Showing posts with label booblessness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label booblessness. Show all posts

Friday, May 4, 2012

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Giselle always got this crazy cat third eye that would appear every time we gave her Lorazepam. She'd yowl and protest you shoving the shaven-down half of a itty bitty pill down her throat, but within 30 minutes would be zonked and ready to travel.

That memory made me smile a bit as I dug through the bathroom closet looking for the prescription that I had so many months ago. I used to take Atavan (Lorazepam) after I got the port inserted and would lie awake feeling the creepy sensation of the port going into my vein and grappling with my constant worry that it was somehow going to cause a clot. One Atavan and thirty minutes and I would forget about the port and wander off into sleep.

Tonight I found that trusty pill bottle with half of the scrip left, so thankful that my own distaste for being on prescription drugs keeps me from enjoying them enough to run out of them. I'm trying to corral my mind back in tonight, keeping it from repeating the anxious worry that's been swirling in my brain since I came home from New Orleans. "Is it going to stick this time?" my brain wonders and as I prod my breast for any sign of hardening. In the pit of my stomach, I think I know that the answer is "no", because I think that I know these things about myself and the way my body works.

So with that whisper to my nervous self, my brain goes into a visual overdrive of what life will be like. "If I lose my breasts," I think, "I'll leave my job and just work out all the time. I'll be in the best shape ever. I just won't have any breasts. It will be fine." And then, my hopeful self says, "Well, maybe in a few years they will come up with a surgery that works for me." and my nervous self laughs softly, pats my hand and reminds my hopeful self that we've been here before, that it's not the procedure, per se, but what my body does to it. And then my brain lurches into another scenario where I feel every bit of what this 14 months of procedures has done to my body, feeling I've been completely trapped in intervention after intervention until I just want to scream.

A picture of Truman-Show-esque carousel ride just popped into my mind. Round and round, garish lights and horrible music and the sickening up and down of hard uncomfortable horses set against a white sound stage. And then it's as though someone rips the needle from the record and everything stops, the only sound is the clicking of my heels as I walk for the door and open it to the bright sunlight. That is what I want to have happen right now. Really, honestly, truly. I want to somehow walk out of this sideshow of a life I have been given.  I want everything to just go back to the way it was a year ago January, before any of this insanity started. I want my body back, I want my time back, I want my life in all of its complexities that I still need to figure out back. I don't want to need help. I don't want to be frustrated. I don't want to be sad. I don't want to be angry. I don't want to be what I see in the mirror these days.

So it won't be that. I will get through the next couple of weeks. The post-surgical depression/anxiety that I am feeling will subside as things straighten out, as I can move around better as the incisions heal, as I know if these breasts are going to stay or go. Life will even out. I know this. I hold on to this as fiercely as a child clutches a new treasured stone at the beach.

Thirty minutes has come and gone and I'm not sure if it's the drugs or the writing, but I think I should be able to sleep now. I'm not writing this to worry anybody. We've been here before, you know, and I appreciate that you are still here with me. It's just been a really, really long road.

P.S. I just looked back in this blog to find an old link and was completely surprised that this recent reconstructive redo was one day shy of the ONE YEAR anniversary of my mastectomy/reconstruction that started me on this path. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. A year and we are still walking.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Imperfectly perfect.

This is dedicated to my friend Tanya Luz, who way back encouraged me to let it be what it was, to embrace what it is and hold my head high--or shake it when necessary.


We wheeled into the parking lot, crunching on the ice underneath, a little giddy at the thought of a few hours away for a little rest and relaxation.

"Oooh, let's start in the hot pools and then go on to our appointments," Lisa noted as she started out of the car.

I froze. "I didn't bring a swimsuit," I said.

"Oh, I didn't either, not a big deal," she replied, and then stopped. "Oh."

We both looked at each other for a minute. "Lis, I don't think I can hack sitting with a bunch of people I don't know with these scars. It wouldn't be anything if I had boobs, but I just don't think I can do it."

"That's ok, let's just go in and see what the situation is inside," she offered.

[I need to pause here and say that from time to time I realize that I am waaaay TMI in what I write here. When I think about my male friends reading this stuff, I cringe. I wonder sometimes if it's crazy that I write about these things and then I realize that people can decide to read if they want to. And, for those of you who are here because you are googling "schlongs"---yes, I can see you--sorry to disappoint.]

So we cruised inside to this beautiful spa teeming with people, grabbed our robes and headed into change. The women's locker room was packed and suddenly I felt like the early-developing 5th grade girl trying to hide the embarrassment of her breasts while clumsily changing clothes. Take off the shirt, hold the robe with chin, try to get into robe without flashing everyone, {shit!} drop robe. All the while uncomfortable and slightly panicked that I am going to make someone else uncomfortable. Yes, uncomfortable. Because it's not really about me feeling like a freak so much as shielding others from the discomfort of the experience of seeing someone with a double mastectomy.

But on the way into the showers I noticed something. Women line the dressing room in various stages of disrobing and, as I cast my eyes around the place, it hit me how imperfectly perfect the female form is. There are women of all shapes and sizes. Lumpy, bumpy, big, small. Even the ones in the best shape had boobs that were disproportionate or hips that were too wide or, gasp, cellulite.

Imperfectly perfect.

In a flash, I thought of my friend Tanya who used to do burlesque and her stories of women with all sorts of crazy, mixed up bodies who would get up and shake it, just because they could. And in that moment I realized that I am just another of these imperfect bodies lined up. My lack of boobs makes me a little bit more of a sideshow, but I may as well own it. In all likelihood, one of these 16 women in the room will have breast cancer too. In all likelihood, they will all have mothers or sisters or friends who will find themselves in the same situation I am in. In all reality, my hiding doesn't help anyone.

Out in the pool, the water was so hot and the air was so cold. We women alternately crouched under the water and rested alongside the pool. Sitting with my head back, talking to my sister, relaxing into the feeling of purification, of lifting, of being just present with where I am. Delicious.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

To Foob or Not to Foob? Not a Simple Question

We have a lot of discussion about "foobs" around here lately. Foobs are our family name for "fake boobs" or the glorified rolled up socks that have passed as interim prostheses that I wore until I got my new (and, frankly, not improved) "falsies" (falsies is a term I remember my mom using for fake boobs...falsies, foobs...).

Ava is most concerned about the foobs and their application. I am usually without them in the house and outside in the neighborhood because they frankly aren't that comfortable. Before we leave to go anywhere, she whispers in a conspiratorial voice "Mom, are you going to put the foobs in?" It's worrying to her when I don't wear them. I suspect it's her trying to normalize what is going on. I don't blame her. Moms are supposed to look a certain way and boobs are normally a part of that package. And then there are the other kids...not that anyone has asked about why I don't have boobs anymore, but I think it's just a matter of time. My kids know, but what do I say to other people's children? "I just don't have them anymore?" WTH?

But it brings up a lot of stuff for me. Wearing the foobs feels like a lie. They are so not me, especially these foobs that are big puff ball socky things that move around in my tank top or the silicone masses that feel like the joke sumo wrestler fat suits that people don to wrestle. Seriously, people. One in 8 women gets breast cancer and these plasticy, mounded things that don't look like real boobs (think 50's style bra ads, bullet boobs) nor feel anything remotely like real boobs are what we get? We have robots to do hysterectomies but can't make a good looking fake breast? Gah.

But not wearing them leaves me feeling like an embarrassed cat that has had her hair shaved off. Women tend to say "oh, nobody notices! They look at your face, Fran, not at your chest." But that is totally not true. People notice, especially men, and it's awkward. I don't know if men knowing you have fake boobs is any more awkward or not. For some reason I think it's not (or that's what men have told me about implants, at least). But the absence of boobs is awkward for people. So we are back in that thing again where you feel like you are embarrassed and they are embarrassed that they notice so you wear the foobs and feel a little bit like a fraud and get irritable about the weight and discomfort and, shit, you are back at another damned-if-you-do scenario that seems to pervade the cancer journey.

It also brings up the subject of le wig. It's summer and I am so not looking forward to the idea of wearing a cap of hair on my head. I know that around the neighborhood and even around town a scarf will be fine. But what about the workplace? Not wearing a wig at work seems kind of like going out without the foobs. Could I go without the foobs and wig at work? No foobs and a crazy Hermes scarf on my head. Oh lordy.

I know a lot of people will say "Just do whatever feels right!" but it just not that simple, it's not that black and white. There are levels of complexity to this whole ordeal that make it worse than just having cancer. It's one thing to have cancer and have people know and be freaked out and feel sorry for you or worried about you. It's another to add insult to injury with the disfigurement and neon sign baldness that it brings. Things you can hide, things you can't. Things that are a huge drag. Things that draw attention that a person like me and my mother before me hate most.

So I am not sure where I sit on all of this. I'm going to poke around on the web a little bit to see where I want to be in this interim space of booblessness. Speaking of, we are getting some really rad button ideas! Maybe on the next post we will have a sample to consider...I think we may have to vote.