Ep.6: Jugs
So I’ve been putting 2 and 2 together and getting 1. I like to work things out, I’m a working things out kind of girl, and I’ve been figuring out that if they’ve found more than one site of invasive lobular carcinoma in my left breast that means, pretty much, my left breast is fucked. So we cut to the chase and before the results of the second set of biopsies are even inked and dried we start asking ‘what next?’. My consultant surgeon stares at my bruised and battered breast and frowns. ‘I could do a breast reduction if you want to try and conserve some of the left breast’ he says ‘but it would be distorted, the nipple would be displaced, and they’re not that big’. I suppress a giggle and hear David, who’s sitting the other side of the privacy curtain, do the same. Our childish humour at my apparently less than big boobies is undiminished by the gravity of the situation.
I don’t want to save this breast. I don’t care about it anymore. I want it and the cargo it smuggles off and out of my body before it can do any more damage, assuming it hasn’t done more already. I look at David for confirmation. In my mind anything other than mastectomy seems daft. The surgeon runs through the options regarding reconstructive surgery but his words blur and I forget them before I’ve heard them. I do this a lot at the moment I find. Forget before I’ve even tried to remember. ‘You don’t have to decide right now’ he says, ‘we’ll meet again when we have the results of the biopsies and decide then’. But I want definites and plans and something with shape and edges to focus on. ‘When can you do it?’ we ask, ‘how soon?’. So although we don’t have a definite plan and date I leave a sketch of a time frame tucked into the strap of my imaginary bra. I figure me and left boob have about 3 weeks left together, give or take.
We go for lunch. Left boob, D and me. We’re going for a lot of lunches at the moment, spending a small fortune on them and I fleetingly wonder whether I should be trying to conserve every penny for a time when and if I can’t work if all of this goes wrong. As if any of this was going right. But I’ve been banned from thinking such dark thoughts so we sit at one of our favourite cafes and mull over the mastectomy along with the sour dough toasties and soup of the day.
I’m astonished at our ability to pause, absorb, adjust, surge forward. Pause, absorb, adjust, surge forward. In the space of just over 2 weeks we’ve gone from pausing to absorb the fact of cancer and the car crash that imposed on our lives to calmly discussing removing my left breast then re-forming it with back fat and muscle. We’ve gone from planning our training for the epic Mallorca 312 cycle to cancelling it in favour of the ‘much more realistic’ 65 mile Etape Loch Ness and now here I am cancelling that and am adjusting to the image of myself sliced and stitched, lying around for weeks on end while I heal. But we do this. Without drama, without tears, we pause, absorb, adjust then surge forward.
I pause to consider how I feel about having my left breast removed. In the Breast Surgeon's office we’d joked that we never liked the left one much anyway but if I’m honest that’s kind of the truth. If you’d said to me 3 weeks ago which part of your body would you give, up I’d have quite happily and quickly handed over my breasts. They’ve never been something I’ve found terribly useful or interesting. They’re not very sensitive or sensual so I’ve never seen the point of them in a sexual context. They weren’t particularly good at breast feeding B and kept getting mastitis which was excruciating. Mainly I use them as a gage of whether I’ve put on too much weight and when I have they are full and too prominent. They’ve gone up and down a lot over the years. In my mid 20s I was over weight and horrified to discover my nickname at the local rugby club was ‘Jugs’. A couple of years ago I had a 3D printed model of myself made during the course of making a programme about selfies. ‘Check out those puppies!’ my friend Ali had laughed when she saw mini-me. I did check them out and was mortified.
At the moment they are not jugs or puppies but slightly deflated balloons. They are the boobs of a nearly 50 year old and my Surgeon is right, they’re not big any more. I’m done with them. I’m sure some women feel they’re tied up in identity and femininity and confidence. Not me. My boobs do not define me.