Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy Read online

  Dr. O has ordered me a deliberately deadly cocktail called CMF: cytoxin, methyltrexate, and 5FU Fluorocuracil. Cytoxin means cell killing. After I hear that, I figure out that the methyltrexate and 5FU are chasers. Maybe like sucking a lime after a tequila shot, I try to reassure myself. And there are more cocktails. It feels like Unhappy Hour: a steroid cocktail to manage my body’s reaction to the poison and an anti-nausea cocktail to control the vomiting and diarrhea. It will not work, but it will blimp me up fifteen pounds. The anti-nausea cocktail makes me vomit and they try another concoction on me. Instead of Zofran I get Kytrol, which is a cousin of Zofran. Are whiskey and bourbon cousins or somehow related?

  I ordered the CMF instead of the AC (adriamyacin, cytoxin) because the doctors told me that although the adriamyacin was stronger, it could cause heart failure. That scared me, but it feels frivolous to worry about a little heart failure when the goal is to kill all the fastest-growing cells in my body.

  I think about how the frat guys I went to college with used to chug beers and put strange tubes down their throat to get the maximum amount of liquor into their bloodstreams in the shortest amount of time. Why not just use an IV? I guess because IVs are too serious. There is something really wrong when an IV is involved. Basically because they follow you everywhere—there’s no getting away from them, especially when you badly need to pee. I learned how to walk slightly ahead of the pole so I could look more elegant when I had visitors in the hospital, but it is still a ball and chain. There are too many IV poles rolling around this oncology office.

  The skull and crossbones on the IV bag means poison, and the poison is about to go inside my vein. It is going to kill all of my fast-growing cells because it can’t find just the cancer. So that is why my hair will fall out, my stomach will cramp, and my white blood cell count will drop, making me exhausted and prone to infection. My veins will turn black, singed from the poison shooting through them, until they look like stripes against my still very white skin. I will look like a heroin addict. Whoever thought of heroin chic never had heroin veins. I will pull my sleeves down and never wear my favorite black dress because it is sleeveless.

  My chemo nurse, Nurse C, introduces herself. How does she look so happy in this place? Even the way she snaps on her rubber gloves seems playful. Everything about her does not match the chemo room—her huge blue-green eyes, her fiery red hair, and her large earrings—except for her white nurse shoes and white nurse’s uniform. When Nurse C rolls the IV pole towards me, I remember that I passed out at my high school blood drive. I didn’t even have the needle in me yet.

  I have been training myself with the hypnosis for this needle especially, for my chemo shots. I don’t pass out when I smell the alcohol or when they tie the rubber band around my arm to make the vein bulge or when they make me clench my fist around a rubber ball. But I am sweating and starting to see black dots. I tell the nurse that I might faint and she has a glass of OJ and a hard candy for me to suck on. I try my mantra: “I am like the sky and nothing can stick to me.”

  The needle feels like it is pulling on my vein and then I feel the rush of the cocktail being forced through it. It feels like it might burst, it is so tight and hard and cold. I did not order my CMF on the rocks. “Nurse this feels really cold.”

  She grabs a blanket to cover me and my mom tries to hug me to keep me warm. I am pushing her away to show that I can handle it. But I can’t. I am so scared that I’m at the beginning of the marathon because I have only just started the poison. There are so many patients in the same chemo room who look like they’ll barely hobble to the finish line. Is that where I am headed?

  The needle stays in my arm and the pushing goes on for hours and it feels like there is a brick balancing on my tiny brave vein. I am trying to read The National Enquirer to take my mind off my vein. With my right hand I’m eating a chocolate Entenmann’s doughnut to get the strange metallic taste out of my mouth that they warned me about. I can’t move my left hand because it has the IV taped securely to the top of my hand. They have started with the vein in my hand to preserve the other veins for future treatments. What feels like forever and a lot of cold pushing later, when Nurse C finally removes the needle from my relieved vein, Dr. O wants to see me in her office.

  I chose Dr. O to be my oncologist because she reminded me of Glenda the Good Witch. Even though she doses out poison, there is a fairylike quality to her. She probably wishes she had a magic wand under her white coat, because there are so many sick people in her office. Dr. O is a woman you want on your side when shit is going down. When she talks it is like she is petting you. “Geralyn, your first chemo was wonderful. Your white count looks beautiful. Why not go home and relax and order in a movie and dinner with Tyler?”

  I feel so unsteady when I leave her office, like I have drunk way too many margaritas. My mom needs to put me into a taxi before she hails her own cab to get downtown to the train station. I am scared that I won’t make it the twenty-three blocks uptown without puking.

  When the empty taxi pulls over the first thing I hear is heavy metal music. I mouth “no” to my mom—I do not want to step into a Black Sabbath concert now because I feel so queasy. My mom sees how sick I am and wants to ride uptown with me but I know if she does she’ll miss her train. Anyway, I need to prove that I can take a fucking taxi and I’m not dead yet.

  I kiss my mom good-bye. She has already paid the cab driver and told him that I’m not feeling well, please drive carefully. Even though my mom and dad grew up in New York, they act like such tourists, way too friendly to people. I’ve told them not to say hi to people when they walk into elevators. It’s a giveaway they are from out of town. She is talking too much to the cab driver now. I need to take some control.

  “Sir, I’m going to Ninety-sixth and Park.”

  What am I thinking? He’s covered in tattoos and wearing a black bandana and I just called him “sir”? Chemo must already be affecting my brain. “I just had my first chemotherapy treatment. Please, please try to drive slowly. I’m so scared that I’ll vomit in your car.”

  The next thing I hear is soft classical music and he has pulled his taxi over. Oh, no. Another taxi moment because I have cancer-confessed. “My wife had ovarian cancer and it was the chemo that nearly killed her.” He rolls down the windows in case I need to vomit and drives so slowly that we get honked at four times. He actually parks the taxi in front of my apartment building and insists on carrying my bag and walking me to the front door.

  I am so optimistic that I order Indian food (maybe that will get the metal taste out of my mouth) and tell Tyler to rent a movie just like Dr. O told me to. I want to be a good patient. The problem is just that I can’t get off my bathroom floor. This cocktail leaves me feeling worse than a notorious night I spent leaning over the toilet swearing I would never drink another cocktail. I am vomiting and shitting at the same time and I am so covered that I need to peel off my clothing and throw away my favorite crimson skirt. I will never wear that suit again.

  I can’t believe that I need to go back to that room and have another cocktail.

  I decide for my next chemo I need to have a cocktail party in my chemo lounge. It is catered with McDonald’s, Entenmann’s chocolate doughnuts, and lots of other things to get the metal taste out of my mouth. I invite my parents, brothers, Aunt Lynda, and friends. My chemo contingent is taking up about half of the chemo room where all the patients sit and get their cocktails. They take turns holding my right hand. How are they so brave? My dad tells me that he would take the shot for me and I know he means it.

  There is something about the chemo room that makes us all feel close and honest. It is more intense than sitting at a bar to have a cocktail and getting so drunk that we say things that we’ve never said before, more intense than sweating in a sauna together. The chemo room is about realizing everything we have ever taken for granted, especially not having cancer. We’ve all looked around and realized how short life could be. My family and friends
make chemo fun and take me out to EJ’s Luncheonette afterwards and then on a little shopping spree. No matter how tired I am from the chemo, I always have a little energy left to shop and eat, even though everything I’ve been eating lately tastes like a rusty nail. I have started craving strange things like macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes with gravy all mixed together.

  It’s so jarring to go from the chemo room back to normal life. When I return to my job and hear my coworkers complaining that they’ve gotten a minute cut out of their story and they are in full panic mode, I can’t relate at all. Maybe a visit to the chemo room would make them understand how lucky they are.

  The next few cocktails build up in my bloodstream and now I am totally tanked. I lose control of my bowels in a taxi. It is not really my fault. I couldn’t warn him because he’s on his cell phone and not speaking English. He keeps hitting the brakes really hard, and each time I think I am holding my sphincter muscle as tightly as I can—but he caught me off guard when he slammed on the brakes at the red light at the intersection of 81st and Central Park West.

  I am so drunk and off kilter. Even carrying a newspaper feels heavy.

  I will vomit every day for the six months of chemotherapy. I have systems: I have learned to steal vomit bags from airplanes. If you ask the stewardess she will usually bring you an entire handful because she is scared you’re going to heave at any moment. I carry those bags everywhere. I also carry a change of clothing, in a vomit-proof plastic bag, of course (I quickly learn that supermarket bags leak). And I figure out which dry cleaners will deal with vomit and still smile when I come to pick up my clothing. I carry around a tin hairspray aerosol that I spray every time I vomit in the ladies room at work so my colleagues will not know that I’ve just spent an hour on the floor. Most important, I carry around a hankie doused in Poison perfume—like they did in Victorian times—to offset any offensive smells that could trigger vomiting. I learned my lesson after I stepped into an ATM that a homeless person had slept in all night. My only misfire was a dog. That was tricky.

  As my veins turn black, my stomach convulses, and my skin turns green, I cannot begin to imagine what must be happening to my eggs. I think my nest is unraveling and it is under attack. I can’t order eggs for breakfast anymore. Scrambled, over easy, it’s all torture. Especially fried—that’s what I fear is happening to my precious eggs after the chemotherapy poison. When I feel a menstrual cramp I am convinced it’s a chemo cramp. When I start to bleed again I am convinced that it’s just another bodily fluid oozing out of me. But when the blood continues, I know my egg is okay. It has somehow survived this assault. I continue to bleed. I was never one of those women who felt it was womanly. It just bummed me out that I couldn’t wear my white satin pants and that I still felt paranoid getting into a swimming pool. Now, each month my blood is a telegram from my eggs: “Still kicking!”

  The chemo begins to have another strange side effect; this one no one warned me about. I become so tired that it feels like I’m watching my life in fast forward on the VCR. Why is everyone speaking so fast, moving so fast? I need to regroup on the sidewalk and sit down because it hurts to hold my hand up in the air to hail a taxi. Taxis don’t even stop for me anymore. Maybe they can’t see me hailing as hard as I used to. But I know it is really because my skin is green, I am bloated, and my hair is starting to fall out.

  I begin to blur and I start to disappear.

  I never realized how often men used to look at me on the street until they stop. I would give anything for a once-over. It’s as if I don’t exist. I just walk by as an invisible woman. I suddenly don’t count.

  I remember when I counted. When men would smile and even catcall and when the men at the coffee counter would make a point of asking me if I wanted sugar in my coffee just to extend the conversation. Now, I am looked through on the coffee line. They take her order before mine even though I was on line first. They never ask if I want sugar. No eye contact.

  I decide to stop wearing lipstick. I am too tired to remember to put it on, and no one is looking anyway. And one day it happens. “I” completely disappear.

  If you don’t believe me, I even have a picture to prove it.

  I have to get my photo ID taken at ABC News. My luck they decide to change the security system now. Everyone needs to get a new ID picture. There is no chemo waiver.

  My friends are headed over to get their picture taken and are waiting for me at my cubicle.

  “I have to return this call,” I lie, because I need to be alone to face the camera.

  I wait until the end of the day to walk down the long corridor towards the security department. There is a little mirror in the security station where the photos are being taken. I guess it’s a courtesy thing for people to make sure they like the way their hair looks. I do not even look. I am avoiding mirrors. Anything shiny or reflective makes me scared. After I caught a glimpse of myself in the microwave pantry at work, I have become more careful.

  My hair has really started to thin.

  I have learned to blow-dry my thinning hair with my eyes closed. I never blow-dried. Now, I try to do anything to fluff the hair that is hanging on until the next cocktail. It is a strange form of self-deception.

  The security man knows there is something wrong with me because my skin is so green from my last chemo treatment. I start explaining. I tell him about the chemotherapy I have been taking and how my hair is falling out. He has an idea. He turns on the fan in his office. It is October and already slightly chilly. He is trying to create the windblown look on my thinning mane. I am so grateful for the fan. It is an act of random kindness. It makes me smile when I see the flash of the red light. But even my smile is not the same.

  I place the ABC new photo ID in my wallet and it is directly across from my Columbia University ID card from just a year ago.

  That Geralyn is gone: the thick long shiny black hair, the the-future-is-mine smile. The lush eyebrows! I look over at my new picture: I am swollen and my skin has a sallow, green tinge.

  My oncologist had warned me that my hair would “release” from my chemo. Releasing is just a very fancy word for falling out. I had never really noticed her hair until we had this conversation during a consult about which chemo I should have. Her hair is the color of Campbell’s tomato soup (with cream added instead of the traditional can of water). It is wavy and a perfect bouffant shape of mini ocean whitecaps all over her head. I think she wears hairspray (so I know she must care about her hairdo, too). Her hairspray is not the kind that makes it stiff, but the kind that keeps her looking perfectly put together while she is consoling a patient and telling her her white counts look “beautiful.” She was noticing my long hair.

  “Geralyn, some women are more comfortable losing their hair if it’s shorter. Why not cut your hair so it’s easier when it starts releasing?” She must see my apprehension and offers Plan B.

  “Some women even shave their hair off beforehand so they don’t need to worry about it falling out.”

  “No way, I can’t.”

  “I think you should get a wig and have it just in case.” Dr. O is still looking at my hair.

  8

  Hair Removal

  Losing my hair is harder than losing my breast because everyone can see it happening.

  And “releasing” sounds so more elegant than it actually is. The word should be “shedding.” I am like a shaggy dog because I leave hair everywhere I go. I leave my hair on chairs during important meetings at work, on clothing I try on in stores, and at friends’ apartments. It is so embarrassing and it feels like everyone can actually see me unraveling. Long black strands of my hair are on my pillow, on my New York Times, on my kitchen table, and all over my hardwood floors. I secretly collect it so that people will not notice all the hair I am leaving behind. I can’t believe how much hair I must have had, because there is still so much on my head even though so much has fallen out.

  Wax, tweezers, Nair, razors, shaving cream, Jolene ble
ach are all products of my recent past, kept on a hopeful shelf in a medicine cabinet. Thinking of all the time and money I spent removing “unwanted” hair makes me wish for it all back. Well, some of it anyway. Just enough to cover this small bald patch on the top of my head that people can’t help but stare at. I remember when I used to get other kinds of stares.

  It is an ironic time of year for my hair to be falling out. It is autumn, and everywhere I walk, there are leaves falling from trees. Autumn used to be my favorite season, but now those naked branches are so sad to look at.

  I take Dr. O’s advice and decide I need a wig. I do my research and I find the most high-end wig salon in New York City. Saying the word “wig” is just too crass here. When I walk in a young man comes up to me and runs his fingers through my hair. He is caressing my hair, actually. I wonder if when he is touching it any of it will just fall out in his hands. He starts to smell it and asks me what type of hair products I use. He must have a hair fetish and he clearly found the right occupation.

  His boss comes over, brushes him aside, and asks me if I am here to sell my hair. I must look really confused because then he asks me if I want to buy extensions—maybe on closer inspection he has noticed the balding spot on the top.

  “I started chemo and I started releasing and I need to get a wig.”

  The younger man hugs me and starts to cry. A real boo-hoo sniffle cry. The older man tells him to pull himself together and gives me a stroke on my face and tells me to follow him. There are a lot of men dressed in drag in the shop trying on long blond wigs and I realize it is only a week before Halloween. That makes my being here seem crueler. I am buying a real costume, a wig I will need to wear every day just to pass, and they are just having fun playing dress-up for a night of partying.