Today is my least favorite holiday, Valentine's Day. I never particularly celebrated it even when I was married, when it seemed entirely manufactured and fake, though that might have been because no one had ever been romantic about V-Day with me. I actually think if a man I loved sent me flowers or wrote a note, I'd be weak in the knees. But now I am not only without a valentine of my own, even a funny valentine, I'm a St. Valentine martyr. My chances for romance or even just sex seem way out of reach. The best I can do is be a one-breasted Amazon in the good fight for love. Not to mention life.
Sob. Literally. When a very sweet male friend of my acquaintance wrote nice things to me today in an email (though non-romantic nice things), I wept a bit in the library, which I'm sure made the studious twenty-somethings nearby uncomfortable.
Snap into the bright side of the picture: a check-up visit to the oncologist affirmed that as far as we know, I'm healthy now. That's not a small thing. That's huge. I'd rather be alive without romance than loved and dead. Period, the end.
Talk about the end...not the end of my life, but the end of this blog. If you have been following it (and to my great joy, some of you apparently have), I want you to know that it may cease (not exactly upon the midnight, as Keats said) now, or any time, I can't say. It was meant to be an account of my recurrence, and it has been, but it seems I'm going to put that behind me and go on. I may check back once in a while to recount how well I've adjusted to my new body with time. Or some development in my life may occur that impels me to say more...I hope not a health development. Whether I do or not, I want you to know how grateful I am that you...mostly anonymous you...have listened when I had something I needed to write. You were the best medicine I had, you readers.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
My Shout-Out to Silicone
Today, one month after surgery, I went to the hole-in-the-wall called My Secret, which is something like a back room Victoria's Secret, as if it were a hidden part of the store too embarassing to show the world. They only see you by appointment, and you're brought into a tiny room with a small table and mirror and asked to undress -- in some ways it felt like I was about to get an abortion in the bad old days. But Marisol, my fitter, was professional and warm, and I left an hour later with a custom-fit silicone breast form (thankfully, she did not use that horrible word prosthesis) that matches the other side.
I am still in a major funk, but the difference between the real thing (meaning the synthetic thing) and the foam stuff I've been using is remarkable. Who invented silicone, anyway? It's probably harmful to the environment and bad in all sorts of ways, but let me tell you, the stuff does have a soft, jelly-like, breast-fatty feel and look to it. When it was in the new bra (in a pocket that prevents it from slipping around), I couldn't tell the difference in the mirror while wearing my shirt. And yes, I like, like, like that. Plus the familiar weight was there again, re-balancing me. I know it's fake, false, a "falsie" (another horrible word, in a different way), yet my mind succumbed to the trick and said, "Oh, it's back, great."
On the other hand, and you know I don't pull my punches here, it looks way weirder than the little foam numbers do when it's sitting on the table rather than inside the bra. In fact it resembles nothing so much as a jellyfish that's somehow assumed a triangular shape. This is going to take getting used to, so that has to be added to the list of what I now have to incorporate into my life. I'm not happy about that. And I absolutely can't imagine that a man who saw it in all its silicone-ness would not be turned way off. The less said about that the better.
But when I walked out of there wearing my new silicone wonder, I actually felt normal, not just looked (I think) normal. At times like these, normal is good. Normal is the best I can aspire to. So I'll take it, gladly. Gratefully. Thank you, silicone.
I am still in a major funk, but the difference between the real thing (meaning the synthetic thing) and the foam stuff I've been using is remarkable. Who invented silicone, anyway? It's probably harmful to the environment and bad in all sorts of ways, but let me tell you, the stuff does have a soft, jelly-like, breast-fatty feel and look to it. When it was in the new bra (in a pocket that prevents it from slipping around), I couldn't tell the difference in the mirror while wearing my shirt. And yes, I like, like, like that. Plus the familiar weight was there again, re-balancing me. I know it's fake, false, a "falsie" (another horrible word, in a different way), yet my mind succumbed to the trick and said, "Oh, it's back, great."
On the other hand, and you know I don't pull my punches here, it looks way weirder than the little foam numbers do when it's sitting on the table rather than inside the bra. In fact it resembles nothing so much as a jellyfish that's somehow assumed a triangular shape. This is going to take getting used to, so that has to be added to the list of what I now have to incorporate into my life. I'm not happy about that. And I absolutely can't imagine that a man who saw it in all its silicone-ness would not be turned way off. The less said about that the better.
But when I walked out of there wearing my new silicone wonder, I actually felt normal, not just looked (I think) normal. At times like these, normal is good. Normal is the best I can aspire to. So I'll take it, gladly. Gratefully. Thank you, silicone.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Frankly
To be consistent with my truth-telling self, I will relate the odd experience yesterday of visiting my opthamologist for an eye check-up, He asked how I am, so I frankly told him what this year has been like. He trumped me by telling me that since I saw him last, his wife died of esophageal cancer at age 64. He said she had suffered through horrible surgery to replace her esophagus after the diagnosis, and she yet died anyway because it had already spread.
What made this odd, folks, and I'm being brutally honest here, is that my very first reaction was the flash thought, "You know, he's not unattractive, maybe we could be lovers now that he's available." Or somehow that thought was mixed with real compassion for how terrible it must have been for both of them. When he showed no sign of having the same thought, I found myself wondering if my mastectomy turned him off. This sort of thing happens to me all the time, and I'm never sure whether I'm just more selfish than other people, or if many people have these reactions and don't have the foolishness to talk about them or even think about them.
Ugh. Sigh. His story was another instance of perspective on how lucky I am to have a good prognosis compared to so many others. Yet I am still struggling with envy for every two-breasted woman on this planet, which makes no sense. I was helped somewhat recently by a long conversation with a close friend who argued that it's okay to feel bad about your own loss while having perspective about the suffering of others at the same time, that it's not a suffering contest.
This friend and I also talked about the interesting question of how we see ourselves as continuous. How do we incorporate changes like losses in our lives? People are often shocked to see pictures of themselves as they age, the way people are shocked by hearing their voices on a tape recorder. Yet the changes of aging are gradual, which probably helps. For example, this friend, whom I've known for over twenty years, looks no different to me. Actually, almost anyone I've ever been attracted to sexually, I still find attractive, which is kind of remarkable. I also know that when I first contemplated getting divorced from my husband of 24 years, it was inconceivable to think of myself as a "divorced woman" -- it just didn't seem to be me ... yet now, 20 years later, it seems very much a part of who I am. So the task before me is incorporating this new body into the "me" I have in my head. And that is complicated by the way breasts are fraught with meanings having to do with femininity, desirability, and sexuality. Even though I'm in my sixties, oddly enough.
What made this odd, folks, and I'm being brutally honest here, is that my very first reaction was the flash thought, "You know, he's not unattractive, maybe we could be lovers now that he's available." Or somehow that thought was mixed with real compassion for how terrible it must have been for both of them. When he showed no sign of having the same thought, I found myself wondering if my mastectomy turned him off. This sort of thing happens to me all the time, and I'm never sure whether I'm just more selfish than other people, or if many people have these reactions and don't have the foolishness to talk about them or even think about them.
Ugh. Sigh. His story was another instance of perspective on how lucky I am to have a good prognosis compared to so many others. Yet I am still struggling with envy for every two-breasted woman on this planet, which makes no sense. I was helped somewhat recently by a long conversation with a close friend who argued that it's okay to feel bad about your own loss while having perspective about the suffering of others at the same time, that it's not a suffering contest.
This friend and I also talked about the interesting question of how we see ourselves as continuous. How do we incorporate changes like losses in our lives? People are often shocked to see pictures of themselves as they age, the way people are shocked by hearing their voices on a tape recorder. Yet the changes of aging are gradual, which probably helps. For example, this friend, whom I've known for over twenty years, looks no different to me. Actually, almost anyone I've ever been attracted to sexually, I still find attractive, which is kind of remarkable. I also know that when I first contemplated getting divorced from my husband of 24 years, it was inconceivable to think of myself as a "divorced woman" -- it just didn't seem to be me ... yet now, 20 years later, it seems very much a part of who I am. So the task before me is incorporating this new body into the "me" I have in my head. And that is complicated by the way breasts are fraught with meanings having to do with femininity, desirability, and sexuality. Even though I'm in my sixties, oddly enough.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Not Inspirational
I want to be upfront: if you're looking for inspiration or warm fuzzies, you won't find it in this post. I tend in general not to have a Positive Outlook on Life. On the other hand, I personally would rather read something that is true, even brutally true, than the usual mush written in the interest of being comforting.
When someone like me has some bad days, they can be very bad. The last couple of days were in some ways the worst since my surgery. Physically I'm coming along, maybe even turned a corner. Today I wore a regular bra for the first time, and it was okay, so that's a milestone. But the struggle I have with my appearance sans bra is looming greater than ever.
It comes down to this: I hate my new lopsided look. OK, I'll be blunt...it's freakish and ugly, at least that's how it appears to me. I don't see how I can ever get reconciled to it, and sometimes, frankly, I wish I had not decided to have the surgery, or at least had not been too cowardly about pain to try an implant. (Though that would have looked weird at best, and might have been an ongoing discomfort.) This is what I'm dealing with now.
The reason for the dip in my mood had to do with issues in the rest of my life, or maybe it's the other way around...maybe those issues seemed more depressing because my spirits were already in a fragile state. At any rate, two nights of waking at 3 am after dreams of frustration (missing a bus, being stranded out in nowhere with no way to get home) didn't help. And yesterday when I went to a class called Yoga for Cancer Victims (not really, but sort of), I found myself getting dizzy every time we went from lying down to sitting and back again. Not sure why -- maybe lack of sleep and not enough lunch. It didn't help to relax me, just made me feel worse.
Well, the sun will come out tomorrow, Orphan Annie said, and at least I'll be around to see that. Or so I think. That's the best I can do as Suzy Creamcheese at the moment.
When someone like me has some bad days, they can be very bad. The last couple of days were in some ways the worst since my surgery. Physically I'm coming along, maybe even turned a corner. Today I wore a regular bra for the first time, and it was okay, so that's a milestone. But the struggle I have with my appearance sans bra is looming greater than ever.
It comes down to this: I hate my new lopsided look. OK, I'll be blunt...it's freakish and ugly, at least that's how it appears to me. I don't see how I can ever get reconciled to it, and sometimes, frankly, I wish I had not decided to have the surgery, or at least had not been too cowardly about pain to try an implant. (Though that would have looked weird at best, and might have been an ongoing discomfort.) This is what I'm dealing with now.
The reason for the dip in my mood had to do with issues in the rest of my life, or maybe it's the other way around...maybe those issues seemed more depressing because my spirits were already in a fragile state. At any rate, two nights of waking at 3 am after dreams of frustration (missing a bus, being stranded out in nowhere with no way to get home) didn't help. And yesterday when I went to a class called Yoga for Cancer Victims (not really, but sort of), I found myself getting dizzy every time we went from lying down to sitting and back again. Not sure why -- maybe lack of sleep and not enough lunch. It didn't help to relax me, just made me feel worse.
Well, the sun will come out tomorrow, Orphan Annie said, and at least I'll be around to see that. Or so I think. That's the best I can do as Suzy Creamcheese at the moment.
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