Jaime Zografos
For the big 4-0, Jaime Zografos thought she’d give herself a present: a breast augmentation. She’d lost weight, and now her chest was flatter than ever…
The plastic surgeon asked when she’d last had a mammogram. She hadn’t had one, ever. He said that was a prerequisite.
Later, she started to rethink the plastic surgery, but she decided she’d still have the mammogram.
Four days later, she got a phone call: “We need to do a diagnostic mammogram.”
The next call was “We need to do a biopsy.”
At that point, she says, she “started freaking out.” Her marriage wasn’t happy, she was working 80-plus hours a week doing real-estate appraisals to support the family, and she didn’t want to scare her daughters, 11 and 15.
So, not saying much, she went for the biopsy. And cried her way through it: “They have you up in the air on a metal frame—I don’t want to say it’s like an oil change—but your breasts drop through this little hole. I was uncomfortable and scared to death. They kept putting needles in different places and pulling out fluid to get more cells. I kept thinking, When you’re an A cup, how much can there possibly be?”
A report was due in 48 hours, so for the next two days, she checked her phone “every 10 seconds.” At 4:55 p.m. on the second day, she was told she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and should come in the next day to talk about what would happen next.
She hung up and called her mom, crying so hard her mom couldn’t even understand what she was saying at first. The minute the news sank in, she said, “I’ll take a red-eye. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
There were so many cancer cells, scattered so far, that there was no way to save Zografos’ breast. Nine days later, she had a double mastectomy and reconstruction. “Which was not the way I’d wanted to get augmented.”
Casting about for some way to get through this, she messaged a Facebook friend. He wasn’t a close friend in real life, but she knew he’d survived a brain tumor. “I need your mindset,” she told him. “I don’t know how to do this.” He suggested focusing on her kids, how she could do what was best for them; where she could pull strength; how to redirect her attention.
Braced, she made a chart for all the chores she wouldn’t be able to do, with places to check them off once accomplished, and she left room for everybody to put little stickers on each day about how they were feeling—happy, sad, worried, scared. She used the chart to explain what was happening to her daughters.
They went upstairs, came down wearing pink shirts, and said, “Mom, we’ve got this. Momma’s Pink Team. It’s going to be fine.”
Zografos didn’t feel so fine when she saw her incision. “After the surgery, everybody was relieved, and the girls made a few little jokes, and I realized I couldn’t laugh. Or breathe deeply, or sneeze.” She learned, fast, to deal with the drains and to do arm exercises, but the shock lingered, and she pushed her husband away, not wanting him to see her chest. “There was shame I didn’t even know would be there.”
The marriage felt like it had already ended, anyway; she was just existing in its fractured shell. One day Zografos’ counselor asked her, “Would this be ok for your girls to endure?”
“No,” she said instantly. “God, no.”
“So why is it OK for you?”
She divorced her husband, sold the house, moved. Her reconstruction surgery went beautifully. Her mind was calm again.
A year and a half later, in June 2017, her doctor told her they needed to redo the reconstruction because the breast shelf was not holding up.
Then she had another cancer scare and decided to have a hysterectomy. “Let’s just do it all at once,” she suggested gamely.
Two weeks after the double surgery, she woke up burning with fever. Her left breast—the cancer side—was inflamed and swollen. Her doctor hospitalized her and said, “I have about 24 hours to get rid of this infection, and if I can’t, we’ll have to remove the breast.” No way no way no way, she thought. She’d just started dating a really great guy three months earlier. Not again. Not now.
But the next day, the doctor came into her hospital room and said, “I have to take it.”
When she stopped crying, she heard her mind say, This whole journey has been bigger than me, on a spiritual level. And it’s just a breast. I’m here to help others. I have to find a way to be OK with this.
And she did.
“All the body image stuff? The biggest thing was letting my girls know that it’s OK if things aren’t perfect, and you can still love yourself.”
While Zografos was recovering in the hospital, her daughter Syndney ordered her a Knitted Knockers. Handmade, they snuggled inside a bra, so you could feel like yourself in public until your reconstruction. Brilliant idea, far better than crumpled tissue or a pricey prosthesis. But they were out of date. You couldn’t wash them easily, and you couldn’t work out in them, because if you got sweaty, they’d stay damp for hours.
With the help of friends who came to visit her, Zografos hatched an idea: a lycra CozyBreast that was soft and washable and cozy and dried fast.
Then she listed other things she wished she’d known about, including a bra that zipped up the front and a hoodie with an inside pocket to hold the drain, so she could comfortably go out in public.
They laughed and teased and planned, and when they brainstormed a name, one friend giggled and said, “What about Boobtique?”
They laughed—and then Zografos put down her pen.
“Wait a minute,” her friend said, alarmed. “We can’t use that! It has ‘boob’ in it!”
Zografos grinned. “So what? People will remember it.”
She wasn’t living carefully anymore. She left her job, opened up YourBoobtique.com, and started a not-for-profit, The Cozy Breast. Simultaneously, Zografosopened an OsteoStrong center in Ballwin to help others who’d lost bone density through chemo or early menopause.
Now she’s finishing a book about “undressing your soul,” hoping to help other women go through adversity without living in fear.
She did the research herself.
