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I don’t know where I’m going to put my boobs.
They’re one of the few physical assets I feel comfortable rocking- as an extra-thick woman in her 40s- to draw the appropriate amount of attention to me.
My eyes aren’t bad. But my boobs, even 20 years past an… uplifting… breast reduction? Are real and spectacular.
Great enough that on dates and in social situations where suitable men might be located? I wear a boob shirt. What is a boob shirt you ask?
This is one of the staples of the endowed woman’s arsenal of slay-that-dude outfits.
It is a blouse that appropriately features the girls. Some cleavage but never side boob. You can get away with a WHOLE lot of other flaws if you have a nice enough rack.
And as a black chick? I can be as plus size as I wanna be as long as I keep it right up top, round the bottom, and whittle down my middle a little. Hourglass proportions keep a lady in business, seemingly no matter how big you get. And TRUST me I’ve been a chart topper.
Not so big that there’s special porn about women my side. But I’ve been big enough that airplane seats were snug.
I’m subtle with my shit? But I like a little cleavage. I’m no prude, but when I hit 50 I’m not going to be as pro-boobage as I am now. I haven’t got time to play if I finally want to settle down.
So what’s the problem?
There’s a strong possibility that all up in my boobie prime, I might have to give up boob shirts. Why? We’ll come back to that in a minute.
Some day you might be in my spot, or sitting next to someone in my spot. You won’t know what to say/think but hopefully this post can help you avoid a well-meaning blunder, on your part or a friend’s. Maybe knowing the mentality behind my complaint might help you some day.
Pre-cancer knowledge isn’t unknowable. Just different
I know what my opinion would have been pre-cancer.
“You might die and you’re worried about boob shirts?”
Yet it’s funny how much clarity having cancer provides you.
And I see now, all the big things that are important- but that’s the obvious part of the journey.
Of course I don’t work as much or as long. (Keeping it to 20 – 40 hours for me is a HUGE improvement.)
Naturally, I’m spending tons more time with my family, even leaning into it when they get on my nerves.
Lots of things I said I would do years ago, I’m doing now because even the milder, slower type of cancer I have CAN still kill you an 81.7% five year survival rate makes it unlikely but not impossible, though I don’t go purely by stats.
And for extra fun while you wait, as I recently found out I’m at risk of, CLL can morph into a more deadly cancer.
So yeah, even the milder, treatable cancers are still cancer.
You can still die from them and complications from them. Of course, you could die crossing the street. So how does this change the small things in your life, this knowledge that the likelihood of your death is increased?
These changes are not just about the fact that you could die.
It’s about how you go out if it happens.
It’s about receiving the gift of awareness that every single day counts, and counts in your favor if you found some way to be happy in it. It’s about finding all the ways you are grateful for your life and enjoying them more.
At first, yes, the reason I gave for making these changes was “just in case it kills me.”
Or even that “what if”- I could be in the group of remission people who have 2-8 years to live instead of 25. Because of that, I am doing even more that makes me happy than I did when I turned 40.
It’s becoming so much more though.
40 was the year when I started saying No. And Oh hell no.
Cancer is the year when I start saying:
- fuck you,
- fuck your opinion,
- fuck the horse you rode in on,
- fuck the bullet that I shot it with, and,
- fuck the grave where it got buried, too.
I love you but that whole thing where I try to morph myself to accomodate you has gone from “just my inner circle” to “not none of y’all.” I still believe in enduring a small or brief discomfort if it will make someone I love deliriously happy.
So sure, I’ll still wear that ugly ass sweater you bought me. But not in public, and I might tell you I think it’s ugly if it ever matters.
Cancer has also brought about a season of:
- “yes,
- me first,
- I’m doing that thing I always wanted to do,
- saying thank you for things I appreciate about people but never thank them for,
- I love me in the way I should love a best friend,
- have joy, be joy, bring joy.”
Back to my boobs & why I’m mad
So check it – on Tuesday I have a consultation to get my mediport installed.
This is about where it gets really really REAL for you. This is where you start to truly understand the types of changes and sacrifices you have to make to beat cancer. And around this time ANY sounds like the amount of sacrifice because you’ve given up or changed so much about your life already.
Everyone has their limits though. And this is pressing up against one of mine.
You see, a mediport is a device they install under your skin, often in your chesticle region for cancer patients, to administer your chemotherapy.
You can also get it installed hidden under your arm, but that makes it super awkward when it’s being accessed, and how you have to maneuver or be maneuvered for the medicine to get in you. It can affect how you sleep and all kinds of things.
So here I am at the oncologist’s office, seeing a demo of what a mediport is.
And how, in skinnier people than me, it kind of looks like you have a round pre-pimple as wide as two fingers and as high as a stack of three quarters, embedded under your collarbone.
And all I can think is “so no boob shirts? For six months!?” Which, after a few seconds, I got a grip on. You think if it’ll save my life, where do I sign up?
Of course then I find out, yeah, this mcgillicutty will probably be in there for YEARS, possibly until I hit the three or five year remission date.
Gotdammit.
It seems like a small thing. But.
I discussed this with a friend of mine when we had an idle moment. After I whined, she made a good point, basically that I should be more worried about my health than my appearance in boob shirts.
It bugged me that she said that.
I wasn’t upset with her or anything, but something about the fact that there was this choice to be made tickled the back of my mind. I fell silent at the time – I’d asked her opinion and she gave me a pretty logical answer. Nothing more to say.
Then later I was thinking some more.
About how I want to be happy.
Whether I have 2 years left or 2 decades, I want joy.
And for fuck’s sake, boob shirts make me happy even if I’m not going on a date.
And sure, I probably won’t be dating during the next 6 months when I’ll be likely to be having chemo. Duh. But I might be in the several years following when this thingee is still my butt buddy.
Yeah, remember? It will be in there for YEARS.
So sure, my focus pretty much ought to be on, you know, living. Most of it is. But what’s the point of surviving cancer just to have a downgraded life if it is in your power to prevent it?
And why does fucking cancer get to take this from me too?
Everyone has their limit.
This issue is an example of the things people aren’t talking about outside their cancer support groups that could actually be helped by technology or fashion or just having more people know about it. There’s not much of a point in me regurgitating the same things everyone’s cancer series says. Sometimes, sure, people show up for the way you say the same old thing.
But if you actually aim to help anyone with your experiences and pain, you have to reveal more perspectives.
The priority is cure cancer- find a way to keep our bodies from making abnormal cells in the first place. Or if our immune system could more reliably kill them that would rock.
In the meantime, how can we make this journey easier in ways that cancer conquerors actually care about?
If you saw the first post in this series, you’ll see that my main goal is to be useful. I’m actually torn between promoting these posts and letting them sit here quietly.
If I can reach more people, I think this should be part of the dialogue it sparks. I mean imagine. In an instant, when you’re told that you have cancer, tons of basic decisions are taken from you. It’s worse when you hit chemo.
Because then you literally sign up to kill off your body on a microscopic level, in the hopes that the healthy cells are strong enough to regenerate and the abnormal cells are not.
You can’t eat this.
You can only drink that.
Or you’re not even hungry but the food you can choke down disgusts you.
You can’t sit outside in the sun without spf one zillion.
Even three months afterwards you have to continue recovery slowly because your heart is weak enough to stop. Tons of other fun stuff can happen post-chemo, effects that last years and possibly the rest of your life.
I also share this because I wish I had this kind of insight when I was talking to friends who had life-threatening illnesses, when they were clinging to something that seemed small or trivial in light of what they were facing.
Because you might not guess what things become important or why unless your life has been in peril- not after the obvious bit.
Especially in this particularly strange peril where you can see the train coming that’s about to hit you, and not only can’t move out of the way, but better not, because that train is chemo and will probably fix you after it almost literally destroys you.
Can’t cancer wearables fix this?
I kid and I joke with you but take this one seriously: we need better cancer wearables to deal with a myriad of things. One lady invented a doo-hickey to keep the seatbelt from hurting your mediport.
Someone also needs to build a database we can refer to that tells us how close we are to normal for all the ranges our doctors are monitoring, but in better layman’s terms than the internet.
And yes. Build me a boob shirt substitute dammit. I’m seeing the peek-a-boo style, and those shirts that have one of the sleeves placed asymmetrically. Or even one shoulder blouses that have way more material on that side.
Yeah, I need more.
Now that I’ve had the appropriate amount of tantrums, I realize that
a- as a fleshier girl, the doctor might be able to actually hide the mediport better using my boobiliciousness
b- if he can’t, then fuck it.
I’ll take this in stride just like the cancer itself, eventually. I might even influence the fashion world with my inventive methods of figuring out how to still look kick-ass in a boobie shirt.
Because I will figure that shit out.
And when this is over, and I get a set of kick-ass scars as my reward? I’ll celebrate them as I would any major accomplishment.