Haiku
Nausea never leaves
Slow burn and quiver inside
My unwelcome friend
Sonnet
Oh chemo mine, I hold you in my soul,
Adventure unlike any I have faced
The poison cocktail brewed to make me whole
This terror not escaped from but embraced.
Such oddness in the notion from the start.
To drink a toxin, knowing it will kill
My cells, myself, my corpuscles, my heart
In hopes the cancer falls more quickly still
A dreadful bargain medicine does urge.
Who knows the price that will at last be paid
When from this dark I once again emerge
My body, cured but damaged, hounded, frayed.
Yet may the days and years so dearly bought
Seem ever dearer for the battle fought.
So creativity comes where it will. Who knows why I was moved to write poems tonight, but there it is. It was fun to take on the challenge of two really rigid forms of poetry and see what came of it. Hope you are amused. I was!
So was I.
ReplyDeleteJim Childs
Colleen, I tried to send this before, but due to some error (I probably forgot to press POST) it didn't get posted. So here it is again.
ReplyDeleteThings I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Had My Mastectomy
The first choice is whether to have reconstructive surgery or go for a prosthetic breast. I don’t really like that term—it’s hard to pronounce and sounds pedantic. “Falsie” is a bit too junior high. So I’ll call it a breast form.
I chose the breast form, and for me it was the right decision. I was over 65 and had been married for years, so no way could I have been mistaken for a sex object. Besides, I had heard stories about problems with the reconstructive surgery that made me unwilling to risk it. Most important, I had a supportive husband, one who thought of me as much more than just a pair of boobs. And I know you have one who’ll be equally supportive, whichever option you choose.
Not everyone is so lucky. A while back John had a visit from an old buddy, a guy he worked with in the Merchant Marine. When John asked Buddy about his wife, he explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that they had to get divorced because she had had a mastectomy. We never learned whether he divorced her because he couldn’t stand having a “defective” wife or she divorced him because she couldn’t stand his attitude. This was a friendship John had no wish to continue.
The cosmetic impact of the surgery wasn’t discussed either by my oncologist or by the surgeon. The latter did boast that when he did this surgery he made a very smooth-looking seam and scar. I remember thinking, “I’m losing my breast. How could I possibly care how the scar looks, for heaven’s sake?” Later I learned that if a surgeon isn’t careful, a badly-executed seam can cause twisting, pain, and discomfort, and I’ve never had any of that.
Nobody said anything to me about how or when to get a breast form. I knew where there was a shop that specialized in these things, but I wasn’t sure if I should go there ahead of time to have the form ready when the surgery was over or wait till afterward. I’m fairly well endowed in that area, so to go around with half of my endowment missing would have looked strange, I thought.
Finally, though, a nurse told me that the proper procedure was to wait till the incision had healed before ordering the breast form. So I had to resort to stuffing my bra with socks for the first few weeks.
When I went for the fitting, the customer service person couldn’t have been more understanding or more helpful. She had been in the same situation and was totally sympathetic. She fitted me with a bra and breast form, gave me a few tips, and took care of sending in the insurance paperwork. It was fantastically easy.
The form itself is a pyramid-shaped piece of silicone (I suppose) that fits into a pocket in the bra made of a thin stretchable fabric. There’s a pocket inside each cup. If you use only one, the other just acts as a liner. When you wear the bra, it holds the form against your chest so that you aren’t conscious of the weight, and it feels just like normal. The breast form itself feels like a normal breast from the outside so a person feeling it would be hard put to tell it was artificial.
It’s possible to buy bathing suits adapted for breast forms, but being as cheap as I am, I didn’t want to do that. Since I swim every day, I go through a bathing suit every 3 or 4 months. What I do is to put padding into one cup with small safety pins. Two shoulder pads put together (you can buy them at fabric stores) make just about the right bulge so the bathing suit looks natural. Then I can easily unpin them and transfer them to another suit when the first one wears out.
That’s it. I’ve been wearing these things for almost 14 years now and had no problems. I hope this helps.
Aunt Margaret
You are so amazing...thank you for sharing. Know that you are in my thoughts..
ReplyDelete