Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy (13 page)

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.

“All I want for my birthday is what I already have.”

That is my dad’s toast to me. He breaks down and starts to hug me so hard. It is his birthday tomorrow. My ending chemo is his present. I was so relieved to finally see my dad cry. I had asked my mom why Daddy never cried about my cancer. It really bothered me because he is so sweet and sentimental about everything: a walking Hallmark card.

“Geralyn, Daddy cries all the time to me. All the time. He wants to be strong for you.”

When my mom told me that, it made me realize how hard it has been for all of their lives to go on while mine is unraveling. My poor younger brothers: How has Howard found time to come to every chemo and still study for his law school finals? How has Paul had the energy to call all my friends after every surgery to let them know that everything was okay and still try to make partner? How has everyone been able to be so supportive of me?

Meredith also made me an end-of-chemo recovery party. I was overwhelmed at my
20/20
party and didn’t know how I could ever thank them enough for believing in me, for promoting me during my chemo, for accepting me with my ever-changing boob sizes and my hat and short skirts, and counting on me more even though I might die. Barbara Walters handed me a beautiful bouquet of flowers at the party, “Geralyn. How are your parents? Give them these from me.” I realize that they have been my eighteen-hour support bra, pushing me up every hour of my day, giving me that lift always.