How Pink Became My New Favorite Color

I have a terrible confession to make, one that I would not have been able to make before my mom passed away last year: back in the early '70s I went braless. I wasn't a Radical Feminist or anything, not a Bra Burner. But they had not invented sports bras back then and bras are not that comfortable and, well, just because I could.

 There was certain criteria that had to be met unless you were doing it to make a political statement:  if you could put a pencil under your breasts and it stayed there, you were too big and had to wear a bra. Hard as it is to imagine today, I was a little slip of a thing back then, I passed the pencil test and I was bra-free for a couple of years. (I did wear band-aids under anything thinner than a sweatshirt; I wasn't completely clueless!) Then I got pregnant and went from braless freedom to maternity bras to nursing bras and the next thing I knew, I was in my sixties, gravity had done it's thing and not only could I have held a pencil under there, I could have held a rolled up newspaper....the Sunday Times.  (Stay with me. This is going to figure into the story.)

Thinking of that reminded me of a book written in the seventies, "All Things Wise And Wonderful" by a country veterinarian from Scotland named James Herriot and set in the time before World War II.  Just the other day I found a copy.  The vet wrote," 'This is the third time I've had to stitch Daisy up and I'm afraid it is just going to go on happening'....That was the worst of very old cows.  Their udders dropped so that when they lay down in their stalls the vital milk-producing organ was pushed to one side into the path of the neighboring animals....There was a long silence as Dodson and I looked at the cow, her broken down udder almost brushing the cobblestones."

So the last few years, boy did I identify with poor Daisy!  Oh, don't sit there looking so smug.  It happens to everybody if you live long enough, maybe not to that degree if you stay skinny and look like two fried eggs on a plate now, but Newton's law is always in effect, honey.

As you know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and since next month is the three year anniversary of my story's beginning, I decided to nag you along with everybody else. "Let me tell you about my operation," as my grandma used to say.

Here is a tip:  If you ever notice certain changes, and you want to ask somebody about them but you really don't want to know, but your son is a doctor, and you kind of want to ask him but you don't want him to know it's you, don't go looking them up on his computer at his house when he can come up behind you and see what you are looking at and make you tell him.  Your whole denial thing doesn't have a chance after that.  I think maybe there was something to the "wanting to get caught theory", although I didn't realize it at the time.

So he made me go to my doctor and she sent me for a "diagnostic mammogram".  That office had a pink Christmas tree decorated with pink ribbons, pink chairs, pink scrubs for the techs and a little pink cape for me to wear while I waited for them to tell me I needed to come back for a needle biopsy.  More pink.  Then onto a surgeon with a nice beige office, who said "I really don't think this is going to be anything.  I see calcium deposits and that doesn't always mean cancer but let's go in and take a look just to be safe."

They would do a lumpectomy to test it. There wasn't any lump but I guess he meant they just wanted to take a chunk of something and get it under a microscope.  The surgeon assured me more than once that he almost never saw cancer in these kind of things. I  had had lumpectomies twice before when there were actual lumps and they were benign. Out-patient surgery, in and out the same day, and he would call us. The surgery was on Friday and by Wednesday he still had not called.  It was a little disconcerting not to hear from him but then, late on Wednesday evening the phone rang.  He had been surprised.  He gave me lots of details with words I didn't understand.  I took notes that I didn't understand.  Then I had enough presence of mind to ask him if he would call our son, Josh, who made me go to him in the first place and who spoke his language.

Here's where the eleven hours of labor and natural childbirth paid off:  Josh called back and explained everything in words I recognized:  I had breast cancer. It was not confined to a tumor but in the milk ducts. The margins of the sample they took still had cancer cells to the edges so they needed to take a larger sample, another surgery.

Long story a little less long, after two more surgeries getting more samples that never got clear edges, I finally had a full mastectomy and they did whatever they do so I could have reconstruction of that breast. There was a year of painful treatments for that (if you have to make a decision about reconstruction, message me. We'll talk) but, praise the Lord, I did not need chemotherapy or even radiation.  And here's the silver lining:  A year after the mastectomy I had another surgery to reduce the size of the other breast so there would be some sort of matching. (The law requires that insurance pays for this, also.)  And voila!  I could probably hold a pencil under there but not one of those fat crayons little kids use in kindergarten.  Not even a toothpick under the reconstructed one.  No parts of me any longer brush the cobblestones.

I read that Liz Higgins says to practice for a mammogram you should take two glass cutting boards, put them in the freezer, then put one on the floor of the garage and lie down with your breast on it.  Put the other on top and have someone run the car over them.

I promise you it is not as bad as all that.  By this time I have had maybe two thousand and forty-three mammograms, okay, maybe a two thousand twenty-three....they do a lot when you are having breast surgeries, and I have never had one that was really painful.  I already have mine scheduled for next month.  (Dennis thinks they should give it to me for half price but I already tried and they didn't go for it.)

 So do it.  Chances are that there will be nothing there, but if you catch something before there are any symptoms, how much easier will it be to fix?  And maybe in a year or two you, who knows?  It might not be fashionable to go braless any more but you could if you wanted to. And the only confession you will have to make is that you were smart enough to catch things early. And you might get a free pink t-shirt.  It will be your favorite color too.