Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy (18 page)

I left my right breast, my lymph nodes, my bloody bandages, my half-dead roses.

Now, I am supposed to leave with a baby.

But I am still not dilating enough to let her out. Maybe I think I can keep her and be pregnant forever and that way I can never get cancer again. We are together and I am scared that once I release her she might lose me. I want to stay pregnant and with her. I like being pregnant because the doctors are always checking on the baby—they just assume that I am fine.

I freak out and call my hypnotherapist to tell her that I am in a house of death. That this is no place to start a life. She tells me that the hospital gave me life last time, and it will give me life again.

Skye is so late that she will now be a Leo, not a Cancer. (Her due date was July twenty-second but even after three inductions, she is not coming out.) I know that it is only a horoscope, but I think that maybe this is her first present to me. Maybe she knows my panic about the word
cancer
Cancer had been a tumor to me . . . how could it mean a birthday? Maybe she knows that I am scared I will die on her.

I need a C-section because I am still not dilating. Despite all the contractions, I still cannot let her go. I am holding on to her too tightly.

I know how to prepare for surgery. I put on the hairnet, the hospital gown, the scratchy slippers. I am wheeled into an operating room again. I see the stainless steel. I am cut open again. But they are not removing cancer, they are taking out the baby. I can only see Tyler’s eyes above the surgical mask but I can now see Skye’s future. I know he will be there for her. Even if I die, Tyler and I have found a way to be together.

When they pull her out of me it is as if I have crossed the finish line. If I died right then and there in that operating room it would not matter. I’ve tricked my destiny. I’ve grown cells that were not malignant. I’ve grown a future. I’ve grown a smile.

When I hold my baby for the first time I realize that Grandma Ruth is showing me that love lives longer than our bodies can. Maybe her exit was her final gift to me. I obsessed so much about dying during my pregnancy that finding myself in a cemetery brought things into pretty clear focus. Her death answered my deepest secret fear about my daughter. Would she forget me if I died? I know now that my baby will never forget me. I know that my death will compel her to know me, to remember me, as I will remember my grandmother and tell my daughter about her.

In a strange way I felt my grandmother was more with me than I had felt her in a long time. She hadn’t vanished.

I always thought that life was supposed to be fair. But it’s hard to describe what is fair about my new baby’s life starting while my own feels so shaky. I think that my grandmother and Erin have shown me that we can always be together.

Dr. B is the first visitor to hold Skye. Same hospital. Same month that I was diagnosed with cancer, but now five years later and I am Skye’s mom.

“Thank you, Dr. B. Thank you for believing I would have this day.”

Dr. B had told me on that day five years ago that I would get my life back. I never believed him. I am still unsure. When he picks Skye up and strokes her tiny perfect arm, I see her little wrist with the hospital bracelet. I remember all of my other hospital bracelets.

I can barely stand up on the day I am supposed to check out of the hospital. I am determined to walk home with Skye in my arms, but my doctors are reluctant to let me because of the Cesarean section. The morphine has worn off and the stitches pull and stretch my skin every time I take a step. I have practiced standing up for two minutes at a time. At first my legs felt tingling and I saw black spots. They bring me out in a wheelchair, to the sliding glass doors at the front of the hospital. I stand up and I grip Skye harder. I have never been able to walk home from the hospital. I had always had drains sewn in me; I was always too dizzy from the blood loss to walk. After all my other hospital visits I would always take a taxi home and even that was unbearable for the six short blocks because I felt every bump in that back seat. I was not stitched up tight enough.

I am still dizzy. But I need to prove to myself that I am okay. I am her mom. I can take care of her. She will be safe with me. I promise her that I will not return to that hospital if I can help it. I need to carry her into a new world. Although it is only six blocks home, it feels like a marathon. My marathon. For every step I take I feel a stab of a pain. I grip her harder. As I take each step I remember how delicate life is—like the sleeping newborn in my arms.

I had forgotten why they sold “Congratulations” cards in hospitals.

I had forgotten that somehow, life could follow death.

I had forgotten that sometimes Cancer could be a birthday.

17

The Booby Mafia

It was our first night together. I see through the nursery glass that she is crying and I need to rescue her. I wheel her little plastic cube down the hallway and into my room and I take her out of the plastic wheeler. When I put her on my chest, suddenly, miraculously, she begins breast-feeding on my left breast. The baby is actually getting milk from the nipple. My baby stops crying and I just look down, in awe that I am actually feeding this baby. So this is what boobs were invented for? Not cancer—not chemo, not mastectomies, not implants, not skin stretching. Not strip bars. Just milk!

I think I got my boob back. And my groove back. There is dreamy milk and I breast-feed everywhere I go—I used to be so embarrassed for those women and now I am becoming one. I whip it out in dressing rooms, in restaurant bathrooms—and even in the office with the door closed. I’m not that bold!

One night at 4 A.M. she is crying and I am giving her my boob and feeling so confident that she is voracious, and I can feed her. But when I turn on the TV and start channel surfing, I land at some porn. The men and women are all going for the boobs, too. I look down at Skye in her boob bliss. Why is it all about boobs? Even babies are obsessed. Can I really be her mom with just one? I am trying my hardest.

I saved my left breast with the hope that someday I might nurse a baby. I wanted my breast to feed a baby, not kill me. I agonized over whether I should have a double mastectomy when I was first diagnosed, but I held out hope. I worried that the cancer would return in that breast, and during my exams I would shake and sweat and worry that my other breast had cancer, too.

But I didn’t realize that making milk would bring its own set of worries. It will take more than mojo to breast-feed Skye with one boob. She is the biggest girl in the nursery at eight pounds, five ounces and, just like her mom, she loves to eat. My boob seems to be working, but then one day the bonding is over. She will not latch on and only wants a bottle. I call a hospital to speak with a lactation consultant and explain my case: I have one boob but I am breast-feeding. When the consultant hears this, she insists that I come into the hospital. Tyler and my friends and family think that I should just give Skye formula. But I need my boob to work.

The lactation consultant seems determined to make me a one-boobed, breast-feeding pin-up girl the minute I arrive in her office. She informs me that she has good news! She has done some research and there is a cult in China that only believed in nursing children off their right breast—how amazing that there are other one-breasted breast-feeders in the world!

“In fact”—she is now really excited—“one breast will produce as much milk as two because the baby is constantly nursing on it.”

But my pediatrician has never heard of such a Chinese cult and tells me that he thinks the breast-feeding militants can be cultlike in their breast-feeding frenzy. He warns me that Skye still needs formula.

But my boob is not producing enough milk and when I start calling other breast-feeding support groups for solutions to my one-boobed dilemma, I begin to notice a pattern. All the breast-feeders seem to have the same agenda and seem like loosely affiliated conspirators. I call them the Booby Mafia. They live by one motto: “Breast Is Best!” Their code of honor demands that breast-feeding is acceptable anywhere, and if you have a problem with that then you definitely were not breast-fed and must be disturbed. After all, who would ever dare come between a suckling infant and its mom? They have different names—La Leche League, the Militant Breast-feeders, lactation consultants—but just one obsession: breast-feeding. And if you challenge their power, watch out. It is especially hard to question their way after being in labor for three days, having a C-section, and feeling weepy.

They have compared notes and their stories match: breast-fed babies have higher IQs; their poops smell better; they are better adjusted; they have fewer ear infections, and lower rates of cancer and obesity; and there has never been a breast-fed serial killer. Okay they don’t say that, but they kind of imply it.

The Booby Mafia all speak in terms that I have never heard before and quote extensive literature on the subject. And that is when my lactation consultant uses the first Booby Mafia term: nipple confusion. I think that maybe she is referring to my tattoo—that my daughter might see the bright red heart and confuse it with the one real nipple that I do have. No. Not that type of confusion. It’s more scientific. The Booby Mafia explains that I cannot give my daughter a bottle: That would create “nipple confusion” because my daughter would forget how to suck the breast, which requires more work than a bottle nipple. And to add confusion to the nipple confusion, there are different kinds of nipples on bottles and the Booby Mafia was emphatic that the only nipple to use is the Advent bottle from London. The Advent is advertised as mimicking the breast nipple, meaning it actually takes me longer to feed the baby because the baby has to suck harder to get the formula.

My lactation consultant tells me to only use the Advent bottles if I am desperate. Otherwise, I’m supposed to give her formula in a little cup—it looks like a tequila shot glass, actually, especially at midnight. Yes, strangely, an infant even knows how to drink out of a shot glass. It is awkward at first, but it is the key to “supplementation.” That is the next Booby Mafia term I learn: supplementation means supplementing breast milk with formula. Because breast is best, as much breast milk as possible should be given, and formula only used to supplement.

I finally break down and give the baby a bottle (she can’t drink out of a tequila shot glass forever) and make sure that it is one of the Booby Mafia–approved bottles from England. But once she drinks from a bottle she just won’t latch on to me. I call a breast-feeding hotline in a panic and I explain my case: I have one boob, but I’m breast-feeding, and my baby won’t suck. Diagnosis: nipple confusion. Duh! My lactation consultant had warned me!

Another lactation consultant squeezes me in for a special visit. She wants to observe how the baby is behaving and why she isn’t latching on. She tells me that I am not allowed to give the baby the bottle for a week. Not even the shot glass. I have to tape a plastic straw (attached to a pack of formula) onto my nipple so whenever the baby sucks my nipple, she gets formula from the plastic straw. If this sounds bizarre, imagine how it looks. I do not shower for three days for fear that I will tape the straw back onto my nipple incorrectly. My wardrobe is limited to Tyler’s Tulane sweatshirt, the one that I wore after I had the milk quarts sewn into me for my reconstruction surgery. I am housebound and begin to recognize the Chinese food delivery guys.

I am also instructed to start pumping so that I will keep producing milk, and so that even if Skye does not latch on, I can give her breast milk in a shot glass (or sneak a bottle). The Booby Mafia orders that I pump at least three times a day. The theory goes that if you pump more, you will produce more. But there is one problem: nothing is coming out. Well, something is, but only in drips. Booby Mafia tells me that I am probably using the wrong pump and suggests that I order a more powerful one.

Okay, crank up the horse power because I am going for industrial strength. I am so desperate, I consider putting my boob in my vacuum cleaner. When I see a place called Grandma’s in the Yellow Pages I am instantly reassured. When I inquire about the pump the kindly saleswoman, who sounds like a grandma, asks me which model I want and gets very technical.

“Please just bring me the most powerful machine you have.”

The industrial-grade pump actually sounds like my vacuum cleaner when I turn it on. It pulls my nipple into a plastic compression chamber and there is quite an impressive spray. But again after hours of churning, only drops. I persevere and watch late night infomercials for hours, the pump and me, just to squeeze out another ounce. Drip by drop.

I keep that vacuum cleaner pump whirring for hours at a time and add up all the drops until there is finally a five-ounce bottle! I am so careful when I transfer the I stayed-up-all-night-to-make-this breast milk into the approved bottle. My daughter slurps and devours that bottle with such abandon that I am sure there are some tears, too, mixed into her next bottle.

After the plastic straw, the vacuum, and a lot of concerned calls from the Booby Mafia, I am exhausted. Almost as exhausted as after a chemo session. They sense it, and as a last-ditch effort not to lose me from their ranks they tell me something I have never heard. I think it is the Booby Mafia Holy Grail: There is a milk bank of other women’s breast milk that I can feed my baby from!

Maybe that is the straw that broke this cow’s back?

Maybe all this hysteria is really not about milk, ear infections, IQs, or bonding. I think it is really about power. Booby power. Power over men and now power over babies. The power I felt leaving me in the strip club . . . the power I thought I had grabbed back for a moment while I was breast-feeding.

When I see another woman reaching for a bottle of baby formula while I am shopping at the supermarket, I am shocked by how easy it seems. I have been struggling with one boob and machines and contraptions, and in that moment I realize that maybe my first failure as a mother has really become my first success. It would have been so easy if my milk had flowed. Because I worked so hard for those drops, I am convinced that I have been feeding her pure love.