The story of a personal experience of illness is not narrative medicine. But the language of the patients is important: it reveals the motivations behind the personal choices, the approach to the body, the pain and the care that would really be needed. For this week’s newsletter we propose the winner of the first prize for the “Short Stories” section of the “Woman over the lines” competition by Iosempredonna.
Narrative oncology, so doctors can help
by TIZIANA MORICONI
With a quick language and a “clinical acuity” (a quote borrowed from the motivation that accompanied the delivery of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the French writer Annie Ernaux, and which is well suited to this text), the leading author shows a glimpse of his history, his family, the medical environment. Vivid brushstrokes and, at times, a stream of consciousness. Thus the path of illness and life reveal themselves for what they are: a whole, unique.
THE BREAST HEALTH NEWSLETTER – how to subscribe
Unilateral asymmetry
by Tai Fautrero
Since 3 November 2017 I have a Single breast, that is, I have a Single breast. It’s my right breast, which, by the way, wasn’t even my favorite. The left was more responsive and sensitive, it had dark switches that ignited my desire and passion. The left nipple, then, was dynamite, always ready to ignite. It was he who had become engorged painfully blocking the breastfeeding of my only child. My left breast was a volcano in full swing and in fact a couple of years of growing existential tensions and anxieties went to clump and condense there, on the left nipple, and from there they crossed the border, infiltrated, irradiated on the breast , tucked under the armpit, these sorrows, these meannesses of mine and of the world … I call them that. Medicine calls them breast cancer, infiltrating mixed lobular breast cancer with metastatic lymph nodes.
Let’s try to spare the obvious: Cancer, if it doesn’t kill you, changes your life, which is almost always bad, but it can also be good. It’s good if you apply the marketing rules to cancer and turn the “problem into opportunity”. Here I have to thank that great genius and maître à penser of my ex, father of my son and manager of the highest level. Any problem hides a great opportunity.
My mother, as a lukewarm Catholic, played down: the Lord will not make you suffer a pain that you cannot bear. My longtime lover suggested it was a chance to get a new pair of boobs (left and right!) That never looked that good.
My friend Dante Alighieri suggested that when you happen to get lost on the best part of your life, you have to start all over again and undergo something like a hundred songs of exams, therapies, needle biopsies, interventions … you have to hit rock bottom, dream of Satan and to go back up to a Paradise, which in my imagination is located in Caprera, in Sardinia.
With so many good ideas on my side, could I browse the internet like any poor half-notch? Sure I could. I could and I did. And I discovered a New world, the United States of America, for example (but not only). Here no one proposes reconstruction because mastectomy already has such a high cost that no insurance pays to implant a rubber prosthesis on a patient who is an unknown factor regardless, for various boring reasons that I am not going to list here but on the web you can find them all.
So, in fact, I have seen and understood that the world is full of women with no boobs. Because they were eliminated, to save their lives. So I went to my surgeon, Dr. Donata, and I asked her if there was the possibility of doing a bilateral mastectomy, since her right breast was also attentive and suspicious … we might as well get rid of the problem.
Donata looked at me as if I were Marina Abramovic herself and said eh no, don’t worry, that’s not how it works. Because if not, then she doesn’t heal me well from the surgery and I’m in a hurry to get her to have chemo and radio. One thing at a time. I have to remove the nipple and all the left breast, then we put an expander underneath, then, if all goes well, we do chemo and radio and in two years (if she is still alive, she didn’t say it but I thought about it) we make her a nice reconstruction and we also fix her right breast which is small.
Surely Donata will not have expressed herself like this, because halfway through her speech I already had blurred vision and trembling legs, no Virgil near and in my head something repeating to me: “for me you go to the painful city, for me yes goes into eternal pain “. With this annoying dirge in my ears, thanks to my online searches and in spite of my boring lover who would have wanted me with fake boobs, I exclaimed.
“I reconstruct it”
Textual. Anacoluto included.
Donata didn’t understand a damn thing, but the young doctors Fragola and Vigna, who were there, reverential and mute trainees, were suddenly revived in a heartfelt prayer. Don’t say that, she is a beautiful woman, she can still have a life ahead. She will surely regret it. Look, at this moment her choice may not be the right one.
Call the husband.
He’s not my husband, but let’s call him, he’s out waiting.
What happens?
Nothing special, Dr. Donata was telling me that there is a mastectomy with lymph nodes to be done and to follow it is not known how many chemo (it will depend on the histological) and a little radio. She will also take off my nipple and breastplate. And instead of all this stuff she would like to put a plastic bag.
Ah ah
But I don’t want to put the expander, a nice scar and go. You agree, right?
Ah yes, well if that’s what you want.
Strawberry and Vigna looked at him begging, Donata was a little annoyed. We were all hungry, then that visit took place after two hours of exhausting waiting.
Get the documents.
Must sign.
I sign, I sign.
And so it was that I signed fine documents that attested that in the fullness of my faculties I refused the reconstruction.
Then I went home. There was my only son of fifteen who was waiting for me a little anxious with my only cana.
How did it go?
Fine now I’ll tell you.
The three of us lay down on the carpet in his room and started stroking the cane.
Do you know any of your friends who have a one-tit mom?
No because?
I inquired and I think the smartest thing is to do a single operation, remove this breast, which has cancer, do not do the reconstruction and stay with one breast.
That is, the right do not take it off?
No
And would you stay with One breast FOREVER?
Yes unless they also take off the right but the plan is to keep it. Doctor Donata cares a lot about her right breast.
And then you won’t have to do other operations?
No, if all goes well.
And will you heal?
I cannot guarantee it but for your birthday (in March) I promise you that I will be super punk, with a single breast and without a hair, what do you think?
Mom, do you take me for an idiot? You make it look cool but it’s going to be awful. Will you put on the wig?
I don’t think so. Do you think I don’t want fake breasts, should I wear a wig? I am as I am. Everything will be fine, in the end we will get a lot of tattoos.
Me too?
If you want it.
But why?
Because up until now I’ve been one way and then I’ll be different, I’ll change. And at the beginning everything will go very badly, things will get worse but then it will be seen, I will always be your mother like the cana, who gets old but it is always her. Or a person who loses a finger, but doesn’t actually change.
It will always be me.
With a single breast.
And with an only child.