Not Like Fried Snoots At All

I feel silly writing all this whiny complaining crap about losing a breast. I mean really. It’s not that big a deal. I feel like I should get over it. Somedays I think I am over it. But, laying in bed this morning, I absent mindedly rested my hand on my naked chest. I startled and flinched inside, surprised once again by the feel of hard bumpy bones under what seems like a dangerously thin layer of skin.

I can’t help but associate such protrusions with illness and death. Starvation. Decay. The left-over carcass from Thanksgiving dinner. It’s hard for me to combine what my hand is feeling with the otherwise complete sensation of inhabiting a healthy, functioning body.

When Mom and I were talking about how my chest would be after my surgery, we imagined it might be like a girls chest again, smooth and flat. That felt good, like I’d be fit and free. I’d travel back to a world where my body was able to do almost everything I asked of it. What it could do and how it felt counted for everything. What it looked like, how it fit into my clothes and how much it weighed didn’t count at all. I thought at least my right side would time travel. My left side would stay here, and I would end up elegantly straddling the power points of my life. I would be 8 years old, fresh and fearless, and 35 confident and wise. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

The lower half of my chest, the area beneath the incision does feel kind of like that. Dr. Rocco, thinking I might opt for reconstruction later on, left as much extra skin and flesh as she could. So the ribs on that part of my body are covered by a measure of fat that feels protective and healthy to my palm. Happy fat. Baby fat. Magic fat.

But a few inches higher, the skin shrinks back, the bones get pushy, and my fingertips transmit the message “wrong! wrong! wrong!” to my brain.

The first time I stuck my fingers under the edge of my bandage, and tentively explored my upper chest, I burst into tears. I had been so unprepared, and was thoroughly shocked to discover how extensive my mastectomy had been.

As kids, when my sister and I were pouting, my mom had a fail-proof method for making us smile. We’d be pushing our fat little lower lips out in protest at some insult or obstacle. As soon as she noticed that sour face, she’d make a scissor motion with her fingers, as if she might snip our pout right off. “Fried snoots for breakfast!” she’d call out tunefully. It used to make me so mad. It was impossible to pout with her scissoring and sing-songing at me like that. I had to smile too.

Before my surgery, I imagined it as a fried snoot-ectomy of sorts. Even though Dr. Rocco had carefully described the procedure to me, even though I’d read descriptons and looked at diagrams, I just couldn’t shake the assumption that they would just hold my breast out from my body and slice it off. It would be simple and clean, like clipping a toenail or biting the head off a chocolate bunny. I knew there’d be some blood and some stitches, but I figured the wound would be a straight line about 5 inches long at the most.

While the incision itself was only 5 linear inches or so, the total wound was much larger than that. It reached around my side and up under my arm. It spread upwards from the cut, stopping just a couple of inches from my collar bone.

When I think about how I got like this, I see Dr. Rocco and her assistants peering through a cat’s eye slit as long as the distance I can make between my thumb and index finger. Even though the room is brightly lit, they are wearing headlamps that help them see into the blobby, bloody world inside me. Someone is holding the severed edges outward, to make a kind of tent. Dr. Rocco is reaching in with her gloved hand and some kind of instrument. I picture a tool like a melon baller, with a small metal cup on one end of the straight handle and a larger one on the other end. I can’t decide if they have sharp, smooth edges, or are serrated around the rim. Probably the big one is smooth, and just used for removing the big globs of breast tissue. The little one has teeth, for reaching way up and scraping the surface of my muscles.

I know it’s silly to imagine it like this. I’m probably far from the truth. I could look it up. I could call Dr. Rocco and ask her. But I don’t really want to. As gruesome as my imaginary scenario is, I’m accustomed to it. The truth might be even more stomach-turning. I am currently operating under the assumption that no muscle tissue was removed. What if I’m wrong? I would find that really upsetting. I think I’m upset plenty already.

I forget where I read it, but someone lately was quoted as saying that if they survived breast cancer, they would just be happy about it, no matter what their body was like after surgery.

Maybe I’d feel like that, pure grateful, if I’d had cancer longer. Or, more accurately, if I’d known I had cancer for longer. No one knows how long I had it for. I was only aware of it for 4 weeks before it was removed. That wasn’t really long enough to totally shift my self-perception. So, when I’m considering my altered body, I’m not comparing it to my ill, endangered chest…I’m comparing it to the healthy, pretty, fit one I still think of as mine. I can’t help it, and I don’t think that woman could help it either, if she were in my situation.

But, I understand her attitude, and agree. I’m fine, really. It hardly hurts any more. The numb area is shrinking. I didn’t have any problems with infection or any difficulties healing. Really, shouldn’t I be over it by now?