Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy

by Geralyn Lucas

  But I am not the only one feeling strange. My mom tells me the next day that everyone was crying when they were singing “Happy Birthday.” It was not happy, because I had cancer. And a few of my classmates called who had been at the reunion to see if I was okay—they must have heard that I was sick.

  Despite being “caught,” I am still glad that I went to the reunion. No matter what anyone else in the room had accomplished—how big her house was, how much money he made—I realized I had earned the title my classmates had given me: Most Likely to Succeed. Just because I showed up. In that room I felt the sadness of my life now, smacked up against all the promise I had thought it held.

  I never thought I would get cancer. Especially not when I was only seventeen years old and about to graduate from high school and the world was waiting for me. I thought I would do great things.

  I knew now that in a strange way I had.

  Everything about me seemed different now because of the cancer, but some things had remained exactly the same.

  11

  18-Hour Support Bra

  The first thing I think when I wake up after my implant surgery is that I have a newfound respect for strippers. This hurts soooo much.

  After four blow-ups in my plastic surgeon’s office, I have reached the final phase of my reconstruction, which involves a surgery to replace the reconstruction expander implant with a real saline implant. I have also decided to get an “enhancement” implant on the left side to match the new bigger fake boob on the right. During my intake at the hospital, the nurse seems to be very rude to me.

  “Have you had any other surgery?” she asks.

  “I had a mastectomy in August.”

  Her face drops and she actually says she is sorry and I realize she thought that I was just another one of those silly plastic surgery junkies checking in to have a boob job. Well, sort of.

  They send me home with drains stitched inside of me again and I empty my drains all night. I am pretty used to what the wound fluid should look like after wearing the milk-carton drains so often after surgery, but this time it looks like pure blood. Tyler comes home from his hospital shift at midnight, and when I show him the blood he mumbles that I should probably go to the emergency room and then passes out from exhaustion.

  When I call Dr. P the next morning she is panicked and I am rushed into emergency surgery because I am bleeding where my new implant is. I am too scared of the drama to feel angry at Tyler for blowing me off last night. He has been so sleep-deprived from his surgery residency and taking care of me during the night shifts at home. It is so hard for him to be on-call for me, too.

  On the way into the operating room I am thinking how crazy it would be if my breast implant killed me and not the breast cancer. Am I vain to be going through this?

  After the surgery they check me into Tyler’s orthopedic floor in the hospital. He’s on call so if I’m on his floor he can see me tonight. Tonight, I just want to be one of his patients, not his wife. I want my bandage to be on my knee and not my boob so that he can change my bandage and reassure me. I want him to care about my cancer the way he cares about his patients. One of his bosses comes to my hospital room and hands Tyler a textbook and a video and tells him that he is doing a hip revision surgery tomorrow . . . another patient is pulling him away.

  But even after all that expanding my skin is still not sloping naturally enough and it is pushing the reconstruction implant too high up on my right side. So like all construction projects, we are over time and over budget. I need another surgery to move the implant lower down. Dr. P is working so hard to make my now reconstructed boob perfect and I do appreciate what a perfectionist she is because I do not want to be lopsided in my new tight, tight sweaters.

  After my final fix-it reconstruction surgery there is a beautiful gift waiting for me, a box wrapped in beautiful ribbons and tissue paper, from a fancy lingerie store. It is from Meredith. I open up the box and smell lavender, and underneath the tissue paper is a gorgeous see-through white lace bra with satin loops stitched all around the borders. When I take it out and hold it up to my chest, I realize how out of place and ridiculous it will look over the plastic drains with the wound fluid accumulating, over the red Sharpie line, and over the jagged stitches. I feel like Cinderella covered in rags and ashes but still dreaming of wearing a ball gown and glass slippers.

  I decide that this nippleless mound, this implant, this stretched skin will someday deserve to wear a lacy bra, too. This beautiful bra has given me hope and somehow showed my boob its future. I remember the pictures of the nipple in the photo book and I think that as soon as this scar is healed, as soon as these drains are pulled out of me, I am getting my new nipple, and putting on this bra.

  Meredith’s gorgeous bra makes me realize that I need to trade in my 18 Hour support bra, throw away my falsie, and find a bra that fits because my boobs are finally even—well, the most even they have been in a long time, after the last surgery. I now have matching implants on both sides so I do not need to keep wearing the falsie, the plastic chicken cutlet–feeling fake boob that I have been using on my real boob to match the expansions. The falsie has become part of me; if it’s not on my body it is sleeping beside me in its plastic holder.

  I finally get to remove the plastic pup tent that’s been over the wound for weeks. And it hurts. I don’t want Tyler to touch it because I just cannot summon any sexiness. I have not showered and I still smell like the hospital. I take a shower and try to wash the hospital smell off of me and my new breasts. It is finally time to throw out the falsie and my 18 Hour support bra. They have been my crutches through this whole experience.

  Reluctantly I go to Victoria’s Secret. I feel like an imposter, shopping like a normal woman in a bra store—my agenda is so much more complex than most women’s here. I am trying to imagine what kind of bra they all need: a strapless bra for their sister’s wedding, a foxy bra for their new boyfriend, a cream-colored bra for their new white cashmere sweater. I just need a make-me-look-normal bra. Do they sell those here? I am trying to pass as a regular woman even though I only have one real boob. Each table I walk by is boasting the best-fitting bra to push me up, contour me, even perform a miracle for me. Victoria’s Secret doesn’t know how badly I need a miracle. I only want to look even—at this point I would call that a small miracle—and I can’t have anything too sheer because my one nipple might get hard, and it would then be obvious that I have only one. I also need to hide my scar, so nothing see-through because it is still a bright red diagonal bolt across my new breast.

  I have no idea what size bra I wear now, and I am slightly intimidated by the saleswomen with tape measures around their necks patrolling the store. As I’m fingering a lacy black bra and wondering what it would look like over my scar, I catch a glimpse of the tape measure coming closer, closer, and closer. I can practically see the lines of the inches. Oh no.

  “Can I help you?”

  The saleswoman seems too confident. She does not realize the challenge she is in for. That tape measure has never measured this kind of measurement.

  “I’m not sure,” I stammer back, terrified of that tape measure.

  “What type of bra are you looking for? Have you tried our new miracle bra?”

  “I just need a bra that fits. I am not really sure what my size is. . . .”

  “Most women are wearing the wrong bra size. Most sizing issues are purely psychological.” The saleswoman seems amused that I think I am alone in this predicament.

  I take a deep breath and I get it all off my chest. “I used to be a 32 A, then I was a 34 double D on my right side only because I had a mastectomy and my skin was being stretched with an expander implant so that my real implant would slope naturally, and I just got an implant on my left side to make it match but my right side is still higher on my chest . . .”

  Oops. Too much information. Cancer confession. I remember my poor deli guy and every other innocent bystander I have blurted to.

>   The saleswoman has not even missed a beat. “What size are you wearing now, dear?”

  “Oh, this. This is my 18-Hour support bra. I don’t even remember the size.”

  Rebecca had found the perfect 18-Hour support bra to help me get through my reunion. But it had done more than help me pass. The support bra had supported me in every way. Just knowing how strong that bra was, knowing that it could endure for eighteen hours and that it had promised to give me a lift. I never understood why any woman would need eighteen-hour support. Now I know. I needed it so badly lately. Support. Actually saying the word support is having a strange effect on me. Thinking that I need to trade in this support bra is making me weak.

  The saleswoman opens a dressing room with her key and puts her tape measure around my chest. I feel like a science project. I had started out with my original 32-A-cup bras and I busted out after my plastic surgeon expanded my reconstruction implant. When I tried to even myself out on the other side, the falsie never seemed to fit inside the other cup. I must have moved up to the D’s at the height of the construction, which is when I bought my support bra, but now I am swimming in it as she pulls the tape measure tighter.

  “You’re a 34 B!” she announces with tremendous authority.

  I must look like I doubt her, but I’m just amazed that my boobs can be anywhere near a normal, regular size? It feels so much more complicated: the cancer, the expansion, the scar, and the one nipple. How did all of that become a standard bra size that I can try on in the Victoria’s Secret dressing room? Although technically I have only gone up one bra size from before I had cancer, there were saline and stitches and stretches and so much sadness in between that I haven’t been sure what to expect. As my boobs were being blown up with saline, my heart has been stretching in all different directions, too. It hurts.

  I cannot give up my support bra.

  The saleswoman leaves my support bra and me in the room and returns with several black lace bras. I cannot take the support bra off.

  “Dear, can I help you with that? It’s really the wrong size.”

  I feel slightly dizzy. I sit down on the bench in the dressing room. The thought of taking off the support bra is making me physically ill. The word support is echoing through this tiny, fluorescent-lit cage. The pretty pink-striped wallpaper is reminding me that buying bras should be a sexy experience, but now it’s causing me psychological trauma. It is reminding me of everything wrong with my life lately. Of all the emotions and people that I have been avoiding because I have been trying to survive my chemo, my surgeries, and my job.

  “It’s my husband,” I stammer. “I’m scared I’m losing him.”

  The saleswoman does not seem fazed by this confession. I keep going.

  “And my mom, I’m so worried about her. We’re Jewish and she has become a Christian Scientist! I don’t think she can handle the idea of me dying. She needs to believe my body can heal itself.

  “My father doesn’t cry around me, but I heard that he broke down sobbing while presenting at a board meeting.”

  The saleslady goes to put the black lacy bra on the little hanger in the dressing room. I’m not sure if she was planning to hug me or if she just accidentally brushed up against me when she was reaching, but now we are embracing with one push up, one miracle, and one smooth-as-skin (and my support bra) between us.

  I tell her everything.

  Before this moment I haven’t told anyone that I felt Tyler was slipping away from me during my cancer treatments. All I wanted was for him to acknowledge that he was scared that I might die, but he was always insisting that I was cured and ended any conversation I wanted to have about what would happen if my cancer came back and if I died. Whenever I said how scared I was, or how uncertain my future felt, he usually cut me off: “You’re cured.” I knew it was supportive that he believed that I was cured, but I wanted him to worry with me.

  But, maybe I had pushed him away?

  Maybe I was so scared of dying on him that I decided to leave him anyway.

  Would I always be his wife if I died? Would he marry someone else?

  What would happen if I disappeared?

  I needed to know. Robin was in my bed with me last night after I had just vomited for the ninth time that day. I tried to eat a cheeseburger but now it was all over my toilet. I brushed my teeth and started to cry.

  “Rob, you will always be my best friend. Even if I die. Will I always be yours?”

  “Ger, you are not going to die.”

  “If I do, you can marry Tyler.”

  “What? Ger, what are you talking about?”

  I had been working on a story at 20/20 called second chances. It was about a couple who got married after their spouses had both died of cancer. They met and fell in love in a support group. I wanted Rob and Tyler and everyone in my life to have a second chance if I disappeared. But, I also needed to feel irreplaceable. I want to know I will still be part of my life, even if I die. But, I miss Tyler now.

  I had thought it would be too much to ask for to expect a husband who was compassionate and who would hold my hand at every chemo appointment, but I saw the other husbands in the chemo room. I had a different idea of romance now—it is not chocolate, roses, perfume. Romance is holding back your wife’s thinning hair while she pukes so hard that she pees in her pants. The whole chemo room was a love song, except for me. I felt more like a country music song. The lyrics would be something like, “First I lost my boob, then I lost my hair, and now I’ve lost my husband.”

  A lot of insensitive people had told me every story they’d heard about husbands leaving wives with breast cancer. The implication was that I should feel lucky that Tyler was sticking around. And everyone was treating me like I should feel so relieved that I was already married, the implication being that a one-boobed girl definitely could not get laid. I would prove them wrong.

  In fact, I had even drafted a singles ad:

  One-boobed woman with extra-large heart seeking companion to share chemo treatments, bone scans, and surgery recovery. Ability to handle vomiting a must. Sperm donor also wanted in near future. Non-smokers preferred.

  I had assumed that hanging out in hospitals might be appealing to a doctor. But it wasn’t. Tyler didn’t have the time to come with me to most of my treatments because he was always on call at the hospital. And he didn’t understand why I needed people there with me at my treatments. He thought that I should just be “mature” and go on my own. I guess the last place he wants to be when he has any spare time is a hospital. He is in the hospital day and night. And the last thing he wants is a patient in pain at home, because he is treating patients in pain all the time.

  I was so jealous when I saw the other husbands in the chemo room at my last treatment. Tyler had shown up once, but he missed my last chemo treatment. That was the one that I needed him to be at most. I thought the last time would be a relief and that I would be so happy to walk out of that oncology office with a Band-Aid on my poor bruised vein, so relieved I would not have to come back for another shot. But it was the first time that I cried in the chemo room. I finally let myself feel the prick of the needle and take in all the sadness around me. I couldn’t before, because I had to keep coming back. All my friends were there, my brothers Paul and Howard, and my parents, taking turns holding my hand and hugging me. My parents had arrived separately. My cancer had even complicated their thirty-year marriage. There had been a snowstorm and my mom had refused to drive from Philly to New York because the roads were so dangerous. She took the train because there was no way she was missing my last treatment. My dad wanted to drive because he thought that way he could control getting to my treatment on time. He always thinks he is sturdier than a train, and I think he would have walked the one hundred miles if he’d had to.

  Even though there was a ton of beautiful white snow in New York for my last chemo, Tyler was in Aspen skiing. I had had to postpone one of my chemo treatments because I had a low white count, and he had a ski
trip planned for this date. He didn’t cancel it. I thought he should be there with me to mark the end of this chapter. I thought he was trying to tell me that his life would not pause for me, that it was business as usual. I knew that Tyler was just being practical and he definitely needed a break from his hospital job and the cancer ward at home. He didn’t think that the last chemo was any different from the other chemos, but I thought it was very symbolic. To me, it was an end, and a beginning, and I needed to know that he understood this.

  Tyler had tried in his own way to be supportive during most of my chemo. One night he went out to find me apple pie à la mode and Apple Jax at midnight when I was having chemo cravings. Chemo would do that to me, make me crave anything I saw advertised on TV and make me crave food I had not eaten since I was in second grade. Tyler also bought me a beautiful antique lamp to keep by my bed on the nights he was on call so that I wouldn’t be scared (he knew that I was still afraid of the dark but was too embarrassed to use a nightlight).

  When I talked to Tyler about how I wanted him there for me more, he rolled his eyes.

  “Why do you need anyone else there for you? There’s a mob of people around you at all times. I can’t take it anymore. Why does it even matter if I’m there at all? You have everyone else.”

  Was he trying to force me to choose between him and my family and friends? Did he feel lost in the crowd?

  As I was losing part of Tyler, I started to realize how much my family was there for me. I needed my mommy and daddy more than ever, even though I was twenty-eight.

  To celebrate my last chemo my parents planned a surprise party for me at the Top of the Sixes building in New York City. It was very glamorous: there was champagne and veal chops and delicious chocolate cake. I try to taste everything and I even swirl a tiny mouthful of champagne around in my mouth. I think I can taste the future, except for the metallic film in my mouth from the earlier chemo cocktail in Dr. O’s office. We are all seated at a long white table clothed table surrounded by huge windows overlooking New York City covered in white snowflakes. It feels like we are inside a plastic snow globe that is being shaken hard.