“Oh, dear,” she uttered, when I told her my breast was doomed. She offered to make postsurgery house calls if required. And then she silently deployed her healing fingers into my mournful flesh, expanding time and extracting tears.
I finally found someone to help clean the house. Her name is Lourdes, and she comes highly recommended. She’ll schedule us in every other Monday, but she’ll pray for me every day.
How can my tit be so sick when it doesn’t even hurt? How is it something so small can be so catastrophic? Fear and grief and disbelief—these are the dominant themes of my bon-voyage-breast session with Theresa.
And finally, my vanity list:
· Get legs waxed.
· Get mustache zapped.
· Get a haircut and color touch-up.
So that if I die in surgery, I’ll die smooth and coiffed.
6
Kissing My Cleavage Good-bye
IT’S THE EVE OF my mastectomy. The forecast calls for heavy gusts of trepidation amid a downpour of telephone calls from family and friends. Expect seasonal escape for daughter at overnight summer camp, treat-filled vacation for family dog at neighbor’s house, and laid-back night with husband, father, and sexy TV host. There is a 5 percent chance of my cracking a smile.
In the hullabaloo of rushing to appointments and making necessary arrangements, I had forgotten one key thing that I had intended to do—find a meaningful way to honor my right breast while she was still attached.
The last time I honored one of my body parts was fourteen years ago. I was pregnant with Naomi, due to give birth any day, and I had opted out of having a traditional baby shower. Instead, I threw myself a Bless My Vagina party. This was far more practical. Who needs gifts like receiving blankets and baby booties when your vagina is in imminent danger? What I needed was a posse of pussies praying for my private parts. And so, my local girlfriends gathered at my home for a magical night of drumming and incantation. It worked. My baby arrived; my vagina survived.
It is far too late to organize a Bless My Breast party—with gourmet victuals and rituals and wine. Even if it had been planned, I would have canceled—my mood is more funereal than celebratory. So after a simple home-cooked meal with Bergen and my dad, several more ideas surface:
· Gold-plated trophy of a solitary tit with “In Appreciation of Thirty-Four Years of Loyalty”
· Bronzing my first training bra
· Ceremonially burning my 36 C bras
Nothing is feasible or appropriate. And as the evening wears on, I am overtaken by the past three weeks’ worth of worrying and fatigue. There will be no tributes or ceremonial gifts. Just a silent surrendering to fate, with Bergen’s arms wrapped around my bosom and our tears a prelude to sleep.
I wake up in the middle of the night to pee and to ponder. If it’s possible to die of a broken heart, then it’s plausible to die of an amputated tit. In the event that I join the Lucky Ones, as a courtesy to my grieving family, I have composed the following obituary:
ROBYN MICHELE LEVY
In the early morning of August 6, 2008, TV host Craig Ferguson (CBS) lost his biggest fan. Surrounded by her surgeon, anesthesiologist, and nurses, Robyn took her final breath as her right breast took her final bow. She leaves behind the remote control and the corner seat of the couch. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Craig Ferguson’s snake-mug replacement fund, should his current snake mug ever break.
IN THE MORNING, Bergen and my dad take me to the hospital. When I check in at the reception desk, I see my name printed in capital letters on the surgery whiteboard:
ROBYN LEVY 7:45 AM
But I know that nothing is permanent around here. Just like my right breast, my name will be taken off later this morning.
I follow a nurse down the hall to the preoperative area.
“We’ll get you ready in here,” she says, drawing the curtains around a hospital bed and the two of us. She helps me get changed into a flimsy hospital gown while filling an oversized plastic bag with the clothes I struggled to dress myself in this morning. When I’m tucked under the sheets, Bergen and my Dad squeeze into this makeshift room. Having them here with me is as bittersweet as getting a mastectomy—their presence is both life saving and heart wrenching.
The nurse opens the curtains and explains, “Someone will be by in a few minutes with your chart.”
And with that, she heads off toward a group mingling by a door.
Soon another nurse arrives with supplies. And questions. I tell her that everything is empty: my stomach, my bladder, my bowels. This news delights her and is noted on my chart. So are my vitals—temperature, blood pressure, heart rate; existing medical condition: Parkinson’s. Her face betrays a hint of surprise, then quickly returns to her neutral nurse expression. Thankfully, I can’t see my own facial expression. It would be too jarring, like looking into the eyes of a death-row prisoner about to be executed.
“The doctor’s on her way,” the nurse says, drawing the curtains.
My dad steps out and waits in the hall. Bergen stays by my side. Still, I feel lost and alone.
Dr. Chung glides toward me, looking elegant in green scrubs. A smile swoops across her face and lands gently on her cheeks. Her dark eyes say, “Trust me,” with the unflinching gaze of a warrior. And I do. I must.
“It’s almost time,” she tells me, peeling back the sheet, opening up my gown, and exposing my chest. Then she uncaps a red marker and starts scribbling curvy lines and decorative dots and dashes. When she is done, my right breast resembles a preschooler’s drawing, the kind proud parents display on their fridge. It’s that good.
Dr. Chung covers us up—me and the masterpiece—then looks at the clock and says, “Any final questions?”
My mind is swirling. Final questions? I’m flooded with final questions. Especially those morbid ones that drown out hope and are best not asked when you’re lying on a gurney, staring at your surgeon, bracing yourself for a mastectomy.
And so I pose this question instead: “I’m sure I don’t want reconstructive surgery, but what if I change my mind years from now—would an implant still be an option?”
Dr. Chung looks surprised. “Didn’t you read chapter 34 in The Intelligent Patient’s Guide to Breast Cancer? I gave you a copy of the book.”
I sheepishly admit that I’d skipped over this chapter—after all, I’m not planning to get a replacement. She gives me the look that teachers give students whose dog ate their homework. Then she glances at the time again and quickly explains that to keep this option open, she’d have to leave a flap of loose, dangly skin next to the scar. That’s instead of a smooth, flat chest.
It’s time to wheel me to the OR—I’ve got seconds to decide. I think, even if I never get reconstruction, that flap could come in handy. For what, I don’t know. But it’s always good to keep your options open, right? Then I look at Bergen for guidance, and instantly I know: I don’t want any more surgery after this ordeal, not even to install a brand-new breast. So what’s the use of saving something I don’t intend to use? If I want loose and dangly, I know where to get it. Decision made: forgo the flap and stick with the smooth. Dr. Chung nods to the nurses, and then I’m rolling slowly down a hallway, toward a set of swinging doors, my husband’s and father’s faces dissolving in my tears. On this early summer morning, my mourning has begun—before the anesthetic, before the first incision, before the great collector takes my masterpiece away.
I WAKE UP horrified and hazy amid a commotion of concern. Everything hurts. Something is missing. Bergen will help me find it later. First I have to pee. A dark-haired woman leans too close into my face and starts talking, “Easy does it, now. There’s no rush.” She’s obviously speaking to me. Wherever I am.
Now Bergen is leaning into my face. “Hello, sweetheart.”
Then my dad, who just smiles. They’re both blurry. I hope they’re OK. I hope I’m OK. I feel terrible. Nausea. Headache. Unbelievable pressure on my chest. I don’t know w
hy. I struggle to sit up, and the dark-haired woman rushes to my side. She’s dressed as a nurse.
“Are we going to try walking to the bathroom?”
There’s something about the tone of her voice that tips me off—this is not just a question, this is also a warning that somehow involves her.
“Nice and slowly. Let’s scoot your bottom toward the edge of the bed.”
Bed? Another clue. That’s where I am, in a bed with beeping noises and long tubes attached to my arm.
The trip to the bathroom is harrowing, even with the nurse by my side. The combination of shock, anesthetic, and painkillers has exacerbated my Parkinson’s symptoms. I am so stiff and so slow that I feel like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, all rusted and immobile, bladder about to burst, being coaxed along by doting Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road. “You can do it. We’re almost there.”
Miraculously, I make it just in time to pee and to pass out. When I come to, flashes of lucidity break through my delirium. I now know that I am breastless in hospital. And I know the reason the yellow brick road was yellow.
I AM TOO afraid to look. The nurses who change the dressing on my vacant lot assure me this is normal. I’ll look when I’m ready, they say. Dr. Chung drops by at the end of her shift to check up on me. She proudly reports that my surgery went well and everything has been sent to the lab for analysis.
“You mean my breast is on some stranger’s desk?”
Dr. Chung smiles. “Theoretically, yes. But removing a breast is complicated. It doesn’t pop off all in one piece, you know.”
I imagine my subdivided breast, sprawled out on a countertop in some cancer laboratory—just one of the many condemned properties Dr. Chung knocks down. Some vacant lots will be rebuilt. Others, like mine, will remain empty. Either way, the view from this prime real estate will be different. One of these days, I’m going to muster up the courage to have a look.
Dr. Chung is reading my chart. “Your blood pressure is quite low. How are you feeling?”
“Wiped out. Dizzy when I stand up.”
“I’d like to keep you in hospital an extra day, just to make sure your blood pressure returns to normal, before sending you home.”
“That would be great,” I say. The prospect of going home the day after surgery seems reckless.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning to check up on you again, before my first operation.”
My remaining time in hospital is spent under the spell of morphine. Or as I like to call it, “More Please.” It takes the edge off the pain, making it easier for me to sleep. Whenever I wake up, either Bergen or my dad is by my side. Sometimes both. When my dad isn’t around, he’s either napping in the waiting room or out shopping for my comfort foods: freshly squeezed veggie juice, ginger rice muffins, and an assortment of fruits and vegetables. Bergen is busy stickhandling the details of my follow-up homecare, which will include daily visits from a community nurse and occasional visits from homecare assistants. Something tells me I’m going to need all the help I can get. Both of my arms are disabled—the left one from Parkinson’s, the right one from having eleven lymph nodes surgically removed.
Just two days after the mastectomy, my morphine supply is cut off, and I am released from hospital—a one-breasted shadow of my former self. While I am convalescing at home, nothing feels comfortable. Not my pajamas. Not my bed. Not the couch. Not even my name. I long to belong to a culture that honors life transitions, where shamans or elders bestow new reverential names that embody change, that reveal powers, that summon ancestors. I wonder what I would be called.
Somewhere deep inside, I feel a stirring. I let out a grunt, and suddenly I am Gug the Cavewoman again, clutching my empty chest, encircled by chanting clan members singing my praises. For the gods have accepted my sacrificial breast, and I have survived this gruesome test. Together we celebrate this rite of passage with song and dance in my honor as I await the unveiling of my new name. The eldest of the elders approaches, her ancient eyes twinkling, her toothless mouth issuing guttural grunts and groans that epitomize my pitiful condition. And then the elder declares, “Eee-Oooh-Huuh.” My new name, which means “One-Good-Tit.” It fits, at least for now.
BEFORE THE OPERATION, Bergen bought me an MP3 player and loaded it with some of my favorite music. It came in handy while I occupied room 438, drowning out irritating hospital noises with the sweet, soaring voices of Feist, Joni Mitchell, and k.d. lang. Had it been wintertime with the windows sealed tight, I’m sure I would have continued listening to the device when I relocated to my own bedroom. But it was summer, and the windows were open, inviting cool breezes and a cacophony of lawn mowers, barking dogs, crying children, and roaring car engines. And somewhere in the space between the noises and fresh air came the sounds of pounding drums, electric guitars, melodic keyboards, and powerhouse vocals from a neighborhood band belting out a live soundtrack to my first day home: “Brown Sugar,” “Mustang Sally,” “Back in the USSR,” “Hot Blooded,” “All Right Now,” and many more covers of classic rock ’n’ roll songs.
Sprawled out on my bed and loaded with painkillers, I had no idea which neighbor’s house or garage this music was coming from. All I knew was that the band was hot, and, like it or not, I was probably their only one-breasted groupie on the block. Everything else about them was left up to my imagination. So I pictured cute guys in their early twenties—indie rockers with bed-head hair and bad-ass attitudes, wearing jeans and T-shirts, rehearsing in a semifinished basement strewn with empty pizza boxes and beer bottles, and making ends meet by playing cover tunes at weddings and bar mitzvahs. Little did they know that they were serenading a middle-aged dame’s postmastectomy homecoming.
MY MENSERVANTS, Beck and Call, bear a striking resemblance to my father and my husband. Beck is the tall, bald jokester, who brings me freshly squeezed juices and take-out treats and New York Times bestsellers I’ve been dying to read. Call is the silver-haired juggler, who dazzles me with his dexterity, functioning as my short-order cook, housekeeper, confidant, chauffeur, secretary, social filter, dog walker, and nurse.
Beck and Call are a good team, but their days of working together are numbered. Beck is booked to fly home later this afternoon. He makes one last trip to the health food store, and when he returns he packs his suitcase and sets it beside the door. There’s still time to be helpful. So he looks around and sees a basket filled with clean laundry.
Meanwhile, I am in bed, propped up by pillows, reading one of my new books. As I’m turning a page, I look up and see a shiny bald head hovering above a stack of floating folded towels, slowly, cautiously ascending the top stairs.
“Where do these go?” Beck asks.
“They go downstairs,” I say, laughing for the first time in days.
I’m sure going to miss Beck when he goes.
The next day, Naomi comes home from camp covered in mosquito bites and bursting with stories. We don’t say it out loud, but we both know it was good she was away while I was in hospital. It allowed her to keep her spirits up and me to let my guard down. She had called Bergen a few times to find out how I was doing. He assured her that the operation had gone well and that I was OK and explained what to expect at this point in my recovery. So by the time she sees me, she is prepared. She doesn’t even flinch.
I have Nora to thank for making me presentable that day. She’s a home caregiver, originally from the Philippines, with a bachelor of science degree. She’s half my size and double my strength—and unbelievably efficient. In just one hour, she washes and styles my hair, gives me a sponge bath, moisturizes my skin, helps me get dressed, makes my bed, does a load of laundry, tidies up the bathroom, takes Nellie for a walk, and cheers me up enough to laugh at the irony of the neighborhood band singing “Pretty Woman” over and over again until they get it right.
Later on, I give Susan a call. Even though she has spoken with Bergen since I got home, she is relieved to hear my voice. I thank her for the funny get well card, and sh
e asks if I’m up for a visit.
“I was thinking of getting a bit of fresh air. Would you like to take me for a walk?” I ask.
“I’ll be right over,” she says.
We eventually make it halfway down the block, and then I burst into tears.
“I hate this fucking disease!”
“I know,” she says. “It’s awful. Which disease do you mean?”
“Breast cancer,” I moan.
“It’s inhumane—chopping off tits.”
Suddenly I feel faint and crouch down on the grass. Some walk—I’m not even moving fast enough to call it a shuffle or a creep.
“You’re body’s been through a lot.” Susan crouches down beside me.
“This is probably far enough for today. Every day you’ll get a little bit stronger and walk a little bit farther. You’ll see. Let’s get you home.”
RECOVERING FROM a mastectomy is draining. Literally—I’ve got a god-awful drain dangling from my side. Apparently, if Dr. Chung hadn’t installed it after removing lymph nodes from my armpit, a lot of bodily fluids would have nowhere to go. I’m sure this tubular contraption is better than having my arm balloon up. Still, I can’t stand the sight of it. Which is why I have obstructed the view of its bloody contents by slipping a sock on top of it. Out of sight, but not out of mind—the container needs monitoring, so I have to sneak a peek every few hours. The container also needs emptying, and the liquid needs measuring—jobs the homecare nurses really enjoy.
The nurses come in all shapes and sizes and have names like Debbie and Shawna and Barbara. They don’t wear nurse uniforms or scrubs. Instead, they dress in comfortable summer outfits—usually capris and a short-sleeved blouse. Each day, one of them drops by the house with her medical kit and supplies to check up on me, change the dressing on the Steri-Strips, and tend to my drain. There’s a lot of leaning over and hovering above me. The view peering down those billowy blouses is much more titillating than glancing down at my own vacant lot. So I am always happy to see them, even though their visits remind me of what I no longer have.
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