On the one year anniversary of my mastectomy
Writing about trauma, or choosing not to.
A year ago this week, I had a preventative mastectomy.
It’s hard to know what verb to use when talking about your own medical procedure. “I had a thing” makes it sound like you owned something, and then you didn’t, which I suppose in my case is true. I had breasts, and now I don’t. “I underwent a thing” feels too passive, as if I had no say in a major decision about my body, but it also feels true. I was went under anesthesia, under knives, under the hands of others when my body could make no protest.
Here I am, a year later, trying to find words to write about a thing that I don’t really want to write about.
I’ve spoken extensively on my Instagram about my surgery and my choice to have it. Talking about it isn’t the issue—quite the opposite. I want more cis-women to talk about their experiences and histories with breast cancer so more of us will get screenings and genetic testing to understand our risk. I have BRCA1, a genetic mutation that increases my lifetime risk of breast cancer to close to 90% and ovarian cancer to 50%. I’m an Ashkenazi Jew, which predisposed me to having the BRCA gene at a 10x higher rate than non-Jews.
But talking about my risk, my medical decisions, my screenings and my recovery how-to in a show-and-tell kind of way feels very different than writing about the actual experience of going through what I went through.
A couple of weeks after my surgery, I became jaundiced and was re-hospitalized for almost a week to monitor my liver. This sounds straightforward. It wasn’t. It started with stomach cramps and a fever that we thought was a stomach bug. Then, a rash that blanketed my entire body, save for my neck and face, that itched constantly and wouldn’t allow me to sleep. Then, extreme fatigue that kept me in bed, too tired to even watch a movie. Then, stepping out of the shower to look at myself in the mirror and realizing, with a needling fear, that my skin was yellow. The whites of my eyes were yellow. Was in the light in the bathroom? Was it just my bruises across my chest and stomach? Nope, my skin was as yellow as old paper and we rushed to the ER.
What followed were CT scans, ultrasounds, morning and evening blood draws, a very painful liver biopsy. Kind doctors and nurses and some rough ones. Not being able to walk to the bathroom unaided. Cold washcloths by my side to ease the itching at night. Visits from my now-husband, my father, my rabbi. So much fear. A lot of crying.
I’m stopping here because I want to. It’s my pain and my story, but it doesn’t need to be yours. I’ve tried writing about all of this before because I feel like I’m supposed to write about my trauma to help process it. As though some magical creative alchemy will integrate my experience into my nervous system (as if it weren’t already integrated) or lessen the pain of the memories. I felt especially obligated to write about my experience as I was going through it, as though these raw emotions needed to trapped in a bottle or they would fade away quickly like smoke.
There is a more extractive voice at play, too. This is one of the most intense emotional experiences of my life; as a creative, shouldn’t I somehow be using this experience to derive some measurable value from it? Tap the pain for oil, extract every drop I can, make my trauma productive?
For now, I desist. Maybe writing through trauma helps some writers, and I’m grateful for those, like Audre Lorde in her Cancer Journals, who have given words to much of what I went through. But my only impulse in the moment was to survive. Rest, cry, sleep, eat, and find some comfort. My only impulse now is to enjoy my health and find joy in the days ahead.
What I’m writing
This was a rough week for writing. As in, I didn’t write. I got a stomach bug on Sunday afternoon that kept me home from a work trip and threw off my routine all week. That it was the one-year anniversary to my last “stomach bug” (see above) didn’t help, mentally. Anxiety kept me up at night and I found myself looking at my hands, wondering if they were yellow (they’re not). Anyway, I’m glad to have this blog as a place to have a side writing project and a reason to write something each week. New week, fresh start.
What I read
I finished Ted Kooser’s book of poems, Winter Morning Walks, which I started a year ago. This book was a surgery recovery gift to me from two dear friends, and finishing it felt like a nice way to honor the last year. Ted began writing these poems when he was going through cancer treatment and found it difficult to summon any creativity or desire to write. Since he couldn’t be exposed to sunlight during his cancer treatment, he went on morning walks in winter, before the sun was up. I think only one poem in the entire book makes reference to a “cancer appointment.” The perfect thing to read in mid-winter or when you’re going through your own wintering.
What I’m reading
Still reading The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. Had to take a break because it gets dark. Need to finish during daylight hours when it won’t keep me up at night.
Still listening to Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.
After buying this book in 2019, finally picked up Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing.
A helpful thing
This week, I chose to turn my iPhone screen grayscale, which is supposed to help reduce some of the phone’s addictiveness. This article has me thinking a lot about my relationship to my phone and my creative practices.
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