk about it, we don't say it.
03:51It's a family, political, economic, environmental issue.
03:56Because in my case, the oncogenes came out negative
03:59and that meant that my cancer came from the outside.
04:04And being from the outside, then you ask yourself,
04:06am I living in a world that is making me sick?
04:09And if it's making me sick, how many more?
04:12Why is all this stored in the closet?
04:16Can't you see it's the first cause of death?
04:18I mean, can't you see that one in seven of us is going to die from this?
04:22And if we knew everything it involves,
04:24we would look at those bodies with more respect.
04:27Not just saying, you're missing this.
04:31But saying, wow, if this woman went through chemo,
04:36radiotherapy, hormonal therapy, mastectomy,
04:38or one of all of them, or all of them at the same time,
04:42I think we would value the ability to live,
04:45and not what's missing.