Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy Read online

  Ativan: All my boob doctors have been telling me that I need a head doctor because clearly they are two different specialties. Whenever I ask, “Am I going to die?” or “Why did this happen to me?” or whenever I cry, they tell me, “You need to see a psychiatrist.”

  Tyler found me my cancer therapist. She had written a book about treating cancer patients and their families that was displayed in the Mount Sinai medical library. She lets me say anything I need to, like, “I’m scared I’m going to die,” and “Why did this happen to me?” It doesn’t freak her out at all or make her think that I am crazy. But she, too, told me, “You need to see a psychiatrist.” But not because she was worried that I was going crazy. She wanted me to get a prescription for anti-anxiety medication: Ativan. Whoever invented Ativan must have been a very worried person because it really does take the edge off nicely.

  Affirmations: I also found a hypnotherapist to teach me how to say affirmations to calm myself down because I am so scared I will faint when I get needles. I have such a low pain threshold and I can’t stand blood. I faint even seeing blood donation signs. The hypnotherapist tells me to think of myself as like the sky and then nothing can stick to me. The sky is so open and vast and stays unchanged no matter what; it is always the sky. A storm can roll through it, an airplane can roar through, and it is always the sky.

  “I am like the sky and nothing can stick to me,” is what I say before every needle now, and it is working.

  She tells me to write a note that my doctor can read to me when he is putting me under anesthesia before my mastectomy surgery. She asks me what I am scared of and then she puts a spin on it. I tell her that I am scared of scalpels. She tells me the scalpel is my friend. I tell her I am scared that my doctors will make a mistake on me. She tells me that I am in a room full of experts. I tell her that I am scared my cancer will come back. She tells me that I am cured. I tell her that I am scared that I will regret the mastectomy after my breast has been cut off. She tells me that I am proud of the decision I made. I tell her that I am so embarrassed at how wimpy I am. I feel like a coward. Everyone tells me that I am brave but I am filled with terror and self-doubt. She tells me the story of how she finally mastered her fear by doing a fire walk over coals. She was terrified. She was doing it with a group of five women as part of a training seminar. Four of them talked nonstop about how scared they were to do the fire walk. How they thought they might get burned. How they might get halfway through and not be able to finish. The fifth woman never said she was scared. She was the one who got third degree burns halfway over the hot coals. The other four made it without a blister. My hypnotherapist is telling me that being scared is brave.

  “It is so courageous to live by your heart. You need to honor your fear.” She explains to me the root of the word courage is coeur or heart. That following your heart is a form of real courage because it is so hard to listen to your heart. I always thought that following my heart was just the easy way out. The idea that it is actually an act of courage, that somehow my fear is strength, makes me feel less weak.

  But since I have been following my heart so much in these past few weeks, it is beating wildly and I can’t tame it. The Ativan helps. And when my medication or affirmations fail, I have still found the best therapy of all. Actually, she found me.

  When I first heard her voice on my answering machine, it was the only time I had heard my future since my diagnosis. Just from her voice, I know that she must be powerful and bold and the stuff of myths. She is an Amazon.

  “Geralyn, my name is Rena. You don’t know me. I’m your friend Jon’s aunt and I had breast cancer years and years ago.” Her voice becomes my lifeline. She tells me about her mastectomy, her chemo, but what she is really telling me is how alive she is all these years later. She signs everything “In Celebration!” She tells me to wear my best jewelry to the hospital. I tried a support group right after I was diagnosed but it didn’t work for me: Everyone was comparing tumor size and estrogen receptor status, and I found myself wanting to solve everyone’s problems in the room except for mine. Rena is different. She wants to tell me everything that helped her and to be my guide. She is convincing me I will have a future. How is she so brave for me? I go onto the Internet and look up Amazons. Women warriors who sliced off their breasts so that they could pull their arrows back further. They were serious. Bad-ass. I channel the voice of Rena and I hear the voice of a warrior. Of a woman who did anything to survive. I know I will cut off my breast, too. But am I Amazon material?

  The Ativan and the champagne have finally settled in as a nice buzz (oops, I remember the warning said not to drink alcohol while taking Ativan, but it is already too late). Will I ever be an Amazon? I am made of the stuff of myths?

  Maybe just lifting up my head is the first step. A small step to re-enter the world I am sure that I have already left. If life is short, I need a sip of champagne and a bite of chocolate soufflé. And, maybe one more Ativan, too? I love those and I am so glad I finally did see a psychiatrist. As I lift up my head I feel dizzy and see some black spots from my head being down so long. I can see my mom’s and Tyler’s smiles as I squint in the bright sunlight. I order a cappuccino to counter the Ativan/champagne buzz, and when I hear the milk steaming it sounds like the bone scan sounded when it stopped whirring. I realize that the things that used to scare me feel so softball compared to an hour in a bone scan machine.

  Bring it on.

  My eyes are swollen and my nose is running so I grab the napkin on my lap. My mascara is all over the white tablecloth and my lipstick has left a thick red smear across the table, too. I’m not embarrassed. I don’t care anymore. My mom and Tyler and the waitresses and the customers think that I am unraveling.

  But I know that it is just my courage starting to show.

  4

  I Need to Get It Off My Chest

  It is my twenty-eighth birthday and I am actually supposed to be having a mastectomy today, but when Dr. B realized it was my birthday he refused. He didn’t want me to think about this on every subsequent birthday. But I am so not convinced there will be that many more to celebrate. I just want to hit thirty.

  More important than celebrating my birthday, I need to somehow mark the last day of wearing my girly costume: Today is my last day with both my breasts, and just yesterday they told me that I definitely have to do six months of chemo. So my long black hair is about to disappear, too. How do I mark this day? I decide I should go outside and get street-harassed for one last time.

  I need a day to not talk about cancer. I need a break, because I have been telling everyone. It has only been two weeks since my breast cancer diagnosis and I’m still adjusting to what my new life as a cancer patient will be. It is so strange that I look and feel exactly the same—but everything is different.

  My parents and my brother Paul have come in from Philly to help me celebrate my birthday with Howard and Tyler and to be with me for my surgery tomorrow. I can’t tell them about my plan because I’m too embarrassed to admit it, but I am so incredibly desperate for some attention before it all goes away.

  I always hated it when men would catcall or leer and I always shouted back something lewd at them or gave them the finger, but now I want it so bad.

  I’ve got to leave my nine-hundred-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment because it is not big enough to handle all the well wishes mingled with grief. Every minute the phone is ringing with high-drama “Happy Birthdays,” or the I-never-told-you-how-much-I-loved-you-but-now-that-you-have-cancer-I-want-to-show-you flowers are arriving.

  I need to clear my mind of cancer for just one afternoon. I want to have some fun and not talk about my tumor size or chemo regimen. I’ve been talking nonstop about cancer now for over two weeks, inappropriately telling strangers that I have cancer. I even tell the male stripper at a bachelorette party. I make it come up in conversation because I’ve been reading articles that suggest that breast cancer happens because women repress things and hold them close
to their chests. I think it’s bullshit, but I need to cover all my bases—but did I have to tell the poor deli guy? “Sorry, I won’t have my regular coffee because I was just diagnosed with cancer and a macrobiotic nutritionist told me that caffeine makes tumors grow.” (My parents have insisted that I start eating health food since my diagnosis.) My deli guy sort of looked at me like it was too much information, and it was.

  But I couldn’t tell my Grandma Ruth that I have cancer. It would have been too sad for her and, because she is losing her mind, I was scared that I’d tell her and then she’d forget and then I’d need to tell her again, and how many times could she stand to hear that her granddaughter has cancer?

  I had seventeen bridesmaids at my wedding and four matrons of honor, so there were a lot of people I had to call. But should I have told my flower girl, Alissa? She is only seven and worships me and I can’t die on her. The telling had gotten a little easier, sort of like when I waited tables in college and I rattled off the daily specials. I wanted all my family and friends to hear it directly from me, to have front-row seats to what was unfolding, rather than hear it from someone else and think that they were not close enough to my heart.

  When I told Robin, she started to make almost animal noises and dropped the phone. After she picked it up, she couldn’t stop sobbing,

  “No, no, no. I love you.”

  She has always been more emotional than I am, and I’ve counted on her my entire life to be the part of me I could not be. We have been best friends since we were three, and our parents still live across the street from each other in Philadelphia. Robin is my alter ego. She cried when they separated us in first grade because we were too cliquey. I wanted to cry, too, but I am more distant from my feelings. Robin is in charge of calling our two other best friends, Jane and Diane, because my call with Robin shows me that I can’t handle the calls with Jane and Diane, especially since Diane is on vacation in Africa and we don’t want her to get on a plane and rush home.

  The one person I was most scared to tell was my boss, Meredith. I was dreading it because she is a goddess and thoroughly intimidating. Meredith is so perfect, and this news was so messy. I had been trying to win her over with the best story ideas and working late, and it was hard to tell if I was impressing her because because she was just so composed.

  My lawyer brothers, Paul and Howard, had researched the law for me and told me it would be illegal for ABC to fire me. I wasn’t worried about that, I was just worried that they would think so much less of me and write off my future there.

  I had finally landed my dream job at 20/20, and I had been there less than a year. I was so star struck finally getting hired at 20/20 because I got to watch Barbara Walters walk back and forth in front of my cubicle on her way to the bathroom. I rode in the elevator with Hugh Downs. Now it felt like all that, too, was going to be taken away. Even if my breast and hair were gone, at least I thought I would still have my brain. But now I wasn’t so sure. Television is the kind of career where someone might see your cancer as a career opportunity. Damaged goods, was all I was thinking. They’d consider me some sort of medical oddity. I really wanted to make a good impression and now I needed to tell them I had cancer?

  Maybe I could just keep it a secret. Could I pull that off? Maybe they would just think I got a boob job after my reconstructive surgery and I could wear a wig and maybe no one would notice.

  I practiced my speech, trying to sound professional and in control, but when Meredith picked up the phone I just blurted. I was always scared anyway of being inarticulate around Meredith because she is so smart.

  There was silence and then: “Geralyn, I had breast cancer when I was younger, in my thirties.”

  What? I never knew!

  She is so perfect. She is so beautiful. She has lived. “Meredith, please don’t tell anyone. I’m so embarrassed. I don’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Geralyn. You’ll need all of our support. I’ll tell everyone for you. Don’t worry about that. I don’t want you to be burdened telling everyone.”

  She didn’t want me to have to deal with everyone’s reactions. She told the whole staff. She organized a staff present, and a gigantic get-well card signed by every single person who worked at 20/20. Meredith even told Barbara Walters. Barbara sent me a hand-written note: Geralyn, you are so beautiful and smart and we are all waiting for your return.

  Even though Meredith took care of the telling, I had to go to the office one more time the Sunday after my diagnosis because I needed to clean up my desk and get my work in order. I was the first person to hold the position of assistant story editor, so no one was really sure of what I did. I find story ideas for 20/20 segments. I read local papers from all over the country and the news wires and strange publications to find interesting, untold stories. And I have found some pretty amazing ones: Amish runaways, kids who want to meet their sperm donor dads, a woman who had twenty-seven plastic surgeries to make herself look like a Barbie doll.

  I typed up my job description and made a list of all the stories I was currently working on and what was ready to be assigned to a producer. It felt so responsible of me to be doing this, but it was also a relief to take my mind off cancer cell types for a few hours, and to be back where I could actually use my brain and where no one needed to feel me up again.

  I had not seen or spoken to anyone since Meredith ran interference for me. I did not expect to see anyone in the office on a Sunday, but there he was. The big Kahuna, my boss’s boss, the executive producer, Victor, in his tennis outfit. I wanted to put my head down and pray that he wouldn’t notice me, but in a strange way I needed to tell him that he could count on me, and that just because I had cancer I was not going away.

  “Victor. Hi. I’m just getting some of my things together before I have my surgery . . .”

  I could see that I was totally freaking Victor out, and to make matters worse, I grabbed his hand! I never held my boss’s hand! What is wrong with me?

  “I’m going to be fine. I scheduled my chemo for Fridays so I can rest over the weekend and be back at work on Mondays.”

  Victor looked concerned but uncomfortable and just kept nodding. I knew that I was coming on so strong to convince us both that I would live and that he could count on me to do my job. I had been trying to impress Victor by getting the best stories for 20/20, but now I needed to convince him that I would live. I remembered how hard I had tried to get hired, how I used to jump when I heard his booming voice on the other end of the phone, and I couldn’t believe we had just held hands. Wow, this getting-it-off-my-chest stuff was pretty powerful! That encounter with Victor showed me that I clearly couldn’t handle telling, and that Meredith was a much more graceful and thorough publicist.

  Since my diagnosis I had been looking for another young woman who had been through this. I had only heard of my mom’s friends, grandmothers. Had angels planned for Meredith to be my boss? Could this be real? This was crazy! And it was about to get even crazier.

  I was about to become completely convinced of angels—on my twenty-eighth birthday, the day before my mastectomy.

  I painstakingly pick out my outfit for my last hurrah, my premastectomy I-need-some-attention-I-need-it-so-badly strut. I’m wearing my favorite faded jeans that make my butt look awesome. And a bodysuit that is very tight and accentuates my breasts—I’m not wearing a bra . . . I never do because my breasts are small and firm enough.

  It’s ninety-five degrees and the city is deserted. Everyone must be away at the beach, but I am stuck here waiting for my surgery tomorrow. I put my hand up to hail a taxi and two start to race towards me. Maybe it’s because there are so few fares today in this scorching heat, or maybe my outfit is working? Is this why the taxis are lurching towards me? The one farther away darts in front of the other taxi and does a sharp turn towards me, nearly causing a rear-end collision. After some heavy screaming and door-slamming and fuck-yous! I reluctantly enter the winner, and it’s about to become clear exactly
why he has won.

  I’m just relieved to slide into some air conditioning, because little blotches of sweat have already started to stain my bodysuit. My inadvertent wet T-shirt seems to make my cab driver quite pleased, especially because I’m not wearing a bra. This is shaping up to be quite the last hurrah for my breasts.

  “Hello, LADY!” He is screaming at me over some blaring dance music that sounds like the club mixed version of “La Bamba.”

  Oh, no . . . I’m noticing that he has a small disco ball hanging in his rearview mirror. It is reminding me of the disco ball over the stage where the strippers showed their boobs.

  I offer back a weak “hi,” pull my large black sunglasses off the top of my head and put them on, hoping to signal that I don’t want any conversation on this cab ride.

  “I saw you from three blocks away. Wow! I nearly crashed that other cab to meet you! My insurance goes way up if that happens!”

  So now I sort of feel obligated to talk to the guy, because he risked a higher insurance rate for me.

  “Oh. I just thought you were a bad driver like a lot of cabbies.”

  I am trying to be rude—maybe this will stop him. He must be a masochist, because he continues with even more excitement.

  “No, I’m a very good driver. And dancer.” He starts to hit the brakes in time with the music and I can’t help but crack up.

  “You like to dance, lady? Wow, I bet you look hot on the dance floor.”

  I think about myself on the dance floor—my breasts are shaking with the music—but then it sounds like a scratch in the record when I realize that tomorrow only one boob will be shaking on the dance floor. How will I dance? Will everyone notice that only one boob shakes and the other is reconstructed? The vision of myself as a hottie in the taxi is fading. I wanted this attention but I’m suddenly feeling very annoyed by this cab driver. It’s not really his fault, but now I’m pissed that he’s hitting on me. Furious, really. He doesn’t know that I’m just wearing a costume because my breasts and hair are about to disappear. I know he won’t leer tomorrow when I only have one boob. He won’t turn his head when I lose my hair. He’s compounding my grief by admiring what I’ve already given away in my head. He could be any man. He’s leering and he wants me for things I will soon not have. I’m scared he will not want me when they are gone. Trying to be a sexy woman is making my heart so heavy now, and I feel it pounding hard.