Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy (11 page)

I am on my chemo for two weeks, and then there is a two-week break. For the two weeks straight that I am “on” chemo, I take a cytoxin pill six times a day. No wonder cytoxin means “cell-killing,” because about twenty minutes after I take it I feel my stomach cramp and I need to go into the bathroom and just deep-breathe or puke and then spray aeresole hairspray to cover the smell (not as obvious as air freshener). It is stressful having only a cubicle during such privacy-demanding moments, but thankfully, my cube is right next to the bathroom. I am a frequent visitor. I always show up at work on Friday afternoons after my chemo shots, too, even though my skin is the shade of an artichoke.

My skin color and thinning hair aren’t the only things my bosses are noticing. I am convinced that everyone at ABC only knows me as “cancer girl,” especially because I was profiled in an ABC News special called “Cancer in the Family.” But when I get paged to Victor’s office, Meredith is there waiting, and they want to promote me! I am just hoping to live out the year, but they give me a three-year contract. They believe I will make it, and they don’t want NBC or CBS to hire me away. Getting noticed at work is giving me some power back and pushing me to be bolder and turn up the volume in my life.

And now, even today, after all my hair has just fallen out in the shower, I am here.
My show must go on.
But facing Victor in my baseball cap feels almost as hard as when I told him that I had cancer. I keep my eyes down and try to keep walking, but he stops me.

“Geralyn! You look so cool! I love that hat!”

I am stunned by his compliment, and so grateful that Victor can see my coolness and not my cancer. I
am
reappearing. I am still tired all the time, but especially tired of looking so exhausted and feeling invisible. I think I have found a way to start reappearing. I am holding on to myself so hard while things are falling away. How do I explain this power?

I remember a little food shack in Provincetown where I used to spend my summers when I was little. It was called Mojos, and it was painted all different colors. When the wind blew I heard chimes floating in the air. I can still picture the way the word
Mojo
was written in wavy letters. I thought I knew what
mojo
meant—but I wasn’t sure. I kept asking people. Everyone knew what it was, but couldn’t explain it. The word
mojo
is now popping into my head all the time. It feels so mysterious. I look it up in the dictionary to make sure my mojo is the real thing. Pronunciation: ‘mō-(,)jō. A magic spell, hex, or charm; broadly: magical power.

I have cast a spell over my own life. I have willed myself to find my magic that must still be there. Despite the baldness and one boob and occasional heave, I am charming. I have met my mojo.

Things that used to scare me don’t anymore. Cancer scares me, people don’t. I can ride in the elevator with Barbara Walters and not be scared of chitchat. There is suddenly something so free about living in the moment. How do I feel so alive while all of my fast-growing cells are being killed in chemo?

Mojo.

My mojo keeps pushing me to reappear.

Cancer is making me cooler than I have ever been. I dare myself. Every chemo treatment, I wear a shorter skirt. I had always loved showing my arms and their definition from the weights at the gym, but now they are covered with black veins. I decide to show leg instead. My tailor keeps blushing as I direct him to go even higher above my knee. I start wearing high heels to chemo, too. Hearing the click of my patent leather strappy shoes against the sanitary white floor gives me so much hope.

The shorter skirts are making my cap look more deliberate, but they still do not match. I buy a black satin miniskirt and a black satin cap to match. It looks deliberate and the cap is blending and it doesn’t seem like just a prop to cover my bald head. The dress code at ABC News is working—someone in the elevator is startled to hear that I have cancer.

“I always thought you were just downtown. The hat and short skirts?”

Downtown seems so far away from my uptown doctor offices and the chemo that I just smirk. Downtown?

I am wearing tighter sweaters to match my short skirts. The expander boob implant my plastic surgeon put inside of me is really too big to fit into my tailored suit jackets. It is also bigger than my left breast, so I need to even myself out with a falsie on the left side. I realize that my boobs don’t really look even in anything I wear except tight sweaters. I think the tightness and gravity pushes them together and down and makes them look sort of similar—maybe it is an optical illusion? I always wanted big boobs—maybe I should be careful what I wish for. How crazy that I have breast cancer, but my boobs are getting more attention. Every time I get a stare I want to explain that they aren’t real, but then I realize how needy I feel for attention, any attention, and I decide to take it. I am thinking that everyone at work must be checking out my ever-changing rack even if they don’t mean to. I know it’s true when the cutest producer on staff pulls me aside one day and confirms my suspicion.

“Geralyn, you look really good.”

“Thanks.” I am so glad that I started wearing concealer to cover the green tinge of my skin from the chemo.

“No, you look really, really good,” he says, and stares at my boobs for a second to make his point.

It is so high maintenance to keep pulling this off. Instead of asking my friends, “Does this make me look fat?” I am always asking if my boobs look even in the shirt I’m wearing, and if there are enough stray wisps creeping out of my baseball cap, and if my skin looks too green.

It is not only my style that is changing, it is my substance. Somehow, losing my breast and hair have made me more daring, which has made me more seductive and even sexier. Living with the risk of dying is making me more and more and more risqué. Every time something goes, I try and amp up something else. It’s a distraction technique designed to thoroughly confuse the viewer, and it’s working. I have found some inner cleavage I never knew was there. It keeps daring me to keep going.

I unplug my juicer, which is filled with parsnips and beets and wheat grass. My parents convinced me to eat macrobiotic when I was diagnosed and I have been juicing every day and trying to eat seaweed. I had a consult with a health guru who told me that caffeine, sugar, and alcohol make the tumor grow. But those are all my favorite food groups, and since I have been eating a special health diet I hold my nose through most meals. I decide to throw out every piece of tofu and seaweed from my refrigerator, and I order a bacon-egg-and-cheese on a roll with a large coffee on the side. If my life is short, I need to taste it now. Mojo.

And when I feel my mojo waning, I borrow some from my boss, Meredith. Mojo is Meredith’s middle name. I always seem to be strong at work, but one day I pretend that I need her advice about a story I am working on, but when my butt hits her sofa, I sob.

“Meredith, I’m so tired. I’m so scared. I can’t take the chemo anymore. I feel like I’m dead already.”

Meredith locked her door and blocked all her calls, even though the broadcast was the following day, and hugged me for what felt like an hour. My mojo is returning.

I dance the Macarena at our office Christmas party. Mojo.

I hire a personal trainer named Hakim and tell him I need to make sure I don’t lose my range of motion after my mastectomy surgery.

“Hakim, please push me hard. I know I’m going through chemo but I can handle it. I need to work on my legs because I’ve started wearing shorter skirts.”

“And oh, could my butt ever look like yours?” Mojo.

On the anniversary of our engagement I want to be romantic and sexy for Tyler, but my mouth tastes like metal from the chemo and I really do have a headache (and a stomachache). I can’t find any lingerie that fits over my two different-sized boobs and I don’t want to wear the baseball cap to bed. I am feeling so not sexy it is ridiculous. I want to him to touch me so badly, but my chest still hurts from my mastectomy surgery. Actually, everything hurts.

I consider putting on the wig and tight sweater with the falsie inside my bra—maybe I could have sex with Tyler almost fully dressed? I wish I could have sex with my clothes on. I want to hide but I also want to just be there totally with Tyler, like we used to, in the bed. I have been sleeping with a beret so Tyler doesn’t have to see me bald. And I’ve been wearing a bra with the falsie even under my nightgown just to reassure myself that I sort of match.

I put on some perfume. And I line my lips with lipstick. I can’t even feel Tyler’s hand when he puts it on the bright red diagonal scar across my chest. In fact, I have been walking into strangers with my reconstructed right boob because I cannot feel where it starts.

But the great thing about sex is that it’s like riding a bicycle. I know that Tyler still loves me—my laugh, our conversations—but will he still be turned on?

Yes, yes, and definitely yes. I cannot believe that Tyler wants me so much.

The way he is kissing me and touching me, I know that it’s not my hair or my boob that ever made him fall in love with me. It was my mojo. It was always there, just waiting for me to meet it.

After Tyler and I have sex again I feel so hot that I still can’t get that Shania Twain song out of my head:
Man, I feel like a woman!

Mojo.

10

Busted!

The invitation to my ten-year high school reunion arrives just as the last substantial wisps of my hair have fallen out and there is almost nothing peeking out of my baseball cap. Besides my baldness, I am more worried that if I go to the reunion my classmates will notice my boob job. It is obvious.

I had been an A-cup in high school. As in lots of A’s. I was smart—or always tried hard to be. A goody girl, that’s what my brothers called me. Now I was a D-cup. As in Duh! Something has changed!

I know that I seem conceited thinking everyone will stare at my new rack. Although there are only two letters between A and D, there are a lot of stares. B—boy, she changed! C—can’t be real, she must have had a boob job. I could reveal the reason for my boob job before they judged the cover of my book—double D. I have been going through breast cancer reconstruction, and it is obvious.

I never understood why they called it breast reconstruction until I went to my first appointment to have my implant “expanded.” I should have worn a hard hat. Expanding is a polite way of saying that your plastic surgeon is going to pull your skin so hard that you’ll want to scream “motherfucker!” as loud as you can.

My plastic surgeon, Dr. P, takes a needle to locate my “port” switch inside the implant, and then fills my implant with so much saline solution that my skin stretches like a balloon about to burst. Can skin burst? I think my new boob is going to explode right there in her pristine Park Avenue plastic surgery office. I imagine bits of my skin and implant flying around the room and landing on her diploma. It hurts and presses against my ribcage. I must have gained five pounds from all that saline! The night after my first of four expansion procedure “blow-ups” I make up my mind. It is 4 A.M. and I am pacing the hallway of my one-bedroom apartment. Tyler is on call at the hospital. I am taking another Tylenol with codeine because my chest is pounding from being so overinflated. I am worried that all my expensive suit jackets that I bought when I got my job at
20/20
won’t fit over my new rack.

But I decide that if it hurts this much to rebuild my breast, I am going to hurt to look at. My breasts will have to be large, round, and worth the hell I am going through. At my next expansion I tell Dr. P to bring it on, blow me up, and please make me look like
Baywatch
. I am going to get some cleavage out of this. Thankfully, she has never seen
Baywatch
. I try to explain the idea of it—big, gigantic, fake, implant boobs.

“Geralyn, my work is natural. When we’re finished I want you to look like you have
not
had work done. You’re a petite girl and I just can’t make your breasts that large.” I reluctantly agree and resign myself to having tasteful breast implants. Reluctantly. If my breasts might kill me, then I want them to stop traffic.

The hardest part about reconstruction is finding a bra that fits. My left breast is still an A, but my right construction site is a double D from all the inflating. I have had to find a falsie to pad the left real boob so it matches my right side. My chest always looks like it is sloping down on the left side (thank god assymetrical shirts are in!). To further complicate things, I only have one nipple, so when I get a headlight there is just one, which is so obvious. I need padding so my left nipple doesn’t show. I cannot believe the little luxuries that I used to take for granted. Like wearing a bathing suit: Now the falsie just floats around once the water creeps in. My seven-year-old cousin Alissa had to hold her towel up for me as a shield when we went swimming together recently. She knew I was nervous that the falsie was on the loose. What would happen if my falsie went wild at my high school reunion? That would be memorable.

Yes, I have a good reason to skip my reunion. Actually two: I am missing my hair and a breast. But I need to show up because I am scared that I will not live to attend the next one. I need to be accounted for. Even if they whisper my fate and the C-word in ten years, at least I can be here now.

My life has become about showing up, because if I die I won’t have a chance to. It’s a way of proving to myself that I am still alive. Showing-Up Syndrome started with going to my friend’s wedding in Sun Valley, Idaho, even though it was only one day after my first chemo. After I spent the night vomiting on my bathroom floor, I had to get on a plane—I had promised her I would. Tyler thought I was crazy and wanted me to stay in bed. He thought it was ridiculous to fly out Saturday morning and fly back Sunday night because it was such a long flight to Idaho. On the way to the airport, the cab driver asked what airline we wanted, and that is when I saw the signs announcing which airline was located in which terminal.
Terminal.
I had not heard the word since my diagnosis and I started to shake and sweat.
Terminal.
Please, please, please do not let me be terminal.