With and Without Boobs

Katherine here.

I hate October.  It's breast cancer month.  I've done breast cancer twice and the most recent round was a mastectomy and the beginning of life sans boobs.

October means cancer and pink everywhere.  People run, walk, play football in pink accessories, eat out, sleep in,  and go on motorcycle cruises to raise money.  People buy all sorts of pink shit to raise money.  This is really good.  This is really important.  This helps prevent cancer and helps people get better.  This is, however, a truly constant reminder that I've been really sick and I could well be really sick again and I'm running out of weapons to battle my sickness because a girl's body can only handle so much surgery and radiation and chemicals and their long range effects.  The mirror is a daily and regular reminder of my survival status.  October just means there is no escaping that definition.

It's the boobless thing on my mind now.  Like most girls, part of my personal history has a booby tale or two.  I was a chesty teenager raised by a Mom so embarrassed by body stuff that menstrual periods were a shock and my introduction to bras was a sack from the Denver Dry Goods with two Playtex bras that showed up on my bed after school one day.  They were white cotton and had a pattern in stitches that looked like a Target with a bullseye at the nipple.  Since Mom wouldn't talk to me about the bras, I had to figure out the straps myself and at age eleven (I had an early start) it was tricky.  Anyway--you get the idea.

Until I went off to college, there was only one small time in high school when I thought I might have a good figure or I might look good in some clothes if I ever got to wear something my mother hadn't made for me.  This is when Mom thought I could be Miss America and found me a sponsor and entered me in the contest without talking to me about my total lack of talent and my horror about the possibility of such a degrading experience.  If Dad hadn't reined her in, I might have had to compete in the pageant with the unique "talent" of changing Mom-made outfits behind a screen while giving a talk about fashion.  The positive I can remember about this is somehow Mom also thought I could make it through the swimsuit competition.

I went from a totally restrictive environment when it came to bodies and what they were capable of to college in the late 60's when bodies became a constant source of discussion.  Clothes changed.  Mom didn't believe in jeans and I never owned a pair until I bought some on my own up in Fort Collins the first week I arrived at CSU.  Mom thought college was still like the June Allyson/Peter Lawford college movies she loved and she sent me off with two piece suits.  Let me tell you that I was the only girl in the dorm with five matching wool suits.  Anyway--I bought jeans and sweaters on the sly.  I still love jeans and sweaters more than any other form of clothing.  The jeans and sweaters didn't really show off my figure anymore than the wool suits did, but I was comfy.  I was too inhibited for showing off what I had so it wasn't a problem.

My favorite college boob memory was at a women's lib rally my freshman year.  It was an infamous bra burning and the hardest part for me was figuring out which of my Playtex numbers I could sacrifice.    The choice made,  I knew there was no way I could publicly remove it and then burn it.  I stuck it in my purse and valiantly burned the stashed bra.  I was always one for making almost statements.

The boobs moved on to leotard type tops and sports bras during most of my teaching and parenting career.  I lived in my jeans and t-shirts and layered up a storm.  I'm guessing that Jim's the only one around who realized I had a nifty chest underneath all the various layers.  These were the mindless boob years.  Boobs for nursing.  Boobs for pleasure.  That's pretty much it.  Boobs for showing hadn't even crossed my mind.

After the kids were out of the house and Jim and I were alone, there was a new boob development.  I'd done the first round of cancer which left me mostly in tact and the radiation effects hadn't begun yet.  I was living in that frame of mind when I believed my body would never start "cancering" again (read THE END OF SICKNESS to understand why I now see the disease as a verb rather than a noun).  This was the last part of my life when I didn't think daily about cancer.  It was nice.

I rarely watched Oprah, but I did one day during that stretch of time and it was about bra fittings and amazingly beautiful bras.  I'd been getting Nike sports bras and tanks at Abercrombie and really hadn't looked at a lingerie department in years.  The Oprah show was cool and it made bra shopping seem like a good time.  I watched all sorts of women in all sorts of shapes put on new bras and they looked a whole lot more like girls after the change.  With my usual whim of iron, I made a bra appointment the next day.

It was awesome.  I went to Nordstrom's and came home with four $80 bras and the sexiest matching panties.  I put sweaters on over the new bras and I got embarrassed.  I was sure somebody was going to think I'd had surgery.  I really had something to flaunt here, but no flaunting experience.  I was almost 50 at this point and it all seemed like a kind of delightful way to battle menopause.  Also, I'd been lucky--all the years in sports bras had kept me from having horrible weiner boobs.  I liked my boobs--even with the bullet-hole in the right one from the lumpectomy.

For about one year I had really nice boob time with pretty underwear and an inner playfulness about my battle against the hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms that appeared.  Then came the second round of cancer.

Each time you have cancer, your choices are fewer and the stats you look at to make decisions are grimmer.  I couldn't do reconstructive surgery because of the radiation treatments during my first cancer battle.  I could remove my lat muscles and wrap them up in balls and attach them to my chest, but my life as an active person would have to change (kayaking and playing tennis require lats).  It would also require a year of my life and three surgeries at best.  I chose to have a mastectomy.

Like most in my position, I did the bra fitting for the prosthetics.  I have two nice bras and two fake boobs collecting dust in my closet.  They are heavy and uncomfortable and they shift around and they just don't feel good physically.  That leaves me as I am and back to tanks from Abercrombie.

I see myself as a Disney cartoon character.  Like Aladdin.  There are no nipples-just some horizontal lines.   Aladdin has more symmetry than I do though.  I have scars and gnars.

I have large parts of my chest and left arm and back that have no sensation.  When Jim lovingly kisses my right shoulder as I cook dinner, I know he is there and doing it, but I don't feel it.  His love of me and my body AS IT IS keeps me afloat and helps me be the girl I am.  Shortly after my surgery a guy at the gym told me he would leave his wife before he'd let her cut her boobs off.  Whatever it is that is me, Jim loves it all and caresses it all and cherishes it all.

My vanity struggles with my situation, but not my soul.  I've learned to dress sans boobs and feel like I look good.  I'm good with distraction and most folks notice the hair, the boots, some odd piece of clothing more than the body that goes with the distractions.  I'm not complaining.  It is good to be alive.

I wrote this because when we saw Chris's production of The Little Shop of Horrors Friday night, the women at the theater were so amazingly well endowed it was almost blinding.  Another result of my boobless state is that I tend to notice boobs wherever I go.  The Parker PACE theater made it impossible to think of much else when the play wasn't happening.  I kept trying to think of the kind of engineering it had taken to keep such masses floating.   It's been a real relief that the rest of the world has looked realistic since that evening.

I'm about to head up to start watching football and there will be football pundits in pink ties and players wearing pink shoes and we will all be aware that breast cancer is a battle that needs fighting.  I support the cause and I contribute to the cause and all of that.  I just want November to come so only my walk from the shower to my closet each morning reminds me that I'm a survivor and not just a girl.