“International FLAT Day” was created to celebrate going flat – to promote breast reconstruction awareness, to promote flat closure (breastless, chest wall reconstruction after mastectomy), to promote flat reconstruction as a valid choice, and to bring together the flat community in sisterhood!
October is breast cancer awareness month, and the 7th is the “Day of Maat” – the Egyptian Goddess who represents TRUTH and JUSTICE. The 7 principles of Maat are: Truth, Justice, Harmony, Balance, Order, Reciprocity, and Propriety. These principles really reflect the “heart” of the shared flat movement!
International FLAT Day began as a joint project of flat advocates Christy Avila (Fierce, Flat, Forward), Robyn Towt (Breast Implant Safety Alliance), Devorah Vester Borenstein, Penny Dubbs Dudek, and Kim Bowles (Not Putting on a Shirt). We share a common goal of wanting to #putflatonthemenu by celebrating the flat advocacy community, and enabling “open-source” sharing of resources on going flat developed by our diverse and passionate flat advocacy community.
Stephanie Astalos Jones, who shared her story with NPOAS last year, recently launched her project Flat Is Where It’s At – a podcast for and about flatties. Stephanie explains where her inspiration came from:
None of us said, “Man, I wish someone would cut my boobs off.”, but since cancer came along and we didn’t want foreign objects shoved into our chest cavities, we find ourselves livin’ the flat life. Or, maybe we DID choose implants and found pain and disease there, so had them removed and we’re livin’ flat now. Or, maybe we found that we had a gene that made us very likely to get cancer, so we preemptively had our breasts removed. However we got here, we find that being flat comes along with very specific problems, weird situations, and wonderful freedoms. Here we discuss them all.
Talking with Metro Surgical Associates
For her mid-September episode of the podcast, Stephanie sat down with the esteemed Drs. Yara Robertson and Rogsbert Phillips-Reed of Metro Surgical Associates in Atlanta, Georgia, to discuss flat closure. This pair of accomplished breast surgeons worked as a team to perform Stephanie’s own revision surgery.
Dr. Yara Robertson Metro Surgical Associates, Atlanta ABOUT
Dr. Rogsbert Phillips-Reed Metro Surgical Associates, Atlanta ABOUT
Drs. Robertson and Phillips-Reed have been tireless advocates for their patients in the Atlanta area for many, many years. They’ve won many awards and given back to their community in so many ways. Dr. Phillips-Reed is one of the top breast cancer surgeons in the U.S. and is a clinical professor of surgery at Morehouse School of Medicine. In 1989, Dr. Phillips-Reed founded Sisters By Choice, a non-profit organization that provides a variety of services to low income and minority communities throughout the metro Atlanta area. She also facilitated the formation of The Greater Atlanta Breast Cancer Task Force, which brings awareness about and works to eliminate breast cancer disparities between black and white women in Atlanta.
Flat Closure is “Reconstructing the Chest Wall”
The Drs. really hit on something that struck me in this discussion – and it was almost an offhand comment, I believe by Dr. Phillips-Reed. She said that flat closure is “reconstructing the chest wall.”
This is such a critical point. Flat closure isn’t just removal of breast tissue – it’s the contouring of the area and producing a smooth scar that lies flat against the patient’s chest. It’s the reconstruction of a normal anatomic contour – the chest wall.
It’s creating a surgical result that the patient can live with.
Thank you, Drs. Robertson and Phillips-Reed, for being a voice for women!
And thank you Stephanie for creating this podcast.
Learn more:
Stephanie’s Podcast
Metro Surgical Associates
Disparities in Breast Cancer Treatment and Outcomes
Original version published on NPOAS’ Facebook page on September 18, 2019
Great news for women going flat! Our 150+ strong, international Flat Friendly Surgeons Directory is now online, searchable and easy to use. Find a patient-recommended flat closure surgeon specializing in mastectomy, revision or explant near you.
Show Your Support!
Recommend a surgeon
Our Directory surgeons are recommended by patients because they have a proven track record for flat closure. These surgeons:
Were technically competent in surgical technique to achieve a flat result, AND
Did the best they could do give the patient the results they desired.
Do you know of a flat closure surgeon who you’d like to see on our list? Contact us! Please include the following information:
Surgeon’s full name
Location
Procedure you’re recommending them for – mastectomy, revision or explant
(optional) photos of their work.
Spread the word
Help us get the word out about this important tool. Request a brochure to share with your family, friends and medical providers. Or share us on social media!
Not Putting on a Shirt is an all-volunteer organization, from the top down. We depend on our volunteers to maintain and grow our resources and tools like the Surgeon Directory. Our volunteers also coordinate literature distribution efforts and conference events, maintain our website, engage the public on social media, and so much more.
See where you fit in on our team! Read about our initiatives. Send us a message to learn more about volunteering with us.
Our advocacy work helps women understand that flat is a valid reconstructive option and empowers them to protect their choice. Tools like the Surgeons Directory are a critical component in ensuring women going flat get surgical results they can live with.
Your generous gift enables us to print and distribute brochures, attend conferences, maintain our informational website and social media platforms, conduct outreach to surgeons and medical students, advance our legislative agenda, and so much more. Not Putting on a Shirt is an all-volunteer organization – 100% of your donation funds our advocacy work.
When I woke up from my mastectomy surgery in 2017, I was happy to be alive. But I very shortly realized what had been done to me. My closure surgeon’s words as I lay on the operating table – “I’ll just leave a little extra in case you change your mind” – turned my stomach. I had lost my chance to be one and done, despite my extraordinary efforts to protect my choice.
I knew things had to change. I fought alone for a year. Then I founded Not Putting on a Shirt.
Thank you for your support. Together, we can put an end to flat denial.
After an intensive six month professional relationship developing our sister organization Flat Closure NOW in collaboration with other flat advocacy powerhouse women, I have decided to refocus my advocacy efforts back to the grassroots work that matters so much to me – and that’s here at Not Putting on a Shirt. I’m excited to get back to basics:
If you have a participant code but have not yet completed the Survey, please do so before the date above. Thanks to our readership we have over 200 participants now! Let’s keep it going – please share!
If you have gone flat after mastectomy, please consider participating in this NEW anonymized survey. It’s another great opportunity to contribute to ending flat denial that’s quick and easy. We want to hear from ALL women who decided to go flat… whether your result was great, unacceptable, or somewhere in between! At the end of the survey, as with the previous survey, there is room for open-ended comments about your experience.
The 2019 Survey is a follow-up to the 2018 Going Flat After Mastectomy Survey. With this NEW survey, we will gather more detailed data in order to better understand how we can improve care for patients who choose to go flat. The data we gather will be used to inform our advocacy work, and to encourage larger-scale research.
We protect your privacy the same way we did in our 2018 Survey – by using unique “participant codes”. (Your survey responses are linked to the participant code rather than to your name/email) You can request that code here. Then, once you have your code, you can access the NEW 2019 Survey here.
Not Putting on a Shirt will be publishing a report on our new findings in July 2019.
You can read the complete 2018 Survey report here – with this data we established, among other findings, that the incidence of intentional flat denial is about 5-12% of patients going flat.
