The C-Word
Page 22
The trouble was, despite the infuriating hot flushes, the difficulty sleeping, the change in my skin, the loss of my periods and the joint aches of a woman twice my age, I considered myself more Mean Girls than Calendar Girls, and in no way was I ready for my Menopausal Ladies’ Club welcome pack.
Just like breast cancer and wig-wearing, I had always assumed menopause to be one of those things that I’d have to worry about many years down the line. So now, with the mind of a twenty-nine-year-old but the body of a fifty-nine-year-old, for the first time in my life, I struggled to know how to behave. In many ways, getting a tattoo punctuated the end of my old Grand Life Plan and the beginning of a new – infinitely less rigid – one. Or perhaps that’s all the therapy talking, and it is what it is – a star-shaped bit of ink.
I still like to think, though, that my star marks the full stop to many a sentence: the end of my active treatment (it’s on my right wrist, beside the point at which my chemo needles were inserted), the reward for getting through those difficult few months (it’s no coincidence that the shape isn’t unlike that of the star stickers that primary teachers award their pupils), plus the recognition that my life has changed irreparably, and that Solomon Grundy life plans aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Still, I’m pleased that I stuck to the old plan for as long as I was able. I’m glad I was a Good Girl. It got things done. But now there was no plan to speak of – just a new tattoo and a blank page. And, while that terrified and excited me in equal measure, I was intrigued to see what would come next, once Operation New Tit was done with.
The life-planners were out in force on the day Tills and I went to get my tattoo, as we discovered over a celebratory post-ink drink in a department-store restaurant. There we were, strutting in with our designer handbags while other women our age struggled in with designer prams. We clinked beer bottles while they shook milk bottles. We talked tattoos while they talked toddlers. And while, several months previous, I’d have been envious of the women on the tables surrounding us, I realised there was a lot to like about my screwed-up approach to age. Benjamin Button eat your heart out – this was The Curious Case of Lisa Lynch. And so, in honour of my fucked-up, twenty-something menopause, I wrote my own ‘Warning’.
When I am thirty I shall have a short, punky haircut
And wear high-street frocks with Louboutin heels.
I shall spank my Premium Bonds on pedicures and shiny Mac gadgets
And five-star holidays, and flip the bird to my pension.
I shall teach my friends’ kids filthy jokes
And swear at traffic wardens and wink at builders
And flirt with shy-looking teenage waiters
And pretend I’m in an episode of Skins.
I shall show off my tattoo in cropped-sleeve jackets
And wear glittery make-up to the supermarket
And learn to rap.
CHAPTER 31
Dotting the i
Is there a Guinness World Record entry for the world’s biggest nipple? Because I think I’ve got it. For verification purposes, I suppose it’s strictly a nupple. And since there aren’t even half as many nupples in the world as there are nipples, I’m skipping the adjudication and taking the crown. Well done me.
I’ve only caught a very quick glimpse of it, mid morphine-trip from my hospital bed when a nurse came to inspect my wounds (it might have been the drugs, but I’m sure her name badge said ‘Mariwana’), but even in my stoned state I couldn’t believe what I’d seen beneath the bloody dressings. Sheesh, it could have taken my eye out. Seriously, it’s the size of a grape. It’s not just the small mound I’d expected from Phase One of Operation New Tit, but in fact a fully-fledged, proud-as-punch, specially constructed imitation erect nipple. I know! Erect! Hell, that’s not even something I can say for my right nipple. That’s generally a lazy little bugger, only standing to attention when absolutely necessary. Not so the nupple. This little baby (sorry, big baby) belongs on a newsagent’s top shelf. Or, better still, beneath a smutty bikini in a Carry On film. (Oh behave.)
Actually, I fear it might be better suited to a horror film right now, given the stitching and swelling and scabbing. Always-Right Breast Nurse came to visit me on the ward before my surgery to explain the procedure, forewarning me that the new nip would be ‘a bit on the large side’ post-surgery, as Smiley Surgeon purposely intended to make it bigger than it would actually end up. Since it’s not made from living tissue, part of it will eventually die and fall off like the leftover bit of umbilical cord on a baby’s belly button.
It was a brilliant surprise, seeing Always-Right Breast Nurse. Given that she doesn’t usually work on Saturdays, I hadn’t expected to see her on the day of my surgery, and her visit to my hospital bed was the one calming tactic that actually worked on me. In many ways, heading back into hospital felt like the same old cancer-treatment routine: turning my nervous frustration into shouting at P the night before (this time about getting the blinds to sit straight, or some other such nonsense), blocking the loo before leaving home, sobbing on the cab journey there, then blocking the loo again when I got to the hospital (what can I say – nerves do funny things to your bowels). It was a surreal, emotional experience, being led back to the same ward where I’d spent several days last June, for the removal of what was about to be replaced. Both Smiley Surgeon and Always-Right Breast Nurse mentioned that the months seemed to have passed so quickly since the last time we were discussing my left breast on a hospital ward. And I suppose it does seem speedy to them. They’re doing this kind of thing every day, but for me it’s been a lengthy, loathsome, laborious process that’s gifted me my first grey hairs. (‘No bloody wonder,’ said Dad as he pulled them from my head.)
No amount of pre-op nerves could make me behave around Smiley Surgeon when he came to visit me before his Saturday-afternoon melon-twisting session, mind. I was my usual, cringe-worthy, goony self. Actually, I was worse than that. I was a complete twat. He poked his head around the door and – this being the first time he’d seen me without long hair, a wig or a headscarf – for a second he didn’t recognise me. ‘Wow, your hair!’ he exclaimed, realising that he was in the right place and walking towards me purposefully with his clipboard.
‘Huh, yeah,’ I snorted embarrassingly. (Goon alert …) ‘Hey, look!’ I yawped, pointing at his head. ‘I’m catching you up!’ From the corner of my eye, I saw P wince as his head fell into his hands, and felt my face getting hotter as I kicked myself for being more of a tit than the body part that Smiley Surgeon was about to create.
Normally I’m a think-before-you-speak kind of girl, but whenever I’m around this man, I just cannot stop these ridiculous things from spewing out of my mouth. It’s like trying to act cool around a Beatle. Though I’m sure I’d be more composed around Paul McCartney than I am around Smiley Surgeon. Hell, compared to how I am with him I reckon I’d be a picture of ease if I ever met the Queen or the Dalai Lama or Dave Grohl. Well, maybe not Grohl. The man is a legend. Whereas I, on the other hand, am a twonk.
As he always does so expertly, Smiley Surgeon delicately side-stepped my fame-blinded faux pas (surely the breast reconstruction equivalent of ‘I carried a watermelon?’), quickly moving on to the business of Operation New Tit. He stood opposite me as I sat topless on my hospital bed, sizing up my real boob against my meantime-boob, and explaining that he didn’t think size and weight would be a problem, but that he might have to spend some time getting the projection right (which, I think, was a polite way of saying that my boobs are a good shape, but they don’t stick out all that much). Apparently, in preparation for the surgery, he lines up all the available implants in the relevant cup size, then tries out the likeliest ones after he’s made the incision before settling on the one that’ll stay beneath my skin. I loved the thought of Smiley Surgeon standing behind a table filled with size-ordered fake tits, like a bell-ringer ready to perform, and I focused on that image as the anaesthetist sent me off to sleep.
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When I woke up three hours later, I caught myself mumbling P’s name (thank God it wasn’t Smiley Surgeon’s) as the anaesthetist who’d put me under handed me a tissue to wipe my tears. I was utterly overwhelmed. There I lay, gowned up and drowsy from the drugs, in the same recovery room I awoke in after my mastectomy, directly opposite the same silver clock and surrounded by the same familiar smells of detergent and dressings that I hadn’t realised I’d remembered from last time.
I cried quietly all the way back to the ward, too, and even once I was back in my bed. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t necessarily out of pain or discomfort; more out of anguish. Trauma, even. I was shell-shocked by the months of treatment I’d been through to get to this point, yet completely surprised that I’d finally – finally – made it here. The whole experience was unexpectedly turning into a bitter reminder of everything I’d fought so hard to forget, and the disbelieving, impossible-to-stomach impact of my diagnosis was hitting me all over again.
Thankfully, P knew just the trick to put a stop to my tears and, perching on the side of my bed, produced a tiny Tiffany bag that brought me round from my morphine-induced sobbing-stupor faster than you can say ‘bling’. Inside the little bag was a card that read: For my wonderful wife, a wonderful ring to mark our wonderful future. Of course that set me off all over again, even before I’d seen what was in the box.
‘Well,’ said P, gesturing to my new tit, ‘you’ve gone through all this to give me something new to play with. The least I can do is give you the same in return.’ And what a deal! I’m going to snag some tights on this baby, I tell you. He’s right; it is wonderful. A sparkling, proud-standing and fabulously show-offy cocktail ring to wear on my middle finger – our way of sticking one up to The Bullshit. I can’t help but think that P’s got the raw end of the deal, though. After all, his toy’s going to shrink. But not mine. Mine’s staying middle-finger-erect for ever.
*
THE WEEK BEFORE my surgery it was Lil’s thirtieth, and I used her party to mark my last night of wig-wearing. And, just like the first time I wore it, it was all a bit of an anticlimax. I had visions of strutting out of the pub and getting a mate to animatedly tear it off my head in the middle of Soho, freaking out the drag queens to the sound of trumpets and adoring applause from the revellers of W1 (seems I’m more drama queen than drag queen). In fact, it wasn’t quite as liberating as I’d have hoped. I was narked and sweaty from a hot-flush-filled evening, and struggling to hold myself upright in my sky-high peep-toes, so out of practice was I at the business of Central London socialising. So the rug was not ripped off to an emancipatory, horn-section sound-track; it was instead done by P to an exasperated, car-horn chorus as I attempted to three-point-turn my way out of a tricky parking space. Which pretty much summed up my entire experience as a wig-wearer: clumsy, begrudging and not a little embarrassing.
The original plan had been to stick with headscarves (or the wig, on special occasions) for another couple of months. But even I knew that it would be too much of a hassle to keep up the pretence in hospital and so I figured this was as good a time as any to out myself as a very-short-haired person. Upon asking my family and friends what to do with my baldness-covering devices, the overwhelming consensus was to throw them away in spectacular fashion. Firing them from a cannon or sending them off on a burning log out to sea or some such. Both of which sounded very appealing, were it not for the fact that I was completely terrified that the moment I decided to ditch them, I’d discover that they were still needed. And so, even as I write this, with a decent head of hair and several months after having relegated Wig 1 to a bottom drawer, that’s exactly where it remains – in my bottom drawer, tangled up in the unruly chaos of hairbrushes and headbands. It’s ruined, of course. But for some reason I can’t bring myself to throw it away.
With my bag packed and my ill-person pyjamas washed and ironed by Mum (still keeping to her promise of helping to ease these moments in the best way she knew how), everything was ready for Operation New Tit. Well, everything except me. This was the part I’d been waiting for – the chance finally to get back the beautiful breast that cancer had taken from me. And while I understood the surgery was nothing like as serious as my previous operation, that the reason for this procedure was a more welcome one, and that the hospital stay wouldn’t be as long, I had still switched from kid-on-Christmas Eve excited to night-before-exam-results brick-shitting.
I knew that my nervousness was bordering on the irrational, and I knew the reason why. The last time I came around from my anaesthetic, Smiley Surgeon came to my bed with the news that my cancer had spread. And I couldn’t help but prepare myself for bad news when I woke up this time, too. I hated not knowing what was going on in my body. It’s not that I knew exactly what was happening in there pre-Bullshit either, of course, but now it was driving me to obsession.
Everyone was quick to tell me that it would be okay, that there was nothing to worry about, that I should just focus on the end result. But, as well as trying to avoid the surgery-subject by snapping at people instead, I was actively trying not to think about the end result. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, like I did about the wig-buying. Back then, I wanted the perfect replica of my original hair. And now, I wanted the perfect replica of my original boob. But I’d learned my lesson; I knew I wasn’t going to get it. The wig may have been poker-straight and frizz-free and kink-proof, but it wasn’t my hair. And I was worried that I’d feel the same way about the specially constructed, all-singing, all-dancing Super Tit that Smiley Surgeon was going to spend his Saturday afternoon crafting. (Remember when Carrie Bradshaw lost her treasured ‘Carrie’ nameplate necklace and the little Russian dude bought her a diamond one to replace it? Now substitute the ‘Carrie’ necklace with my old tit, and the diamond necklace with my new tit, and you’ve got the idea. Note to self: Sex and the City = not real life.)
Before my surgery, though, was an operation for Sgt Pepper, when we took her to be spayed. And even that was traumatic. It was a window into what it must have been like for P and Jamie and my parents during my eight-hour mastectomy. I was a right bloody mess while she was at the vet’s – waiting nervously by the phone, trying to keep busy by writing a blog post (which I later binned, utter shit that it was), spilling my tea down the side of the sofa, chewing off what was left of my fingernails.
So, as I concluded last time, in many ways I was going to have the easy part: I’d be knocked out, none the wiser while my family counted the minutes, drank endless cups of tea and tried to busy themselves. Fortunately, unlike Sgt Pepper, I wouldn’t be coming round from my operation to find a plastic cone around my neck. Though, when I woke up after the op, I was relieved to discover something rather cone-shaped beneath the left side of my hospital gown.
Earlier that morning, I had taken a sneaky photo of my Old Tit on my iPhone. And even through my hospital gown I could see that the ‘after’ photo was going to be a hell of a lot more impressive.
‘So, what do you think of it?’ beamed a proud Smiley Surgeon, staring intently at my chest as I walked into his room for my post-op check-up a week later. (I had become so used to folk staring at my tits that I was becoming quite offended when people out in the Real World spoke to my face.) Carefully avoiding my usual levels of goondom but inexplicably turning scouse in the process, I replied in an oddly high-pitched voice. ‘I’m made up, la!’ (Okay, so I just added the ‘la’ for dramatic effect, but still. What was my problem?)
‘Oh-kaay. Let’s have a look,’ he replied, side-stepping my comedy accent and gesturing to the bed behind the curtain.
Always-Right Breast Nurse was on hand to remove my dressings and, for the first time since the sneaky look in my hospital bed, I got to see the full glory of my newly formed nupple. Not to mention the beautiful, perfectly round mound that it sat atop, like an especially delicious cherry bakewell or iced bun. While SS prodded at my new boob and I looked on admiringly (at him and the New Tit), I couldn’t help but thin
k of the Generation Game. Believe me, if Brucie had handed you a lump of clay and a pottery wheel and given you sixty seconds to create a breast, Smiley Surgeon would have been the visiting expert whose model you had to copy. (Didn’t he do well?)
Undoubtedly the sweetest part of my check-up, however, was watching SS’s smiling face (P is convinced he only smiles for me, by the way, and that he’s more Serious Surgeon with his other patients) as he explained that, mid-surgery, he’d had a ‘good look around in there’. (That, rather flatteringly, makes my tit sound like Mary Poppins’ handbag, when I’m sure that a ‘good look around’ my B-cup is actually tantamount to a twenty-second shufty.) But he continued with a sentence that ended in those few little words that every girl dreams of hearing: ‘… no sign of cancer.’ I’d been too afraid to ask him what he’d discovered while inside my boob, for fear of letting slip my vision of an Alien-style tumour bursting out and creating havoc in the operating theatre, so I was as pleased that he’d picked up on my unspoken worry as I was about the words he’d said. No. Sign. Of. Cancer. Forget ‘cellar door’ – these are the most beautiful words in the English language.
But, beautiful as those words were, hearing them was strangely unsettling. I didn’t know what to say, plumping for a simple, ‘Phew,’ and heading out of my appointment in an uncharacteristically timid manner. You’d think that hearing the words ‘no sign of cancer’ would have you doing backflips across the kitchen. And beside the fact that (a) it would hurt too much, (b) I can’t do a backflip, and (c) even if I could, the size of our kitchen would mean me crashing into a wall mid-air, that’s oddly not how you feel you ought to react. It’s weirdly anticlimactic, which is a lesson you’d think I’d have learned, given the many stalling, false finishes I’d come to expect of The Bullshit.