the one about the lotion
I had major surgery exactly 11 weeks ago today, removing a one centimeter cancerous tumor in my left breast, one benign lymph node, and all of the breast tissue in both my breasts, replaced by stomach fat that feels at times like the heavy bagels we eat on Sunday mornings have been slapped onto my chest. I have no sensation in either of my breasts, my belly button or my abdomen. The nerve endings went with the tissue that was removed. It is difficult for me to explain what the loss of feeling in my breasts feels like, what the loss of feeling in my belly feels like. I went in the ocean recently and didn’t notice how cold the water was, because I actually didn’t feel it at all. It’s bizarre, really, but that’s hardly scratching the surface of a feeling I am constantly aware of, that something isn’t quite right, even though you’d never know that from looking at me. My plastic surgeon did a beautiful job of making perfectly round breasts in almost the exact same size as my natural boobs, and my stomach is fantastically flat in a way I would never be able to achieve on my own, even with no carbs and 900 sit-ups a day. I am happy I chose to have a radical surgery for what my doctors have called “a tiny bit of cancer” (as if that somehow blunts the trauma of the word cancer). I am happy to have had a surgery that made me feel in control, to have my own tissue rebuild my breasts, and to have made a decision that was completely mine, one I have owned. I know I am lucky my cancer was small and caught early. I know I am lucky to be healing nicely, and to be moving away from the terror that’s gripped my soul since that first shocking “Amanda you have cancer” phone call back in March.
On the surface, I am in a good place: I am healing, and by all accounts, I am healthy. But there’s a lot going on *under the surface. And for me, it all comes out in the shower.
I love the shower, and I always have. I’ve never been one of those “why am I in here” people, standing under the water and wishing to be in bed, on the couch. I’ve always relished the idea of being caught under impossibly hot water, listening to the white noise of the shower head and letting it momentarily numb me to my never-ending thoughts and anxieties. Even after having kids, with the door to the bathroom swinging open as often as a turnstile to the subway, I have loved it. I always put lotion on my body, the result of an aunt who reminded me of the perils of ashy elbows, in a ritual that’s helped to remind me to be kind to myself when self love just isn’t there. After my surgery, I couldn’t shower for a week, and when I was finally able to get back in there without a plastic bag over my body, I wept tears of relief and joy and sadness and happiness.
And I kind of thought that was the end of my shower tears, except it appears it was just the beginning. Every single time I am in there, I get emotional. Maybe it’s the quiet of the water, maybe it’s my hands over a body I no longer recognize. Over skin that no longer feels alive. By the time I get out and start applying the cream needed for my many scars, my eyes are watery. And more often than I care to admit, when my fingers trace the lines that will now mark my body forever, I am crying. I keep waiting for it to get easier, and it hasn’t. My fingers are still so tentative. They’re so confused. My skin, 43 years known to me, feels like someone else’s. I alternatively rush through putting the lotion and cream on, wishing I was anywhere else, that I was anyone else, or taking so long in application that I blink and 41 minutes have passed, and I wonder exactly what I’ve been doing.
I guess it’s expected, after a cancer diagnosis, and a surgery like mine, that I would cry a lot. I do, and I am ok with that. It reminds me that I am ALIVE and PRESENT instead of in the perils of an imagination that would have me dead in a week. I don’t just cry about sad things, like my fears about cancer coming back or what would happen if my girls grew up without me. I am mourning my old body, in all its perfect flaws. I am grieving a life without daily medication, and regular doctor’s visits. A life without the all knowing “how are you feeling?” question, the fear behind it from the loved ones who are just as scared as I am that I will not be ok. I had been hoping that my surgery — and the amazing news that I would not need chemo or radiation — would mean it was really just a one off, and that the tiny tumor and the bullshit that came with it would be in my very distant past almost immediately. That hasn’t happened. I cried when my daughter, who still just thinks I had a boob job, told me I “wasn’t as much fun” as I was before my surgery. But THEN I cried when she congratulated me for swimming in the ocean, high-fiving me because she knew seeing me in the water was another step toward recovery.
None of this is easy. I don’t know why I thought it would be. In fact, that’s probably what I cry the most about. The fact that I know I am a tough chick, and this is not easy. That there have been so many decisions I have had to make that I did not WANT to make. There have been so many conversations and imaginations about things I never wanted to think about. So much worry, so much wonder. Someone asked me recently how I am getting through all of this. I told her what I know to be true: you get through it, because you have to. There’s no choice in that. And that’s actually oddly comforting, given the number of questions I haven’t wanted to answer. Will I be ok? Tears, lotions, scars, operations, medications, doctors visits, life, anything else?
YES, every time. Because that’s the only answer for me.
