Cancer Bloopers: PG 13 Rating

By Ann McGee-Cooper

From time to time in the past nine months, I have shared pieces of my breast cancer journey.  It has brought many challenges, lessons, and blessings.  I have chosen to keep a sense of humor, adjusting to each new challenge. So as a final blog, here is the funny side of all this.

Following a mastectomy one has many decisions to make.  Breast reconstruction or simply a prosthesis (translation…false breast)?  Well, knowing that I didn’t want the health risks of putting silicone inside my body, I chose to shop for a prosthesis.  What I found was a silicone sack the size of my healthy breast, which is pink, heavy and slippery.  Yes, it fits into a pocket of a special bra to keep it in place.  But if you are physically active, even with the pocket, the heavy silicone pink sack slips out.  Try planting pansies for example.  I finally had to put it in my pocket after brushing the dirt off.

And then there is my yoga class.  Doing my best to regain flexibility and strength, I now have a wig to try to keep on my head; meanwhile this pink silicone breast-sack keeps slipping around.  Try doing a downward facing dog with a silicone false breast.   Do I hold my wig in place or grab for my false left breast that is sliding around?  You can’t balance on no hands.  So, the false pink breast  comes sliding onto the floor with a loud KERPLOP!  Well, it takes a bit of courage and grace to pick up your left breast and slip it back into place.

Actually, that I can handle.  Even on the dance floor, I found myself humiliated when enjoying doing a Latin dance with a handsome 20-something, male professional dance teacher who was graciously inviting me to tango with him.  At the end of the dance he laid me backwards in a very graceful dip with my left leg extended up in a sexy high kick….only to be punctuated with a loud PLOP!!!  Alas, it was my slippery false left breast that had slipped like a torpedo to the floor.  So what do you say at a time like this?  “Excuse me while I retrieve my left breast?”    Or, do I try to kick it casually off the dance floor to be retrieved later?  I found that I had to frequently reposition it or it would be sliding around or poking out of my dress.  Wouldn’t it be better to simply dance with one breast?  I thought so.

But now for the final indignity.  When going through chemotherapy the two kinds of cells that grow the fastest and are therefore most damaged are the hair cells (so you lose your hair and are shiny bald for a few months) and your digestive track.  The latter is the worst of all for me.  One no longer can control flatulence which is increased by whatever is happening to diet and digestion.  Now, without warning, when going up stairs, picking up something even moderately heavy, getting into a car or….you get the idea.  If it was a lady-like delicate “toot” I think I could handle it.  But it is more an unending series of machine-gun blasts that cause one to think, “Surely that could be controlled with a tight squeeze!”  But, alas, as hard as one tries to silence this action, it is not to be so.  And then there are the ones more like an 18 wheeler’s air horn that typically happen in yoga class.  Try having your legs up over your head and then folded back to the floor.  If ever there was an “at risk” pose, this is it.  And the embarrassment goes on—with work Partners, Clients, when out socially with my beloved spouse, Larry…all take it in stride and join me in a healthy dose of laughter as we get through this final challenge.

The good news is that I now have a new left breast individually sculpted to fit me and glued into place.  So hopefully there won’t be any more surprises as my false breast plops loudly onto the floor.  But as for the flatulence, well if you see my beloved with ear plugs as we dance or are in yoga class, you will know to beware standing close by.