Abi Dare, Breast Surgery, Coronavirus

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.1 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2020

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Abi Dare has written a novel about house girls in Nigeria. It's called The Girl with the Louding Voice. The main character is Adunni who's 14 and has been sold into domestic servitude. She becomes a victim of rape, abuse and poverty but more than anything, she wants an education.

Coronavirus is dominating the news. There's a risk that the TV, radio, and social media coverage can be scary for children. So how do we reassure them, and how do we get the message across that what they do can protect themselves as well as others?

After mastectomies the aim is to make breasts look and feel as they did before but sensitivity tends to suffer. We hear about the changes women can expect and what treatments are available for women here in the UK from London breast surgeon, Dr Ayesha Khan. We also go to California to hear from Sarafina Nance who's an astrophysics PhD student in the US. She's leading a campaign to increase understanding of sensitivity and what can help. She talks to Jenni about an experimental nerve-preserving procedure she herself received in the US last year.

Women Beware Women is a Jacobean revenge drama about patriarchy, predation and the manipulation of young women. It's on in London and seems very relevant to our #MeToo era. The play features Tara Fitzgerald. She comes into the studio to discuss whether her character, Livia, is just a comical minx or a woman who both controls and destroys lives?

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts
0:04.6	Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday, the Fourth of March.
0:10.8	Good morning. coronavirus leads the news on radio, television and in print.
0:16.4	How do you reassure your children when everyone is talking about it and how can they best protect themselves?
0:23.9	The girl with the loud voice, Abitair's novel tells the story of a duni,
0:28.5	a Nigerian girl who wants an education, but is sold into domestic slavery.
0:34.4	And a contemporary production of Thomas Middleton's revenge tragedy, women,
0:38.9	bewere women. Tire fits Gerald on her role as the twice widowed
0:43.8	Livia. Now those of us who've had a mastectomy
0:48.4	know that the sensation in the breasts and nipple too, which we've been used
0:52.5	has a tendency to be there no longer. Indeed, when my surgeon suggested reducing my
0:58.4	remaining breasts to match up with the one that now had an implant, I refused.
1:02.5	I didn't want to lose all possibility of pleasure on both sides.
1:07.1	Even now 14 years on from my surgery, when reconstruction techniques are of a high quality when
1:13.3	it comes to appearance, they're still often a lack of feeling. Well, an American student who
1:19.9	had a prophylactic double mastectomy when she was 26 is now heading a campaign about new techniques
1:26.4	where sensation might be retained after the operation. I'm joined by Dr Aisha Khan,
1:32.8	who's a breast surgeon at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, and from California
1:38.1	by Seraphina Nance. Seraphina, how did you come to have a double mastectomy when you were only 26?
1:46.8	So thank you so much for having me on. So my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer
1:54.4	when I was 23. And shortly after being diagnosed, he was asked to do genetic testing.
2:04.4	And after he tested positive for the braca to that patient, his oncologist suggested that I get tested
	...

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