In honor of breast cancer awareness month, I wrote this...

Just What I’ve Always Wanted!


I never got to properly say good-bye to my breasts. Not that I know how one would really go about it. Would you throw them a going-away party?  Buy them a card? Sing them a song? I just took photos to remember them by and went to bed.


Five hours, a lot of drugs, and 2 surgeries later, they were gone. All gone. Nipples too. (People don’t think about that part, but in most cases they have to go too.)


I wish I had done more with them when they were here. Took them to more places, showed them more of the world. Let them meet more interesting people. I didn’t know I wouldn’t have them forever. It wasn’t something I ever thought much about, to tell you the truth.


I never really thought about giving them up, because, well, I never really thought about getting cancer. Other people get cancer. Other old people. Not me, not 39-year-old me. Not me, who has traveled the world, been to graduate school, and made it through childbirth (with back labor!) without an epidural. That kind of shit just doesn’t happen people like me.


Well, you may think, who the hell do you think it happens to, then? The truth is, it happens to people like me, people not like me, and people somewhat like me.


Older, younger, prettier, healthier, less fit, more fit, fatter, skinnier, darker, lighter, people with piercings and tattoos, educated, not-educated, middle class, unemployed, CEOs, northerners, southerners, mid-westerners, artists, poets, gardeners, teachers, doctors, moms, dads, and me. We can all get breast cancer. And when we do, it always, always sucks.


Sometimes it sucks more, sometimes it sucks less, but I can pretty much guarantee that no one who has heard the words, “It’s breast cancer” has ever done a jig, threw up their hands and said, “Awesome! Just what I’ve always wanted!”


Then you are numb. And it is like it isn’t happening to you, but someone else. And your whole world slowly and subtly just falls out from under you. You feel so completely let down, set adrift, let go—or whatever you feel—(but it will all suck) and you have no earthly idea what it all means. What it means for your body, your marriage, your kids, your bank account, your job, your mind, your friendships, your whole way of being in the world. Your whole way of living your life. You have no idea what any of it means and that, that is truly terrifying.


After a certain age, we like to feel that we can know what our lives are all about. What will happen today, tomorrow, and next year. And one figures, for the most part, most of it is all kind of know-able, tolerable, and pretty much the same as today. But now that is no longer true. Your life is no longer know-able or predictable in the way that your friend’s lives are know-able and predictable (or so you think).

 You are no longer in control of your own life, your own body, your own time. You freak out, you cry, you get pissed off, you sleep, you dive into work. However you cope. You start there, and once the numbness wears off a bit and the shock is mostly over, you find yourself living a life you could never imagine. A life filled with needles, appointments, waiting rooms, lab tests, scans, more waiting rooms, hospital protocols, chemo, bruises, hospital gowns. And all these things become your new way of being, living, and seeing the world. You are no longer quite whole, you are now a cancer patient.

 In a freaky and twisted way—you can get used to anything, trust me—you get used to it. It becomes who you are, at least for now. All that stuff you never imagined happens to you again and again. Over and over. Time passes and six months later, you can’t believe you still have three more rounds of chemo, two surgeries, and nipple tattoos (yes, they were a surprise to me too) to go. But you do, and so you keep going. Because really, what is the alternative?

 Then, before you have time to gather your friends and throw a party, you are saying good-bye to your breasts forever. Your surgeon (well meaning, but still has her breasts) is saying things like, “Just think, you will have the breasts of an 18-year-old” and I think, “Oh, really? How many 18-year-olds do you know with six-inch scars and nipple tattoos?” Unless her name is Frankenstein, not many, I bet.

 Anyway, I’d rather have my (now) 40-year-old breasts, thank you. They had nerve endings, they had sensation, and they had real nipples. They didn’t have eternal numbness, scars, silicone, or arm-pit cleavage.


But—and you must remember this—they did have cancer, and that my dear reader, is why you had to part ways with them in the first place.