Warmed Up Vomit

06Dec09

I should warn readers right now that while I tell the story I’m going to jump into the present from time to time, and sometimes even the future (where we will all be wearing alfoil jumpsuits and getting around in hovercrafts!).

A year since my diagnosis and with much treatment under my belt, I look like shit.  Seriously.

The drugs, the steroids, the sitting around feeling like crap…I’ve gained serious weight…60lbs…thats serious weight!  I have weird sticky outy, short but long, straight but wavy hair that looks like I’ve hacked at myself in a bipolar rage. The only cut that would even it out right now is ‘skinhead’ and having been there once I’m not keen on going there again.  I’m as pale as a ghost and my skin is uber sensitive which means I am often visited by weird rashy bits.  Let’s not even talk about the bad boob because that just shits me…obviously its under my clothes so it really only offends me.  Except of course if I wear anything with a V neck you can also catch sight of the blue tattoo’d radiotherapy point…right between my breasts.

People (friends?) will say “Wow you look great!” when what they really mean is “Wow, you’re still alive!”  Of course they mean well, but it feels quite patronising at times.

Last night I went to a dinner for a friend who is soon to be married.  I agonised over what to wear (a black sack) and what to do with my wayward hair (try to get it into some kind of shape by adding a thin brown hair band and using half a pot of gel).  I was in a foul mood when I got there, made fouler by the venue ( a loud bar full of society flibbertigibbets in mini skirts, inflated prices and obnoxious service…I felt 100 years old) and then capped off by one of the girls (yes who means well) exclaiming…”Hi Rach…wow…great head band!”

Great. Head. Band.

Yeah of course.  This head band is awesome.  It’s about 2mm thick and brown…the same colour as my wonky thatch.  Yeah it’s an essential part of my look…the killer app in my fabulousness.

It was all I could do at that point not to punch her in the mouth.  She might also have said “Wow those buttons on your shirt, brillant.  And I love how you’re wearing…what are those…shoes?  Shoes are so in right now. And look!  Bare, unmanicured nails.  I saw that in Marie Claire as the next big thing.  You are so on to it Rach!”

So whats the moral to this story?  Well I’m not sure there is one except to say that women (and I’m sure many men) who’ve come out the other side of cancer looking nothing like they did when they started, feel like they’re about as physically appealing as warmed up vomit. And no amount of patronising, superficial cheerleading will make that person feel any better about it.

So what should you say?  Try something simple and honest like…”You look better each time I see you”.

I will happily buy that, for now.

Filed under: Breast Cancer, Cancer, Triple negative breast cancer, Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: appearance, Breast Cancer, Cancer, self esteem, tnbc, Triple negative breast cancer

Body Blow

04Dec09

I awoke early one December Saturday morning to one of those lovely sunny and not yet humid Sydney days.  Scrunching up my eyes I stretched up above my head then reached over with my left hand to scratch a little itch just below my right breast.  I felt something…odd.  Definitely something I hadn’t noticed before.  It was as hard as concrete.  Maybe a weird bone I hadn’t noticed before?  I reached over and poked the flesh of the other breast, right in the crease line where it met my chest wall.  Nope, nothing there.  Back to the right.  Whatever it was, it didn’t hurt, and felt irregular, like someone had injected liquid concrete into my boob and it had created a bubbly, jaggedy pebble in an open space.  Weird!

And so began what will probably turn out to be the defining year of my life.

Filed under: Breast Cancer, Cancer, Triple negative breast cancer, Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: body blow, Breast Cancer, Cancer, graves disease, out of body experience, tnbc, triple negative