Free Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy by Geralyn Lucas Page B

and pulling my skin, and what would happen if my drains fell out in my favorite Japanese restaurant?
    Tyler has not seen my chest yet. But tonight when he gets out of the hospital he is going to snip the milk quarts out of me so that I don’t need to visit my plastic surgeon for that part—after all, he did a breast cancer rotation during his training.
    It will be the first time he has seen my breast after my mastectomy. It is so humiliating that this will be his first look. I want to be able to clean it up for him first, dress it up a little. But it’s hard to find a negligee that will fit over the milk quarts. My hair is greasy, too, because I still can’t take a shower and get the dressing wet. What will he think when he sees this? I know he has seen a mastectomy before in his training, but he has never seen it on his wife.
    Tyler is concentrating so hard when he is snipping the stitches off my chest that I can’t tell if he is shocked or just in surgeon mode. It is still raw and burns. The strangest part is that I can’t feel his hand moving along my new breast as he is snipping. There is no sensation. I am trying to remember what the nipple felt like there, when it used to feel so good.
    I don’t know what to expect. It is almost like a doctor-patient moment and it feels very professional. He finishes snipping the especially hard pieces of string, caked with my blood, that have kept the milk quarts on my chest.
    When he finishes he puts the scissors down and wipes off the wound. He is looking in my eyes and I notice that his eyes have changed from a medical, surgical look to an “I want you” look. Tyler smirks and his hands have moved from my wound. I notice that I have started to bleed a little where the stitches were. Tyler does not miss a beat.
    “Geralyn, let me put on a fresh bandage so we can have sex.”
    I need to put on some lipstick.
     

 

 
    7
    Cocktails
     
     
    When I see the IV bag with a skull and crossbones on it wheeling towards me I realize that I am actually about to get poisoned. I am sweating as my oncologist, Dr. O, begins to explain the chemo “cocktail” the nurse is about to push through my veins. But I finally hear a word I can hang on to in this white sanitary place: cocktail !
    A strange thought pops into my head: When was the last time I was actually at a bar drinking a cocktail? I could really use a very dirty martini, Absolut vodka, extra olives on the side, right about now to help my courage kick in.
    Funny, I was never daring in the cocktail department. I was president of Students Against Driving Drunk in high school. I never had a fake ID. A Sea Breeze was as cool as I got. I could never say “Sex on the Beach” or “Orgasm” with a serious face to a bartender. Now I’m having a poisonous cocktail.
    First day of school, first kiss, and now first chemo. I’m not sure what the dress code is for first chemo, I mean I know this is not a time for appearances, but I do want to look good facing this assault. I have worn lipstick and my favorite crimson suit because I have just come from 20/20 . I am also wearing the beautiful antique Murano glass necklace that Tyler gave me the night before my mastectomy. One of the glass globes is pinkish red, and it highlights the crimson of my suit and the red of my lipstick perfectly.
    Tyler can not be here because he has to be at the hospital with his patients. So my mom has taken the day off from her job as an elementary school guidance counselor to come with me to my first chemo. My mom used to love telling me that my first word was out . I’d stand in my crib and point and say “out.” Right now I would do anything to get the hell out of here.
    I am being so mean to my mom that it’s reminding me of when I was in high school and I took out all my frustrations and anxieties on her. The other patients keep shooting me nasty looks like, “Be nice to your poor mother—look at the hell she is already going through and you being