Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy Read Online Free PDF

been hoping for that all along. He just didn’t want to sway me. My husband must love me, I realize when I hang up the phone. But what is “me,” and can he really deal with what is ahead?
    Even though I have just planned my cancer treatments, I need to believe that I have a future, too. That Tyler and I have a future. I decide to see one more doctor that no one referred me to. I need to see a fertility specialist. I might die, but I need to believe I might live.
    During all my consults, the cancer doctors wanted no role in my baby plan, and they tried to convince me that the song I should be listening to is “Stayin’ Alive,” not “She’s Having a Baby.” So I find a fertility specialist on my own. When I go on the Internet, the information is bleak. I make eleven calls explaining my situation, and only one doctor calls me back. I can barely hear him when I return his call on a pay phone. I strain to hear the words, “Very serious.”
    When I arrive at his Park Avenue fertility office, the first thing I see—well, anyone would notice—is a wall full of babies. Smiling babies, beautiful babies, perfect babies. Babies. I know it is supposed to be hopeful, but it feels like a cruel taunt.
    “Na-na-na-na-na—I had a baby and you can’t. Because you have cancer.”
    The fertility doctor puts a probe inside my vagina to check out my eggs. I am embarrassed because I have been so busy planning my surgery and chemo strategies that I forgot to shave my legs. He’s a really young-looking, Doogie Howser type of doctor, and when I see his diploma on the wall I realize that we graduated from the University of Pennsylvania the same year. Maybe he will like me better knowing that my eggs were educated at the same place he went to school? Maybe he will try harder for my eggs?
    After I wipe the pelvic probe goop off my unshaven legs, I hear the news I have been dreading. I read some articles about banking eggs—basically, it’s like putting your eggs in a safety deposit box before chemotherapy. That way, the poison won’t pollute the eggs, and in case I go into early menopause from the chemo, I’ll still have eggs put away on ice. The only problem is that in order to get the eggs to bank, they need to hyper-stimulate me with hormones, and the hormones could kick my cancer into high gear.
    “Ethically, no one would give you hormones now, Geralyn. I’m sorry. I could go in and grab one egg just before you menstruate, before you start your chemo, but you need to have surgery to get that one egg and the chance of that one egg surviving isn’t worth it. Usually we need to work with at least four eggs just to get one that takes.”
    I am heartbroken that I can’t bank my eggs. What would I do for a safety deposit box now?
    I come up with a Plan B: I will just hit pause and get treated for my cancer and then get pregnant. But it’s not that easy. When I announce my brilliant plan to my fertility doctor there is silence. It is very likely, he tells me, that I will go into early menopause from the chemo. Even worse, my cancer might return after my treatment. That would mean more chemo, and then I would definitely go into menopause if I hadn’t already.
    I try to start planning for every variation of my future, any future. I am desperate for a pair of headlights to show me I do have a future, even a glimmer of it.
    I need to know it is there.
     

 

 
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    Headlights
     
     
    I cannot stop thinking about the fact that I only have one week left with my breast.
    And I cannot lift my head off the table at my favorite French bistro because it is hitting me that I might die. Tyler and my mom brought me here to cheer me up right after we left my bone scan appointment at the radiology suite to see if my cancer has spread to other parts of my body.
    “Geralyn, honey, please lift your head up. Come on.”
    My arms are covering my head and my cheek is flat against the soft white linen tablecloth. I think it’s the white linen