The Last Days of My Left Breast
I’m a stripper, rocker, bartender, and writer. I had a lot of plans last year, but none of them involved breast cancer. The disease sidetracked my livelihood, threatened my life, and forced me to reinvent my chest. So far, I've lived to tell the tale.
You should see my tits. Right now. They’re quite impressive.
My right breast is an A-cup, a small, soft mound of flesh with a pert pink nipple the size of a half-dollar. It’s familiar, and looks much like it does in the countless photos and movies it’s appeared in over the past couple of decades. It’s not gonna stop traffic or anything, but it looks good. My left breast, on the other hand, maybe could stop traffic. It’s straight out of a horror film—the size of a cantaloupe and just as hard, skin stretched taut, with a long black trail of stitches on the side. The nipple is a psychedelic swirl of pinks and deep purples. The center of it is black. Black . Still, I have to admire the progress. The wound has closed up, and, apart from the nipple, the skin color is approaching normal. A week ago my breast was a giant yellow, green, and purple bruise, ringed with subcutaneous plastic tubing attached to a drain bulb.
A week before that it looked much like its neighbor. My breast went to band practice to prepare for the Coco Cobra and the Killers reunion show, swam laps at Cascade Athletic Club, and worked way too hard juggling three jobs: stripping, bartending, and writing. It also took the stage at Mary’s Club one last time after twelve years—naked and proud throughout the strains of its swan song, the Stones’ “Doncha Bother Me,” rising and falling with thousands of breaths, and stoically covering for an aching, grieving heart. Then, on September 26, 2008, it submitted itself to the surgeon’s knife to remove some tiny bits of cancer that had taken up residence.
The following is a travelogue of my journey through the wilds of breast cancer, and an ode to a body part that always more than did its job.
Thanks for the memories.
R.I.P.
h3. Lump
Like most women, my entrée into the world of breast cancer started with a lump, found by my erstwhile beau during one of his routine “breast exams.” The lump wasn’t exactly difficult to discover: my breasts aren’t much more than lumps, and a lump on a lump is, well, noticeable. Still, if not for him, I wouldn’t have caught that gumdrop-size nodule over my heart for a good while longer. And cancer, as I’ve learned, really wrecks the place the longer it’s in town.
Next I did what any stripper would do and told the girls at the office. Strip-club dressing rooms can be potent nuclei of female power and amazing sources of information—like covens or sewing circles. The strippers said lumps are common. They also insisted that I see a doctor.
Down at Old Town Clinic, my nurse practitioner, Dana Mozer, fondled me thoroughly. After examining every centimeter of my breast, she pronounced that my lump wasn’t of much concern. Good lumps, like mine, move around; bad lumps stay stubbornly in place. Good lumps also grow and shrink, sometimes depending on caffeine intake, so we scheduled another appointment and I cut down on coffee —but two weeks later my lump was the same size. Although I was only thirty-three and have no family history of cancer—breast or otherwise—she booked me for my first mammogram.
If this is virgin territory for y’all, a mammogram involves flattening one’s breast like a pancake between two hard plastic plates and taking images. My small breasts proved difficult for the pancake-maker to get hold of, so the scans had to be repeated several times. Next, I had an ultrasound, which can uncover abnormalities not revealed by the mammogram. Both the mammographer and the ultrasound tech thought my breasts looked perfectly normal. I was hugely relieved … until the overseeing doc came in, held up my images, and brusquely pointed out a handful of tiny white dots—calcifications that were suspicious for cancer. She ordered a biopsy.
I pursed my lips and tried to hide my irritation. So far the doctor appointments were primarily an inconvenience, but a biopsy? That meant losing a chunk of my breast! It also meant there might be something seriously wrong with me, yet all I could think of was what it meant for my mortgage. How would I strip with a chunk missing from my breast? How big would this chunk be? Would I be able to hide it with Dermablend?
Published: March 2009
