As well as the right breast drooping, it was also getting really itchy underneath, right down to my ribcage. It would itch and itch all bloody day long. I just assumed it was eczema, even though I have never in my life suffered from it.
After getting the genome result, I went to see a breast-cancer specialist and also mentioned the itching. After studying my breasts, she said that she could tell something wasn’t quite right, that perhaps the right implant was leaking. A mammogram and ultrasound scan confirmed her diagnosis, showing a grey patch spreading from my breast down to my ribcage. There was a strong chance that, if it wasn’t dealt with, it could become infected.
It was a huge lesson to me. You think you can get away with mucking about with your body, searching for the perfect breasts… it’s always the breasts with us women, isn’t it? I did it my whole life out of vanity, and now I was learning that there’s a price for everything. The faulty gene is something you’re either born with or not, but the leak was my doing because I chose to have silicone implants. I started to look back over all the surgeries I’d had out of vanity and thought, What the fuck am I doing?
I had three options: leave things as they were for a while, then return every six months for a mammogram to see if there had been any changes; go in for surgery and just remove the implants; or go in for surgery and have the implants and my breast tissue removed and be done with it.
I didn’t think twice about it. I had three kids, and my first grandchild was on the way. For me, the double mastectomy was a very simple decision to make. They were coming off. My breasts had always been problematic for me because I was large-chested and they got on my nerves. The surgery had been about trying to reduce them, firm them up or stop them sagging, never about making them bigger. I didn’t want to go back every six months for tests, and there was absolutely no point getting new implants put in when I might end up having to take them out again for a mastectomy further down the line. So I said to myself, Fuck it, I don’t want to finish up looking like a patchwork quilt, I want them gone. I didn’t want that time bomb inside me. I didn’t feel the need to discuss it with anyone; it was totally my choice and I made it there and then.
When I got home and called the kids, they didn’t want me to do it straight away, they wanted me to think about it. And Ozzy didn’t really understand my reasons for doing it either. They were all pretty freaked out by it, to be honest. But when I made it clear that I was fine with it psychologically and that it was a preventative measure that meant I was less at risk, they were fully supportive.
Initially it was going to be two separate surgeries: six hours for the first, where they remove the implants and breast tissue, then, a few months later after you’ve healed, there’s a seven-hour procedure for the aesthetic side of things.
But the first operation, in January 2012 at St John’s hospital in Santa Monica, took thirteen and a half hours. It turned out that the silicone had leaked into my stomach wall, and it took the surgeon all that time to pick it out. Hours and hours to sort out the mess. And for what? My fucking vanity. I am so against silicone breast implants now, and would urge any woman not to have them. They’re revolting.
Then, after the stomach wall had been cleaned up, they put temporary, saline-filled implants in, just to stretch the skin.
Meanwhile, Kelly was at the hospital, anxiously waiting for me to emerge from surgery and fielding increasingly panicked calls from the others. So when, after six hours, there was no news, they started to think that something had gone terribly wrong and I wasn’t coming back.
When I was finally brought up, so Kelly later told me, I was howling like a wounded animal; I have no recollection of this. Then I just cried and cried and cried, going on and on about my father or just talking complete gibberish. I think it was a reaction to the extra anaesthetic I’d needed to be kept under for longer. Either way, it was very scary and distressing for her.
I came out after five days, and was under strict instructions to rest. As our house in Hidden Hills was quite a long drive and I couldn’t face the journey, I took the decision to stay at our one-bedroom apartment in Sierra Towers, which we used for occasional overnights in LA if we were working there late. It was also several degrees cooler in town and, after the op, I was even more sensitive to heat than I usually am.
I have long had issues with excessive sweating, at night especially. It goes back to when I had the colon cancer and had to have chemo. They said my periods would probably stop, and I thought the sweating might be part of the menopause. But in the end, my periods carried on then petered out when I was about fifty-five.
I certainly wasn’t aware of the menopause when, or indeed if, it came; I had no symptoms other than the sweating, which I still get. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a lake on my chest, so I like to have the bedroom really cold, while Ozzy likes it to be warmer. I often think about crossing the hallway to the cooler spare bedroom, but rarely have the strength to do so.
So, post-mastectomy, I had a bed to myself at Sierra Towers and the air-con on full blast. But after the first day I fainted on my way to the bathroom. Luckily, as well as Ozzy, my housekeeper Saba was with me, thank God. She took me to Cedars-Sinai hospital, which was the nearest, where they ran some tests. It turned out that I had a critically low iron level, so I had to stay there for the next five days to get the level up, then return for weekly infusions until it had stabilised. The bag of iron was so thick that it took two to three hours to put in. You can’t just do it through a syringe, and you have to get the proportions right or it can be dangerous.
Once I was home and healing, it still took me ages to get over the anaesthetic. I wasn’t in any pain from the operation, as such, just discomfort. But I was so woozy. I would be fine in the morning, then about lunchtime I would start nodding off.
I took two weeks off straight after the operation, then went back to doing The Talk. I didn’t say anything on air about the operation, but the girls all knew about it so they were able to keep an eye on me. They were so kind. Everyone rallied round to make sure I didn’t get too tired.
After about three months, when everything from the first operation had settled down, I went in for the second, which took the expected time of seven hours. First of all they removed the saline implants and fitted two nets inside my breasts. Then, while I was still under, they took body fat from my stomach area and put it into some sort of spinning machine. Usually if you inject fat into the body, it eventually dissipates, but apparently this spinning process helps it to stick to the netting. When I came round I was totally bandaged up, right across my chest, then fitted with a strong elastic bra with a zip up the front. I felt trussed up, but in a secure rather than uncomfortable way. After searching all my life for the ‘perfect’ breasts, I felt nothing but relief that they’d been removed. Not just because of the health issues, but because I just didn’t have to think about them any more.
When Angelina Jolie had her double mastectomy, she made a point of saying that she didn’t feel defeminised by it. That was an important thing to say, because I know that a lot of women do feel that way after the operation. But I didn’t feel defeminised by it at all. I’m sixty, my kids are grown up and, for me, it just didn’t feel like a big deal. But if someone like Angelina – in the prime of her life and such an exotic, mysterious, beautiful, physically perfect woman – can make such a huge decision and feel OK about it, that’s a great message to put out there.
We’re just lucky that medicine has come on in such leaps and bounds that we even have this preventative option. It wasn’t that long ago that no one ever got an early warning; they only found out when it was too late.
When I had the colon cancer, it had gone into my lymph nodes. That is something I still have to keep an eye on because if it flares up again it can spread easily. So I go for a check-up once a year. I also check myself regularly for lumps, but other than that, I feel very calm about it all. I just get on with it. Ozzy gets more uptight about it than I do. He got
to grips with all the medical detail in the end, but it only panicked him, so I steer away from in-depth conversations about it. Besides, I’m at an age now where I know what’s best for me and I’m just going to do what I’ve got to do. My family can have a view if they wish, but ultimately it’s my decision.
I think about all the women who aren’t lucky enough to be in my position, who don’t have the knowledge that the genes they’re carrying might heighten their risk of getting breast cancer, and I consider myself to be very fortunate indeed. I have minimised the risk and I now have far smaller breasts made from my own body fat that feel much more comfortable. I barely even think about them now.
Once the scars from the second operation had healed, I went in and had a couple of nipples tattooed on, purely for aesthetic purposes. It was nothing, because I couldn’t feel it being done anyway. It’s something they encourage, just so that your new breasts resemble the old ones as much as they can. But to be honest, with or without nipples, when I looked in the mirror I was absolutely fine with what I had, and still am.
Now I sometimes go out in a dress or a kaftan and I don’t wear a bra. It’s so liberating, as I have never been able to do that before. Also, as I’m short, smaller breasts suit my shape much better. I wake up in the mornings and feel somehow lighter, unburdened by the thought of yet another mammogram looming and what they might find.
And, to boot, I have the most fabulous décolletage. Yes, dear reader, I confess. While I was under the anaesthetic for the second operation I figured that, as I was out for the count anyway, I might as well make the most of it. So while they were waiting for my body fat to spin in that wondrous little machine, I asked them to give me a cheeky little neck lift while they were at it. I always push it.
But not as much as my husband who, throughout all my time in hospital for these procedures, only came to see me once. And during that one visit he took a photograph of me, completely out of it, my face puffed up from the anaesthetic, my eyes like slits, my mouth dribbling. I didn’t realise it had been taken until he sent it to me as a text message a few days after getting home. I was so upset about it that I went through the fucking roof.
‘Why on earth would you do that? What’s the fucking point you’re trying to make?’ I shouted.
‘I just thought it was funny,’ he said, and shrugged.
Not for the first time, I wondered if he knew me at all. Yes, I was angry, but actually, it broke my heart.
9
Pearly Princess
Look at that face!
After quite a few years of battling with substance abuse in his teens, my son Jack was finally in a really good place: clean and sober since the age of seventeen, super fit and gaining a reputation as quite a daredevil with TV shows like Adrenaline Junkie. His life was very much, ‘Oh Mum, at the end of the month I’m off down the Amazon with some mates,’ or, ‘I’m going to climb a mountain, I’ll be back in six weeks.’ The mere thought of it gave me a heart attack each time, but I was thrilled that he had found something he loved doing and was really good at.
In April 2011, he started dating a girl called Lisa Stelly. I had met her a couple of times and really liked her. She was a working model, and had done TV commercials and was making a good living from it. She was a beautiful, long-legged young woman from Louisiana, with that lovely Southern accent, and it was no mystery to me what Jack saw in her. But it was very early days between them, so their relationship wasn’t something I gave much thought to. Then, about three months after they met, Jack called me while I was staying a couple of nights in town.
‘Mum, are you around? We need to talk.’
Now if this had come from Kelly, I would instantly go into mental free fall and think, What has she done now? But as Jack was so sensible, I imagined it was a business matter he wanted to discuss with me, or another madcap, dangerous adventure he was embarking on. So as he walked in the door, I had mentally prepared myself for all the nail-biting details.
‘Hi, Mum. Now, look, don’t panic and don’t get upset…’
Which, of course, immediately made me panic. My heart was in my chest, my mind racing with all the possibilities of what he was about to tell me. Well, all except the actual one.
‘Lisa’s pregnant.’
A wave of different emotions washed over me. One of them, of course, was joy, because there was a new life coming into the world. But then I was sad too, because my son and his girlfriend barely knew each other, and I knew that from this moment on his life would never be the same again. All I could think of for a while was that I didn’t know Lisa, and I just hoped she loved my son. You don’t always know after two or three months, and I doubt she knew then either.
Ozzy was away on tour at the time, so I called to tell him. He never thinks of consequences, he just focuses on that one thing. So he says, ‘A baby? That’s amazing,’ and meanwhile I’m sitting there thinking, Oh my God. What happens if it doesn’t work, and one of them meets somebody they fall in love with and then gets married and goes?
Because as a mother, all these scenarios go through your head; you can’t help it. But Jack’s telling me, ‘You can’t think like that, Mum. You’ve just got to think about the positive.’
I had expected the first pregnancy to be one of my girls; I never expected it to be Jack, who is the baby of the family. And as he led such an active, outdoorsy sort of life, it just wasn’t on the cards.
He was the first to acknowledge that he and Lisa were only just getting to know each other. But there was only ever one outcome. Lisa is very religious, and she’s totally against abortion – as is Jack, though his views have nothing to do with religion. He just doesn’t agree with it.
I really admired him for doing the right thing. There are so many guys who would have gone, ‘Forget it; I’m off.’ He didn’t. He was responsible and supportive, and just amazing.
‘All we can do,’ he said, ‘is try our hardest to make it work, and see if we can become a couple. We’re not thinking about marriage yet; we’re just thinking about the baby. So we’ve decided that Lisa’s going to move in with me.’
Now Jack’s house was a classic bachelor pad, up in the Hollywood Hills. There were about forty bloody steps up to it, and my first thought was, Well, that’s going to be fun, carting a buggy up those.
So I knew straight away that we were going to have to sell the place, because it just wasn’t child-friendly, but I really admired them. It was such a grown-up approach to a difficult situation, and they are from totally different backgrounds and cultures. It was especially tough for her to say she was pregnant, coming from the very close-knit and religious Southern family she does. Her brother-in-law is a preacher.
Initially I supposed that I might not be as involved in the pregnancy as I would have been if it was, say, Aimee or Kelly who was having the baby, but Lisa was incredibly thoughtful towards me in everything. She let me be a part of all the ultrasound scans, which I thought was an amazing thing to do.
I would look at the jellybean on the screen, then across at my son. And suddenly I was rewinding a quarter of a century and it was me having the scan and looking at Jack on the screen. You don’t realise how quickly time passes, and to me, it might have been yesterday that I had him. Then I would snap out of it and think, What am I doing? I’m insane.
It was so special to be there, watching my son’s face as he saw his tiny daughter on the screen. He was just overwhelmed. Overwhelmed and overjoyed. And I was really happy to see that, because there were times when so many people – Jack’s friends included – thought the whole thing was crazy, saying, ‘It’s never going to work,’ and, ‘You’re nuts to even try,’ and yet here they were, Jack and Lisa, two young people united in love for their unborn child.
Pearl entered our lives on 24 April 2012. It was a natural birth, with Lisa’s mum in the delivery room with her, plus her sister who was videoing it, while Jack, Ozzy, Kelly and I were waiting outside in the hallway along with other members of Lisa’s family
.
Lisa had had a couple of false starts but when she was about ten days late, they decided to bring her in and induce her. When I heard the news, I remember becoming aware of my heart beating faster. My first grandchild. I took a few deep breaths and it was a case of, Right, this is it. Now. Nothing will ever be the same again. By the end of the day there’ll be a baby. A new little Osbourne. And in the end, everything went perfectly. There was no panic, it was all very controlled and bonding. Exactly the way you would want it to be.
When Pearl was born, it was indescribably moving. Now I understand why people become midwives – the emotion, the wonder, the glory of it, is intoxicating. To be in the presence of something so extraordinary, to share this moment, this everyday miracle, was a privilege. I kept looking at Jack’s face the whole time, and I could tell that he was trying as hard as I was to stay composed but, of course, he broke down and cried. We all did, but the two brand-new grandmothers out-sobbed everyone else.
The midwife swaddled the precious bundle in a blanket and we took turns cradling her as we welcomed this new addition to our two families. She was a complete amalgam of the two of them, with Jack’s mouth and chin and Lisa’s nose and eyes. I was so moved, and just couldn’t stop the tears from cascading down my cheeks. With her wisp of pale brown hair, still damp from her momentous journey, she was just adorable and I was overwhelmed with love for her.
The joy on her parents’ faces was plain for all to see, and I felt instinctively at that point that, despite the shock of the pregnancy so early in their relationship, they were going to do just fine.
Unbreakable: My New Autobiography Page 10