Sarafina Nance received a nipple-sparing preventative double mastectomy with direct-to-implant reconstruction in November 2019 after she'd tested positive for the BRCA2 genetic mutation, and she, like Majsiak, was also one of Dr. Peled's patients. She decided she wanted to go through with the mastectomy because doctors found a benign tumor in her breast at age 25 — that process of getting it biopsied gave her anxiety, and she felt ready to move forward with surgery.
Nance has sensation in most of her right breast and at least half of her left breast, which she said she regained soon after surgery. She recognized the initial numbness for the first time when her boyfriend was helping her put gauze on her wounds. "It feels like you can't understand what's going on with your body and somebody else touching it," she said.
"I think I've been very lucky in that, because I have most of my sensation, my body feels pretty much 100-percent mine," Nance explained. "I have no issues moving through my day-to-day life, which includes exercise and intimacy with my boyfriend, and feeling like nothing has changed."
