At 3:10pm I was a healthy, carefree 26-year-old. And around 4:10pm I wasn’t.
One week ago…
“Do you see lines, or at least that one line? Can’t we Botox that?” I lift my chin and point to my throat and say with excitement!
“The imaginary lines, right?” She laughs. “You’re not getting old, I promise.”
The large mirror is reflecting a woman with green eyes staring out from a thick, white, gooey facial mask. Ahem, me. I’ve seen the same eyes behind various masks for the last ten years, but the woman hiding underneath has changed drastically. From where I call home, to where I work, to my beau, to my weight, to my friendships, and even to my goals and desires. I love how even when our ages chance numbers, our noses and ears grow, our skin sags and smile lines frame our face, our eyes stay the same.
Tanisha has been the skin-care solution, a savior to every woman’s blemish or sunburn in my family. I began visiting her warm office that always smells of sweet citrus when I was thirteen and teenage acne was galvanizing my face. Pre-emptive was my motivator. Tanning beds were for quitters. I was determined to be the hot and sexy chica, well forever. I was frustrated because I spotted some freckles under my clavicle bone and sunspots on a twenty-something were gross. I was a fan of micro-derm… eye crèmes, latisse.
She places cool cucumber slices over my eyes. She asks, “So what are you doing for Christmas?”
“We’re actually going to the Caribbean. Maybe go scuba diving; my family hasn’t done a vacation in years. I’m excited for the ocean breeze and dolphin watching. I’m headed to go swimsuit shopping tomorrow.” I said with a grin.
I was counting down the days until we could abandon reality as the five of us and disappear into the British Islands. It had been a hell of a few years and I was ready to laugh and play monopoly with my mom, dad, little brother and sister. Adulthood hasn’t turned into strangers, but communication now consisted of phone calls and organized dinners. I missed wholesome spontaneity of the nuclear family.
Last week my biggest problems included finding a swimsuit and finishing a term paper. And I thought my life was over when I noticed a solitary crinkle above my nose. This week I’m trying to find specialists at Mayo. And I’d give anything for a few wrinkles.
Now….
It’s 7:41pm in Denver. It’s 9:41pm in New York. I’m in the first row of a plane and we’re flying somewhere over Kansas, but the clouds block any signs of life below. I know there are Moms and Dads, young couples, friends pushing shopping carts through the grocery store picking out that special Turkey. There are kids doing homework, dogs being brushed, people falling in love. However the signs of life inside of the airplane are prevalent and very loud. There is a woman knitting a blanket with the red yarn with silver threads woven in. There is a woman feeding twin babies, switching breasts every thirty or so minutes. A man eating some sort of chicken salad. And Andrew is sitting next to me engrossed in his Travel & Leisure. And I sit here with my headphones keeping me company, trying to figure out how to describe the event that unfolded a few hours ago.
After we got the phone call on Friday I walked into his office armed with optimism. In theory I relished the image of me smiling and beaming, embracing the idea of surgery. I’d be a rock star. But once I felt the cold chill and heard the hum of the air conditioners, and then saw the man in a white jacket holding a clipboard, the image of me being a badass disappeared.
I’m shivering. Why do doctors always keep their offices so freaking chilly? I guess it’s a more conducive environment to misery. There is no possible chance of feeling cozy on metal chairs with plastic cushions.
Andrew then turned to me and kissed my nose softly, “You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”
“I hope you’re not going anywhere.” I say quietly.
The surgeon walks back into the room handing us several sheets of papers, they’re typed with complicated terms and directions. There are orders and names of specialists. Titles under the specialists include “limb preservation”. His white jacket giving him the feeling of authority, I’m safer when he is near me. I always feel safer in churches and hospitals.
He turns to me and then turns to Andrew and then turns back to me, “This isn’t something that is an emergency, but let’s get this taken care of in the next week or two.” He says sincerely.
“So it’s like a really bad cyst?” I say. Trying to better understand what’s going on.
“No, actually this is a tumor.” He says.
“But it’s benign, right?”
“I don’t want to call it that. These quickly can become malignant, so I think it’s best to operate sooner rather than later. The specialists can better answer that specific question.”
Andrew interjects my lame questions with, “Can you explain the surgery to us?” he asks.
I squirm.
“Do you see the biopsy area?” He lightly touches the bandage under my clavicle, where there are ugly black stitches and gauze. It’s difficult to miss.
“We’ll remove the skin around that entire area and then we’ll cut out the tissue up until the fascia, and then we’ll scrape the fascia for any remaining cells. And then we’ll also cut a 3-5cenimeter margin around the affected area.”
“And then will they put her skin back on that area?” He asks.
I’m silently pleading for the conversation to stop. I need a break. I need a soda. I need a week. “Actually, no. It is important that her skin is permanently removed in that area; that’s why we’ll do skin-graphing.”
“What skin will you use?” He asks.
The surgeon pats his own thigh. “The donor skin will come from her leg.”
“And then that is sewn into the area?”
“Precisely. And we’ll actually sew in a protective layer for two weeks while we wait to see if the body accepts the graph. The patch will be around 4x4 inches in total and then there will be about a ¼ indention. And obviously there will be discoloration.”
I pipe up, “Isn’t there a way that they can do a filler or something to even the skin out?”
He looks at me with gentle eyes, “I’m afraid not. The skin will be very thin and fragile area and they’ll need to be paying very close attention to the area to make sure the tumor doesn’t come back.”
Andrew interrupts, clearly not concerned with the aesthetic issues, “What will be the time in the hospital, the recovery, etc…”
Their voices become fuzzy and I’m caught in a hazy realization that what they’re talking about isn’t skin, it’s her skin, and her is me. This isn’t just a conversation. They’re talking about a procedure. And there isn’t an option. I like my choices. It’s one of the reasons I dig being American.
I walked into this office several weeks ago with a bump on my chest. It’s a bump that a million doctors have always said, “it’s a fluid-filled cyst. It’s nothing to worry about.” Every single dermatologist, family practice, nurse said, “leave it alone.”
But whenever I put lotion on and felt the raised area I would shudder. I didn’t like it. So I visited a plastic surgeon, “Do you see this bump?”
“Yes.”
“I want it out. I know that it isn’t necessary and insurance won’t cover it, but I think it’s just, I just want it out.”
“It’s going to leave a very visible scar. Are you okay with that?”
I went home and slept on it. I figured a scar was worth the peace of mind. I called the next morning to schedule the appointment. When I arrived at the office several days ago to get prickled with local and a few milliliters lighter, the surgeon said, “I think it’s a good idea for us to send this to a pathologist, just in case.”
“Sure.” His suggestion didn’t even register.
He started off by numbing my chest with reassuring comments about how it would only take a few minutes. But fifteen or twenty minutes into the procedure his eyes were incredibly focused, and his voice wasn’t one of reassurance, in fact he was silent until he asked his nurse to, “We are actually taking two samples. Can you label the second sample? And then let’s sew her up.”
The word sample is when I realized this wasn’t a stubborn pore, or scar tissue.
“Okay Auna, well this is much larger than I suspected, however we got enough of a biopsy for the pathologist.”
And then on Friday night we were packing for Vail and received a phone call that the made the insomnia come back. It made the stupid stuff in life more stupid.
They both turned to me. What am I supposed to say? It’s requiring every iota of effort to keep the dam in place, to prevent the landslide of tears that will submerge my mascara if I’m not careful.
So I fake the biggest, toothiest smile I can muster, “Sounds great. Thank you for all this information. I will start making these phone calls right away.”
Their expressions are startled. But they don’t understand why I need out. I need fresh air. The cold office that smells of sterile gloves and iv’s are all too familiar. I’ve been here before. I had staph infection that nearly stole my life and my leg five years ago. I got it. I was an expert in things not normal.
I feel shallow now. When a woman is standing in line at Nordstrom and there is something weird or wrong with her face or neck, I notice. Who doesn’t? We’re all used to seeing the norm and so when something atypical arrives it takes a few seconds to adjust, to calculate; to observe.
I used to feel bad for myself because I had a massive dent in my hip, but now I’d take a dent in the other hip than an indention in my chest. It will be ugly and it won’t go away, or get better. This is one of those forever things. I don’t want to be ugly; I don’t want to be abnormal. I want to be pretty when I dress up and get fancy. I don’t want to be the one girl who people can’t figure out what’s wrong with her chest.
But the second thing is more… there is a tumor growing next to my heart. It sits under my skin, slowly snaking around the muscle tissue, creeping near my arms and my throat. It’s foreign, it’s uninvited and yet, it stays. I don’t know how or why this tumor found residence in my chest, but for some reason it did. I want to run away from it, I want it to disappear, but tumors don’t work like that. They get comfortable, they’re bossy, they’re insensitive; they cause pain and anguish and scar people’s lives.
And I guess I’m no exception.
I’m supposed to be enjoying a week with my boyfriend’s family. Tomorrow I’m supposed to be spending the night in Manhattan catching up with my dearest friends. And now, we’re trying to schedule an MRI over Thanksgiving. I can kiss the Caribbean goodbye, no working out, golf, skiing, etc.. For a while.
And so final question is… I so desperately want to be the optimistic person shielding shallow fears with a grateful attitude, but I can’t shake it. The bible says that God hands us troubles because he loves us. In so many ways, I have to agree. Usually our success stories impress others, we leverage ourselves farther in the great ladder of life, but success doesn’t teach us to love ourselves, it’s survival that puts up that test.
It’s when we have no choice, but to endure. And then I get grateful. It could be so much worse, I could be so much sicker, less fortunate, without insurance and so on… So maybe this will give me a different reason to look in the mirror and smile, not because my eyes are green or I can’t find any lines, but because there will be a reminder that I endured.
