Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy Read Online Free PDF Page B

tablecloth that is triggering my terror: It is reminding me of the white hallways of the hospital that I just left.
    “Please, please, please lift your head up. Everything is going to be okay.”
    My mom sounds so desperate as she asks my favorite waitress to bring me a glass of champagne. I know my mom and Tyler are trying to get my mind off the cancer but it isn’t working. They have both been with me at all these horrible consults and we all need a change of scenery. It is backfiring. At first they were laughing at me when I put my head down, but now that it’s been over twenty minutes with my head down they have stopped laughing. They are panicking and don’t know what to do.
    I am panicking, too. It is a strange countdown, knowing that a week from now I will be in the hospital having my breast cut off of me. The panic hits me at inconvenient moments like this one when I realize that I’m a cancer patient now.
    I definitely do not belong in the world of soup of the day, what should I wear today, news of the day. When the waitress comes back with my champagne I start to sob, and my back is moving up and down, and my head is still down on the table. I hear muffled voices, the waitresses are starting to whisper about the meltdown at table six, and the other chic patrons must be beginning to notice that I will not lift up my head because my mom and Tyler are pleading with me, begging me.
    “Geralyn, it’s not so bad. It seems like the cancer hasn’t spread—we should be relieved.”
    I’m glad I took philosophy courses in college because I realize that I must be having an existential crisis. I am not part of this world anymore. I always cared what people thought of me and in the past I would have been too self-conscious to lose it in this tiny tony place, but in the past I didn’t have cancer. I should smell the chocolate soufflé in the air and the warm summer breeze wafting through the large open doors, but all I can smell is the scary smell of the radiology suite. Instead of quiche I smell the alcohol I was swabbed with before the nurse put the rubber band on my arm to make my vein jump for the shot that injected the contrast dye. Instead of the baguettes the waitress has just put down on the table, I still smell the stench of disappointment in the air.
    All I want to do is keep my head on the table and have a one-woman pity party because that visit to the radiology suite has kept me in that world of dying. I can’t switch the channel in my mind to be here in the restaurant. I am still encapsulated in some huge Star Wars machine. I am reliving that hour in the bone scan.
    When the technician asked me if I was claustrophobic right before he put me into the huge machine, it made me think about all the things that I’m really scared of now that I have cancer. He dimmed the lights and I considered telling him that I am actually scared of the dark or pretending I’m a claustrophobic so I could get out of this thing. Because I am terrified I can’t handle more bad news. I’m scared of dying before I turn thirty.
    The lab technician looked so serious that he was making me even more scared. Why couldn’t he just smile—would it kill him?
    When the machine started to rumble I was embarrassed to remember the things that used to scare me:
    Cockroaches.
    Wearing no makeup and running into an old boyfriend who broke my heart.
    Algebra.
    Having to ride from the lobby up to the tenth floor alone with Barbara Walters at work—how do I make conversation for ten straight floors?
    Having to tell my doorman that I forgot my key to my apartment again and could I borrow the secret key just one more time?
    The dark (I always sleep with a nightlight on).
    Now I am just scared that my cancer has spread.
    I am scared they will tell me they can’t cure me and that I only have months to live.
    I am scared they will discover that the pain in my neck is actually a huge tumor and not a pulled muscle from trying to look cool at the