Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition, Oct. 7, 2011
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about breasts. If you are male, I don’t need to hear you chiming in with something helpful like, “Yeah, me too.” If you’re even thinking that while you’re reading this, that’s probably sexual harassment, buddy. And my calling you buddy when your name isn’t even Bud is also harassment of some sort. Let’s stop harassing each other and continue. Shall we?
Last week I got a call from our friend on the West Coast. She had recently had a single mastectomy. Things went smoothly. The morning after surgery, she was home with the only real source of irritation being the drainage and discharge. To the alarm of her friends, she was up and answering her phone. You see, she is 83 years old. You’re right; that’s not a typo – that’s 83 as in octogenarian, not 38. Her husband is 80.
We’ve been friends with this couple since we met in California almost twenty years ago. We became friends despite our age difference, or perhaps because of it. I’m not afraid of aging, because there’s only one alternative, but I’m hoping you noticed there is an age difference.
In the ten years since we each departed the Golden State, we’ve only seen them once when they stopped to visit us in Ohio along a cross-country trip to see friends and family. Her husband attended his 60th class reunion in Kentucky just a couple of summers ago. The class has dwindled to about half of its size, but it’s amazing how they’ve kept in touch over the decades, even without the aid of computers and Facebook.
Our families were close, spending many an enjoyable evening and holiday together. She made the most amazing homemade Christmas ornaments and treats, and our young kids adored them. I loved to hear the tales from their youth. I have a deep and sudden longing to see them.
She relayed to me that when she was but a girl, her aunt after whom she was named, had also had a mastectomy. Or at least that’s what she thinks had happened. “You didn’t talk about a lot of things back then.” The aunt had often appeared to be in pain and had always seemed a fragile person.
I’m glad we can talk about all sorts of things nowadays. Not everything is necessarily appropriate in every context, but it gives us a newfound freedom of access, inquiry, and information. William Stewart Halsted, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University, first performed a radical mastectomy in 1891 as life-saving operation for breast cancer patients. Before that time, breast cancer was not only a death sentence, but it also relegated the sufferer to a virtual quarantine because the stench and discharge associated with the disease made them pariahs.
Halsted was ”an almost excruciatingly slow, meticulous surgeon known for his gentle handling of tissue at a time when bloody slashing, and no thought of germs, were more common…” (Source: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/history/history5.html.) Incidentally, Halsted also introduced the use of rubber gloves in surgery. It was not so much for keeping the surgical site germ-free, but to save the hands of the nurse he later married. Caroline Hampton suffered from rashes as a result of washing with mercuric chloride. Halsted contacted Goodyear to make a thin pair of gloves, and it soon became the rage.
I heard a report that when the Susan G. Komen Foundation began its awareness campaign, there were many women who could not bring themselves to put the pen to paper to sign any petitions. The stigma attached to breast cancer made the stakes too high for them to have their names associated with the disease or its cure. We have come a long way. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. We have a long way to go yet.
Last month, I finally got my buns (and other parts) into Fauquier Hospital for my first mammogram. Yes, they give women a free one on the year of their fortieth birthday, but somehow I didn’t get around to it even five years ago. I’m tempted to say I should have gone in earlier, because it was a smashing good time. But in truth, it was just plain smashing, even though very temporarily. My technician was absolutely wonderful. She didn’t make me feel self-conscious at all, and I kept jabbering away about the wonders of modern medicine and William Halsted.
Anyway, the images indicate I need to go in for a repeat exam, more thorough, with an ultrasound this time. I guess that makes up for all the years I skipped going in. I’m not afraid…yet. Best of all, I’m not afraid or ashamed to talk about it.
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