Don't Parton Me

"Lures slung around her neck," wrote Germaine Greer of the human mammary gland. Anthropologist Marvin Harris wrote more or less the same thing, speculating that the human female has larger breasts than other primates because human males, preoccupied with cave paintings and interesting piles of dung, won't man up for just any ordinary pair. Big boobs are the two-by-fours of human reproduction.

Or not. I really have no opinion on how the human breast got to be so large. I just know that for many of us, the size is over and above the demands of mere lactation and pleasurable sensation.

I knew that at the start of this breast cancer journey,that I would probably have one, maybe two revelations that would come as a complete surprise. The nature of my revelation begins some six years ago, after my return from a spectacular vacation in England and Wales. On the first day back, I made the as-it-turns-out helpful mistake of stepping on the scales. The dial whizzed up to an astonishing 177lbs. On that 21-day holiday, there had been much feasting, many steak-and-kidney pies consumed with many pints of bitter. Get me going and I can strap on five imperial pints of Wadworth's 6X before the night is out.

So, not too surprisingly, I'd gained a pound every three days while on that marvelous trip. This new peak in weight was the crowning moment of a long march towards obesity that had begun when I'd returned to work after the birth of my daughter some seven years before. Stressed and unable to exercise, I'd packed on pound after unhappy pound. Jeans got too tight and then were discarded entirely in favor of nice, roomy chinos. To this day, I keep one dress from this period, The Tarp, as a chastening reminder of the whole process, a process that often had me looking in the mirror, and wondering where I went. I recognized the face, but nothing else seemed to belong to me.

But thanks to a kind spouse and a benevolent employer I returned from England, ready to go part-time. Seeing those unfamiliar numbers on the scales, I shelved plans to paint the house in my spare time and decided instead to get into shape again. I'd been a runner in my twenties and thirties. Where had that girl gone? As it turns out, I'm not cursed with a particularly fat-prone metabolism. All I needed was time on the bike. Within a few months, I'd shed the first 30 of the 47 pounds I needed to lose.

But nature is cruel. I lost weight from my face, my hands, my ankles, my fingers (I still wonder exactly where that first wedding ring slipped off, never to be found again). I even lost weight in a few places that clearly needed it, from a bum that, as David Sedaris' father would have said, was large enough to land a chopper on. But things weren't so happy in the upper hemisphere. True, I wouldn't have to buy my bras at Wal-Mart anymore, but neither did I dare attempt naked jumping jacks, lest I break my jaw. My knees were getting a break and were very thankful for it, but my upper spine, already curved from scoliosis, wasn't happy at all.

It never occurred to me that there were any options in dealing with the largely undiminished boob fat. I figured if I ever lost that last 17 pounds, my boobs would become something my spine was built for. Why I would have thought this is unclear, because I'd been buxom if not downright Partonesque ever since my teens. But, determined, I trained very hard for the Livestrong bike ride one year. I lost another ten pounds and was intrigued to note, again, how little came off the chest area. Just cursed, I thought. The very idea of a surgical reduction struck me as the sort of bourgeois self-indulgence that would get me hung when the revolution came. I didn't even consider it.

And now we return to that revelation that came with being diagnosed with breast cancer, be it stage zero or one. When I realized that I would have to undergo a mastectomy, I consoled myself with thoughts of a return to a perky pair. I didn't ever consider that I might just feel better with some of the weight gone. Even with the differential weight on one side, I feel stronger, less jiggly and ridiculous. At least on one side! Sure, I hate the scar. I hate the loss of nerve endings and I loathe the unnatural numbness that I suspect will always be there. I would never trade the healthy skin and nerve endings in the good boob for the lifeless concavity on the other side.

But in losing that one vat of jelly, I now glimpse, in those few hours of the day when I don't have The Blob stuffed in my bra, what it would be like to be normally proportioned. If you don't believe how much I'm looking forward to a further reduction, walk around with a five pound weight for a whole day, then walk around for an hour without it. You'll never go back.

If I could talk to that 49-year-old woman who'd recently done herself proud in the Livestrong ride, who was almost at her ideal weight but who still had to carry those swaying jugs around, I'd shout at her: "Get a reduction! Nature has done you no favors!" Big boobs may have been good for the species eons ago, but since the future of the species seems assured, perhaps now we could worry about what a bother these pockets of excessive flab really are.

(Though, thinking back on it, having a reduction just as I turned 50 may not have worked out. For my 50th birthday, my husband took us on another trip to England. I gained ten pounds in two weeks.)

I'm still awaiting pathology. I still don't know if radiation is in my future, or even worse, tho this seems unlikely. But I do know that more fat is coming off, with the help of a diet and a knife. I'll worry about the revolution later.

Which will arrive at about the same time I get around to painting the house.