Healing well! Bachelor alum Lesley Murphy has shared a photo of her chest after undergoing a preventative double mastectomy. Find out more in the video above, and detailed below.
The 29-year-old bravely made the reveal with an Instagram snap on Sunday, April 16, one week after she had the surgery at an Arkansas hospital.
With her long blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, Murphy posed with an open shirt for the photo that showcased her now breastless chest.
“I think my upper half is healing nicely!” she wrote in a detailed caption alongside the image.
But she admitted it’s not been an easy recovery and she’s had to rely on her mom, who is a breast cancer survivor, to care for her.
“She dresses me in the mornings,” she wrote. “She also measures my drains twice daily which are the tubes you see coming out of my lovely red apron I never take off.”
Murphy is on meds to help with the pain but said: “Sometimes when I make the wrong movements it feels like my chest is detaching from my body.”
The former political consultant, who was on Sean Lowe’s season of the ABC reality dating show made the decision to have both her breast removed after testing positive for the BRCA2 genetic mutation, which put her at a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
She’s now focusing on her recovery and will have reconstructive surgery in the future.
“I feel lucky because my surgeons only made one vertical incision on the lower half of both breasts while saving skin & nipple,” she added. “So while all breast tissue is (hopefully) gone, I retained some of the old me!”
Murphy has been sharing her story via social media and updating fans on her progress.
