Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy (7 page)

I see Dr. B. again, but this time he is in full surgeon mode—in all-blue scrubs with a mask—standing in the hallway just outside the operating room. Dr. Brower tells me they are setting up the OR and just need about five more minutes. Five minutes? I need an Ativan. Help. My heart is feeling so wild right now and my lipstick is making me feel even wilder.

My anesthesiologist has come to put the IV line in my arm. He is gentle but it still hurts to get the needle. I feel the smooth rush of fluids entering my vein. When he comes over to check my IV I beg him for some anti-anxiety medication. He pushes something through my IV and I feel the rush in my vein again.

How long will it take this sedative to kick in? Maybe I need to pace and say more affirmations to calm myself down? I slide off the gurney as delicately as I can and pull the IV pole along. I realize the back of my surgical gown is open and my butt is hanging out but does it matter if anyone checks it out? I am about to have my breast cut off, so there is no false modesty here.

I see the fiery red exit sign at the end of the hallway and I start shuffling towards it, dragging the IV pole, sort of like we are doing the Hustle together. The exit sign matches my bright red lipstick. It is equally defiant and it is screaming a siren song: “Bolt out the door and keep your breast. Bolt. Keep your breast. Bolt.” I am trying to remember my lipstick, but all I see is the scalpel.

I know now why exit signs were invented. For dangerous situations like this: like fires, and like fleeing a building so your breast will not be cut off. My life is on fire. It is burning down around me. I don’t belong here. I need to EXIT.

How did this all happen in just a matter of weeks? Why did this happen? Why me? Was it because I took birth control pills, did not go to the gym enough? Ate too many cheeseburgers? The one cigarette I smoked in ninth grade? I want to leave so badly. I have not lived my life hard enough. I have never even gotten a speeding ticket. I have lived inside the lines too much. I want to run. Would I set off an alarm if I bolted through the door? I want to just walk through the door and go back to the life I left where the “clean” I worried about was a stain on my favorite pants, not the cancer in my lymph nodes. They are removing my lymph nodes today and tomorrow I will know if my cancer has spread. That feels almost as scary as waking up without a breast.

The red letters EXIT are glowing, and showing me a safe passage back to the life I left.

But I think how crazy I would look running down Fifth Avenue in a surgical smock with my ass hanging out with a hairnet. I see strange people in New York City all the time but this would be especially creepy because I have bright red lipstick on. And where would I run to? I would be a fugitive from cancer. I might pull it off, but the IV pole would have to come, too. My IV pole is my ball and chain. I could yank it out, but I faint when I see blood, and this would be messy.

I decide not to run out the door because I am scared of what people would think of me—that, and it might make the cover of the
New York Post
. GIRL GOES WILD BEFORE MASTECTOMY SURGERY! They would write about my lipstick. I always worry about what people think, so I know I am still here. It is a good sign that I am too embarrassed to flee. It is the lipstick that saves me from leaving. I would never be able to explain why I was wearing it.

I am so scared that one of my second-opinion cancer doctors who told me that I needed to see a psychiatrist might see me now in the operating room area. Yikes. Those doctors would definitely say, “You still need to see a psychiatrist, especially because you are wearing lipstick to your mastectomy surgery.” But I know that I’m not crazy. Since all the doctors told me that I am “living with risk” (risk of my cancer coming back, risk of dying) I have decided to become risqué.

I shuffle back to the stretcher, and now it is show time.

Because Tyler works in this hospital he manages to sneak my parents and brothers up through the corridors into the surgical holding area to see me one last time. What if I never wake up from the surgery? Is this our last hug? They are hugging me so hard that I am scared my IV might get pulled out. And then they are wheeling me in and it almost looks like a kitchen because there is so much stainless steel everywhere. Maybe my lipstick will shimmer its reflection in the dull surfaces.

There must be about ten people in the OR in scrubs. I realize that they only know me as twenty-eight-year-old mastectomy, right breast. But just maybe they will notice my lipstick? My lipstick feels so far away from the scalpel.

My lipstick is all I have.

I’m clinging to that thin film of beeswax or paraffin or whatever ingredients lipstick is made of. That thin layer of color, of moisture, of hope is all I have that is mine when they put the oxygen mask on my face to put me under. I am holding on so tight to that hyper-red-notice-me-now pigment that is screaming that I am out of context because I do not deserve to be in this operating room having my breast cut off.

I want my lipstick to tell everyone in this room that I think I have a future and I know I will wear lipstick again, but on my terms next time. But for now, I have my war paint. I think I am ready. I glide my tongue one last time over the smooth surface and I taste the lipstick in my mouth and it is mingling with the anesthesia cloud that has made me very sleepy and then—I am out.

If I were awake I would see Dr. B slicing away the mound of flesh that was my breast and carefully placing it in the pathology container.

If I were awake I would hear the beeping of my heart and the whirring of the breathing machine, because I am intubated.

If I were awake, I might feel a little pride that I wore such a true red shade that it now seems to perfectly match the blood on the operating room table.

If I were awake I would tell them how proud I am that I decided to cut off my breast, to hopefully save my life.

If I were awake I would tell them that I know I will still be a woman.

For anyone who does not believe this, that is why I am wearing lipstick.

In the sterility of the operating room I am laughing.

In the blood and gauze I am dancing.

Under anesthesia, with a tube forced down my throat, I am hopeful and maybe even a little sexy.

And slightly in control, just knowing that my lipstick might last.

6

Peep Show

All I can see when I try to open my eyes is the white bandage where my right breast used to be. This is the moment I’ve been dreading: I have woken up after my mastectomy surgery and a piece of me is gone. They are screaming at me to breathe as hard as I can in the recovery room at Mount Sinai Hospital. The recovery room is like a low-budget porn movie—lots of moaning, bad lighting, and way too much directing.

“Open your mouth—wider. Wider. Wider!”

They gave me too much anesthesia for my surgery and I feel like I’m slurping up air. I still can’t breathe, even after they have rolled over the respirator and put the mask on. In between all the chaos a sassy nurse comes over to me and screams that I need to breathe—b-r-e-a-t-h-e harder.

“Open your mouth!” Then, just when I think she is about to yell at me again, she starts to smile. It’s the lipstick.

“Girl, what kind of lipstick are you wearing? That shit stayed on for your six-hour surgery!”

Good thing my lipstick is not fading, because I am.

But I can see Tyler hovering above me. He is reading me the affirmations my hypnotherapist suggested: “You are cured. You are so proud of your decision to have the mastectomy. Your body knows exactly how to respond to the surgery.”

Tyler looks as in love as he did on the night he proposed to me in a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park. He hid two champagne glasses and a bottle of champagne under his trench coat. After I screamed “Yes!” and we downed the bubbly, he wanted to smash our glasses. As we threw our glasses and the glass shattered, Tyler grabbed me and said, “Geralyn, this moment can never be undone.” I remember those shards of glass shining on the New York City sidewalk under the street light. Now I feel like this surgery has smashed me into tiny pieces that can’t be glued back together. Everything hurts so badly. Tyler looks so scared in his surgical scrubs and so brave for me somehow. It is so strange because I have seen him in scrubs at home many times, but never in the hospital.

I must have blacked out because when I wake up again I know that I am out of the recovery room—I don’t hear the moaning all around me. I am now in the hushed dim of a hospital room instead of the bright stadium lights of the recovery room. I can hear the sadness in the air and it feels so loud that I want to reassure everyone that I will be okay. There is a small crowd. My parents, brothers, in-laws, and friends have been sitting here in the darkness waiting for me to wake up.

Robin starts to cry and my mother-in-law tells her not to cry in front of me and to leave the room. My dad is sitting and thinking hard. He looks like he is about to take a swing on the racquetball court. I strain to lift my head up and they all begin to come into focus and I can see the anticipation in the room. I try to say something but my voice is hoarse from the tube that has been down my throat during surgery.

“I feel so much performance anxiety. Please, someone else speak.”

That makes everyone laugh and we begin to talk about everything except what we’re all thinking about: my wound. No one will talk about it.

A young doctor comes into the room to change my dressing and everyone leaves. I try to turn my neck as far away as I can when he starts to peel away the thin white layers of gauze that I feel are wet and blotched with fresh blood. I close my eyes and remember never being able to look when I got shots when I was little. I can’t look. Not yet. The doctor also unscrews the plastic drains that are sewn into my chest to catch my oozing wound fluid. He empties the fluid, screws back the drains, and checks my morphine pump. He scribbles something on my chart and quietly disappears into the bright white corridor outside my room. It would be strange to chitchat and I am way too tired to be nice or flirt.

That first night, my chest is burning and pounding because the anesthesia is wearing off. I tell Tyler how much it hurts and he tells me it’s normal and to keep pushing my morphine pump for more pain meds. I keep buzzing for the nurse, but she just keeps screaming at me over the intercom that a doctor is on his way. This is definitely not
General Hospital
. Finally, four hours later, the pain resident comes to visit me. Tyler didn’t want me to bother him. Tyler knows the pain resident because I am at Mount Sinai where Tyler is doing his training. His friend is confused and asks if we just had a baby: Unfortunately, breast cancer and maternity patients are on the same floor in the Women’s Pavilion.

“No, my wife just had a mastectomy.” And I can hear Tyler’s voice drop.

The resident checks out my pump and tells me it has been blocked for hours—no pain meds for all that time. What the hell is wrong with my husband? It is the first signal that he should not give me any medical advice. He is a knee doctor, not a boob doctor and I am his wife, not his patient. Why is he so insensitive to my pain? He tries to make it up to me the next day by bringing me sushi for dinner. The sushi is so soft and does not hurt my chest when I chew it.

I spend the next day, my first day without my breast, in bed. Everything hurts. It hurts when I breathe in to smell a beautiful bouquet of red roses. It hurts when my friends sit on the corner of my bed to be near me. It hurts especially when I need to roll over to pee in my bedpan. When I take a sip of fresh-squeezed carrot juice to help get my energy level back up, I feel the wound beginning to ooze.

I get some good news: my lymph nodes are clean. I have never seen my parents so happy. They are jumping up and down and hugging the nurse and it looks like they are in a Megabucks Lotto commercial. Clean lymph nodes . . . the things we took for granted before this happened. The nurse reminds me that my right arm will be very prone to infection because I do not have lymph nodes anymore on that side. No blood drawn on that side, no blood pressure on that side, and no manicures. I know I will cheat. I can’t walk around with just my left hand polished. I am already going to be missing my right boob and I’ll need other things to match.

The next day I am determined to be glamorous for my visitors. I will not pee in the bedpan. It takes me about twenty minutes to get out of bed, still attached to my IV pole, without moving the drains and tugging on the stitches holding together my skin. I do manage to pee on the toilet but I can’t reach to wipe and need to call a nurse. I ask her to help me put on my white waffle cotton robe—it bulges slightly but fits over the quart-sized plastic drains that look like milk cartons. And I take out my jewelry bag. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take a shower after my surgery because my wound would have tape all around it and wouldn’t be able to get wet. Since my hair would be greasy I brought jewelry to make up for it. I decide to wear my freshwater-pearl chandelier earrings because the white looks nice with the white cotton robe. And it matches my bandage.

As if on cue, three dozen perfect, creamy white roses arrive in my room. “Thinking of you, Barbara Walters.”

My mom, dad, and brothers do not leave my bed. My mother-in-law Marie, my father-in-law Gerald, my sister-in-law Leslie, my Uncle Marty, Uncle Steve, Aunt Marilyn, Aunt Pamela, Uncle Bernard, Aunt Nancy are all there. My friend Suzanne makes sure that I have fresh doughnuts every morning. My friends sit on my bed until the staff tells them they have to leave because visiting hours are over. They answer my phone and laugh: “Geralyn Lucas’s room, how can we help you?”

But when my gynecologist—the one I first showed my lump to—comes to visit me, her visit reminds me of the sadness of where my life left off.

“Geralyn, I am so sorry this happened. Please don’t get pregnant. It will be too dangerous for you now.”

I need to see Dr. B’s face to feel some hope. He told me that I will get my life back, that it will be a hard year, but then things will return to normal. Dr. B is supposed to come see me today and I need to look my best for him. He will probably feel guilty to see me in so much pain, knowing he has cut off my breast. But I feel a strange closeness with him, since he has cut me open and stitched me back together. I can’t reach to brush my hair—it would pull the stitches too much. I can still tilt my face down to apply my lipstick. But I can’t reach my arm up to curl my middle finger and make the perfect lipstick arch between my lips. It would hurt my drain stitching too much.