Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy Read online

  I remember that I was always the smart girl.

  I remember when boobs were not my best feature, clearly not what defined me.

  I remember when my breasts were not something that could kill me.

  Now I want more. I want the power in this room. I want to have what they have. Now that I’m losing that feature, I am concerned that it mattered more than I thought.

  It is just too deep and complicated for me to figure out right this minute, especially with Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” blaring in the background. I know my husband will probably go to strip clubs with his orthopedic surgeon colleagues at conventions. I will sit at home with one boob, thinking of him looking at perfect boobs. Will my brother Paul plan our brother Howard’s bachelor party in a strip club? I look around the smoky VIP Strip Club and I see brothers, husbands, dads, friends, bosses, all leering, and maybe because I am drunk I will admit that I am jealous and want to know they would leer at me, too, even after my surgery.

  I leave forty dollars on a twenty-seven dollar tab because I am too embarrassed to ask for change. I stand up to leave the club. I walk past the breasts on parade, past the commotion, and past the testosterone.

  The bouncer smiles at me when he holds open the door and I feel a small victory. Because I caught his eye with my smile. There’s a ratty maroon velvet rope outside to cordon off the entrance to the club. I am leaving the world of boobs.

  As I hail a taxi at the corner, I start to think about how the excitement in that room did not begin until the tops came off. I have kept my shirt on until now (well, most of the time) and still gotten paid, gotten loved, and gotten noticed. When I lose my breast I will be stripped of part of what I thought made me a woman, made me desirable. But, I think, I will still be me.

  Maybe I am like an antique table that is being stripped before being re-varnished. Layers will be peeled away to reveal something beautiful underneath. Actually, maybe the ultimate striptease is ahead of me: First my breast will be cut off. Then my hair will fall out. And when there is nothing left to strip, maybe there will be a revelation of a different beauty underneath, one that I never knew existed.

  I will be stripped to the core but I will still be there.

  I think of myself on that stage with the strobe light on me: it is the striptease of my life.

  I will find a way to exist.

  Somehow.

  2

  Lumps

  I knew it was bad news.

  Two men in white coats. Both of them crying.

  I was in a windowless white room with a tacky nature print on the wall and it felt like the scene in a movie where the woman finds out that she has cancer and she will die young. But it was real.

  My husband’s white coat says “Dr. Lucas” across his chest in happy cursive. Maybe Tom Cruise would play Tyler? It is a total stretch, but Tyler is handsome and has amazing blue eyes and fabulous shoulders. He looks like a doctor on a soap opera, but he really went to medical school. But I know that medical school hasn’t prepared him for being thirty-two, married only two years, and finding out that his wife has breast cancer.

  The other white coat belongs to my breast surgeon, Dr. B. He had predicted it would never be cancer because I was only twenty-seven, because I had no family history, because I looked so healthy. Bruce Willis or another sexy balding actor would play him. He looks exactly like what a doctor looks like in the movies when there is bad news. But his tears are real. He looks at me and finally says it.

  “You do have cancer”—pause—“but we will cure you.”

  Strange, I have never heard the words “cancer” and “cure” in the same sentence before. Is he lying to me?

  I understand why Tyler is crying. I know that we said in sickness and in health, but there has got to be some sort of exit clause when something like this happens. Dr. B, I understand his tears, too. He probably has done this scene hundreds of times in his office. I wonder if delivering bad news got easier after some practice. Clearly, he is not immune to it. But there is an extra level of bad news here. I am his colleague’s wife. It is personal.

  Now, if two grown men, doctors, cannot handle this information, how am I supposed to? But somehow I hear myself rally like I always do. I should not have been cut from the seventh-grade cheerleading team. I do not cry.

  “It will be okay,” I am trying to convince the doctors. “I’ll be fine.” That last sentence hangs in the air, and they both look at me like I don’t get it. Like, “Oh, we just told her that she has cancer and she’s in denial.” I am not in denial. I am scared, though.

  I realize in that small windowless office that this is about having no control. This is something that just happened. So, if I didn’t cause this, how can I fix it? My body has betrayed me. How can I count on it to get better? To fix itself? I have always been a good “fixer.” I am the one my parents call to tell my younger brothers what to do. I instruct my friends about how to break up with their boyfriends. Now I see that this might be unfixable.

  “Do I need to have chemotherapy, will I lose my hair?”

  I am so embarrassed that the only lame thing I can think about is whether my hair will fall out. I must seem so vain, but I have always pictured cancer patients with bald heads.

  Dr. B tells me that it is too early to make that decision, that we will have the full pathology report back tomorrow and I will need to consult an oncologist.

  I am not prepared for this scene to unfold in my life. I never had a biopsy. The word biopsy even sounds serious. I never even had my tonsils out, or broke my arm. I ate a cheeseburger before my biopsy and I saw white dots when Dr. B was cutting into my breast to get to that lump. During the biopsy I could still taste the ketchup in my mouth even though the smell of alcohol was so heavy in the room.

  I knew when I first felt the lump in the shower that it felt like trouble. My fingertips just knew it was bad news. I should not have been worried because my mom and grandmothers had never had breast cancer. But I was worried. I was dripping wet, still in my towel when I told Tyler about the lumps. There were actually three of them.

  “Geralyn, you’re being a hypochondriac. Just because you found a lump you think you have breast cancer? Women always have lumps. It’s nothing.”

  Tyler was annoyed with me—I could tell by his tone of voice.

  I didn’t understand why he was so annoyed, considering he was the one who had taught me how to do a breast self-exam in the first place. When I first met Tyler, he was doing a rotation as the breast resident. Aside from it being especially intimidating to show him my breasts, it affected me to hear him so devastated by what he had seen. On our first date he told me all about the young mother with breast cancer he had just done a mastectomy on. She was only twenty-eight and he thought she was going to die. He couldn’t believe how many women, especially young women, had breast cancer. He made me learn how to do a breast self-exam. He had told me that one of my friends, someone I knew, would get breast cancer—it was pure statistics.

  We both never imagined that the woman who would get breast cancer would be me. Meeting Tyler would save my life.

  But now that I had actually done the breast exam and I had found lumps, he didn’t seem concerned. He seemed more upset that we were late to a movie, because I was always late. He was always on time. Maybe he was snapping at me because he, too, was terrified of the lump, because he had seen too many bad lumps. He seemed like such an asshole right then, but he must have been scared.

  I cried through the whole movie, The Bridges of Madison County, not because I was sad, but because I was so worried about the lumps I had found in the shower, and I couldn’t believe that Tyler seemed like he didn’t even care. It was a kind of cathartic and safe place to sob—everyone walked out of that movie sniffling. When I mentioned the lumps again after the movie, he had that same tone of voice. He was so dismissive that I almost believed I was a hypochondriac.

  Until I told my gynecologist. The remaining lump (the other two went away afte
r my period) was buried so deep in the right corner of my right breast near my armpit that she couldn’t feel it at first. I had to guide her hand all the way into my breast.

  “Geralyn. It’s probably nothing because you are so young. But I never play games with lumps. You need a sonogram.”

  It was especially cruel timing. I mean, not that there’s ever any good time to get breast cancer, but I was there to tell my gynecologist that I was ready to get pregnant. Instead of leaving her office with a prescription for prenatal vitamins, I left with a prescription for a sonogram of the lump. A sonogram turned into a mammogram, which then became a biopsy. No one with white coats in those white rooms was treating me like a hypochondriac. I wished I were a hypochondriac. I wished that my husband was right. I thought about all the petty gloats I had had whenever I was right in arguments. But there was no gloating now, just terror, with Dr. B and Tyler and the results we have just heard about my biopsy.

  The first thing that I need to do is tell my little brother, Howard, who is in the waiting room. He is not really little, he’s twenty-three, but he was like my baby growing up. I want to lie and protect him from this bad news.

  Howard hugs me and tells me that everything will be okay. Howard will later offer to drop out of law school to take care of me. He offers to take night courses so that he can take me to every chemo. I will cry when I hear his kindness, but my parents and I convince him that his life has to go on even if mine is screeching to a halt. Howard walks with me and Tyler the four blocks back to our apartment on 96th Street between Park and Madison. I see a chalkboard outside our favorite neighborhood bistro that says “Today’s Specials.” As I pass that sign, I think of how easy those decisions had been—whether to have soup or salad—and how I stumbled over them. I remember how angry I was at myself because I had forgotten to drop off Tyler’s shirts at the dry cleaners that morning.

  When we get back to our apartment, Tyler cries until he starts honking his nose when he blows it.

  “Geralyn, please, please don’t leave me. I’m so scared we’re going to break up. People who get cancer, they leave their marriages.”

  What? His comment totally floors me. I am the one who should be worried about being left. I am the damaged goods. The nurse at my biopsy already implied how “lucky” I am that I am married (as if I can’t even flirt now).

  That night, I decide to make a list of everyone I need to call to say that I have cancer. I don’t want anyone to hear it secondhand. Like secondhand smoke, or clothing, it’s not as good as the original and I realize that there is etiquette even in cancer. I get through the first call to my parents in Philadelphia. My dad keeps saying, “You have cancer? Really?” Then they start to wail. And, as if on cue, the fire alarm goes off. They must have been cooking dinner when I called and now it is burning. My mom says the house is crying. They still live in the same house in Philadelphia where I lived since I was two years old. I make my other brother, Paul, drive out to their house to make sure they are okay. He’s a lawyer in Philly. What am I thinking? When I tell Paul, he sounds out of his mind. How could I think that he could take care of anyone? Who is taking care of him?

  I keep calling everyone on my list. I even put my old boyfriend, Brian, on the list to call. It’s strange, but I want him to know. I am so scared to call Jen. Her mom just had breast cancer. How can she deal with more breast cancer? My friends are outraged that the doctors in the room were the ones crying. Isn’t that supposed to be my role? Weren’t they supposed to comfort me and be the strong ones? But there was something that I liked about these two men in their white coats of authority suddenly feeling as helpless as I do.

  The next morning, at 8:45 on the last Friday in July, instead of heading off to my job as an assistant story editor at ABC News 20/20 I am sitting in the Park Avenue office of a famous breast surgeon. I had a good excuse not to be at work that morning, although I lied to my bosses and told them I had a sore throat. I have been waiting for over half an hour to see her, and I know instead of feeling annoyed by the wait I should feel grateful. She squeezed me into her packed schedule because Tyler called her in a panic when we found out the news last night. Tyler worked for her on the breast service and told me that all of her women patients adore her because she is so tough. He said they loved her warrior mode because they thought she would be that aggressive with the cancer.

  Her office is slightly below street level, and there are grates on the windows and not much light. I see the people hurrying by. Children being tugged to camp by their parents, people running to work. It feels right that I am only watching them go about their normal lives now, because nothing about my life will be normal again. Her desk is beautiful steel and glass, and it is gleaming. I notice the reflection of more glass, and pictures of a child. I don’t think I will ever be able to have one now.

  The order in her office is offering me a sort of refuge from this chaos. Her impressive diplomas are speaking to me from their gold frames. They are telling me that they will help me, they will cure me. I think about my own diplomas. About how hard I worked my entire life, studying, trying to get A’s, just to get those diplomas to put on my resumé, to get that job. And now sitting in this chair, nothing seems to matter anymore. The diploma, the job, the marriage, the future, all feel like they are about to vaporize with that one word: cancer.

  Now I am getting angry. There is nothing I can do to change the results. This is not about studying, working hard, getting the right answer, charming the right person, or nailing the interview. I spent so much of my life worrying. I thought of myself as a Chicken Little of sorts. Yes, the sky is always falling down, but not really—until now. I am a chronic worrier. A catastrophizer, actually. If that word existed, it is because someone knows me. I fret and agonize about everything and nothing at all. Maybe my worrying is a lame way of controlling my world; maybe a lifetime of silly worrying could somehow have prepared me for a real catastrophe?

  When the surgeon enters the room she barely looks at me. It is my pathology report that matters here. I have been reduced to a cell type. A bad one. No small talk about what I do or how she knows Tyler. God, I would do anything for chitchat, please, please, let’s at least talk about the weather? She is fishing for my mammogram. She holds a film up to the light and looks distressed. Almost as if I had snuck into a parking spot she had been eyeing or caused her to break a perfectly manicured nail. Annoyed, that is the emotion I sense. She picks up my file and that is when she finally looks at me.

  “Oh my god, do you have bad luck! You are only twenty-seven? This is unbelievable.”

  I start to cry. No, sob. A doctor has just told me that I have bad luck? She seems bothered.

  “Please pull yourself together,” she is pleading now. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  All I can think about is that I want my mommy. She is in the waiting room. She took the train up first thing this morning from Philadelphia to be with me at this appointment; she will come with me to every doctor’s appointment. I think that she insists on being here now because she was so busy working full-time with three kids when I was little.

  “You need to have a double mastectomy. Meet me in the examining room.”

  She tries telling me a joke in the examining room. Something lame like, “Pink is your color,” when she sees me in the examining gown. It is too late for any laughing now.

  I want to tell her who I was yesterday, before I knew I had cancer. I want to compare notes on the last great sushi restaurant we ate at or the last pair of fabulous black strappy high heels we bought. Anything to show we still have something in common. I want her to understand that this is not my fault.

  I cry so hard that she decides to have a social worker call my house later that day to check up on me, because clearly this is not part of her job—she is just the doctor. I can’t stop crying. It’s the first time I have cried since hearing the news. And I am crying because I think she has told me that I am incurable. That I am a walking death sentence. That
she has only read about cases like mine in her medical school textbooks. I never heard of a doctor telling a patient she had bad luck. My first doctor cried, my second doctor told me I had bad luck. I am screwed.

  I kind of felt like I was cheating on my boyfriend when Dr. B insisted that I get a second opinion. Would I like the other doctor more? Were there any rules about pissing off the first doctor with what the second doctor said? Dr. B recommended a lumpectomy, but this second doctor wants me to have a double mastectomy. She sees how much this news panicks me and she offers to give me the phone number of a woman in the Hamptons who recently had a double mastectomy. All I can think about is, “What kind of bathing suit is she wearing now?” Since the second doctor has such a different opinion from the first, I decide I need a third-opinion doctor.

  My doctor husband still can’t stop crying. He must think I am going to die. He must be thinking about the twenty-eight-year-old woman he took care of on his breast rotation who was dying. He watched her die of breast cancer. I am about to turn twenty-eight in a few weeks. He is spending all his time in the medical library, pulling every study on breast cancer, reading his medical textbooks every night. He won the golden scalpel award in med school, but nothing could prepare him for this. He has taken a few days off to come with me to my doctor appointments, but then he needs to go back to the hospital, to his patients. But being in a hospital when your wife has cancer is not so easy. He is sent home from the hospital his first day back because his hands cannot stop shaking while he was scrubbing in for surgery.

  I continue to see doctors. Nine strangers feel me up. Since we have already gone to second base, there are things about me that I want them to know: I wear black almost every day. I am a Leo. I wear sunglasses even on cloudy days. I am an incurable slob. “Desperado” was my favorite song even before this happened to me.

  But they all keep looking at me in the same way. No eye contact. I make jokes, I wear beautiful suits and lots of perfume and lipstick to catch their attention. I am being too obvious. Tyler even tells me on the way to one consult that I look like a prostitute. I know he is terrified to see the way the other doctors are looking at me. I know he is so sweet to his patients, but maybe even he has looked at a patient this way—just right through them. I am just trying to get their attention. I want them to look at me and realize I am not the cancer. I am not the malignancy.