Read Online Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy by Geralyn Lucas - Free Book Online
Authors: Geralyn Lucas
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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
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
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