The pain post-surgery was minimal. An oddity of my new false breasts was that I could make them go up and down. I figured if muscle was used to secure my silicone implants then I should be able to flex my pecs. Once after a shower I stood in front of the mirror and flexed one then the other: rat ta tat tat. They looked like breasts but beneath I was She Robot.
The traumas of my 30s dissolved my selfhood until ‘I’ became a quilt pieced together by traumatic experiences, memories and various educations. If someone had asked me to describe what I did or who I was I’d have to wrap the quilted self around my shoulders and read off the patches. Well, I did this two years ago, and that seven years ago … so I guess I’m a …
There’d been an accumulation of depersonalising experiences: my body changing under the knife and facing cancer, and what that meant for my living a possibly shortened life. What I’d planned was no longer going to happen; what lay ahead was most definitely unknown. What was in front of me was, was … what? At this point I was blinking in the new dawn of being cancer free. I had a changeling body, from adolescent to woman, but also a changeling mind. My identity appeared fluid.
Hair gave character; you changed it and people drew different conclusions about you. My long locks feminised me. I had done a lot of dancing and outdoor adventuring in my life and my arm muscles (from climbing) were prominent. I used to feel my body had a natural tendency towards the masculine. This belief was inflated by my diagnosis of polycystic ovaries, but my long, feminine locks counteracted the perception I had of myself.
Before chemotherapy started I got a short do and loved the younger-looking self in the mirror. When I went bald I joined the cancer community and became one of them. With no hair on my head, up my nose, and little left on my eyebrows and eyelashes, I was desexualised.
When the spiky beginnings of my hair appeared after chemotherapy, I noticed a change in how people saw me. We’d had our first fun time together as a family on the victory holiday in New Zealand.
We’d driven a Happy Camper, their basic model with a small kitchenette and seats that converted to bedding. We hung Celso’s feeding formula bag off a hook, which we set up on a window latch.
My son has Down syndrome, the woman had told us on our arrival at the oversize luggage area to collect the backpack with Celso’s formula bags. She was in her 50s with faded blonde hair and an open face. I think it’s great you continuing to travel as a family, she said, that’s important. She waved us off with a broad smile.
We’d packed enough formula to last a fortnight, with extras in case something happened, plus an extra kangaroo feeding pump. This pump was kept charging off the camper’s engine battery, while the other was in use. Australia has a reciprocal health care agreement with New Zealand so we knew if Celso became ill or his peg got pulled out we could rush to a nearby hospital.
Celso had had a peg put in as his not eating appeared semi-permanent. The temporary nasogastric tube we’d been using to keep him alive, hoping he’d pick up eating and drinking, was no longer viable. He pulled it out too often and, really, enough was enough for him after having it taped to his face for the first 18 months of his life. It was unlikely to come out but it had happened once, soon after the peg had been inserted. We’d gone for a day out to the Botanic Gardens, as he loved the ponds with their large goldfish. When I put him back into his front-facing car seat, the temporary thick tube, which stays in until the site heals and toughens into a large version of an ear piercing, got stuck on the seat belt unbeknownst to me. I put him in, feeling some resistance but thinking it was just clothing tucked in somewhere. The tube ripped out, his stomach contents immediately oozing out of the hole.
Sick and appalled at what I’d done, I shoved two nappies over the site to absorb and slow down the seeping formula and rushed to the Children’s Hospital. It’s okay, darling, I yammered at Celso over my shoulder. It’s okay. I’m so sorry, honey. Mummy didn’t know it was stuck in the seat belt. We’ll get it fixed now. Don’t worry.
They got us straight into the triage nurse’s observation room and she put it back in. The skin hadn’t ripped, nor had the newly made surgical hole closed up. Throughout the hours waiting in the hospital to see if the new insert took, Celso looked around and made use of the room around him to have fun. He does this. He examined the baby weigher with its scooped sides, placing his weight on it to see the numbers changing, and giggled; he read the glary pictures of giraffes and birds on the walls around him for meaning.
In the New Zealand airport, I stood in the duty-free line with a packet of cigars for a family member. A burly man with a shaved head behind the counter said, I love your haircut, it’s great seeing women with short hair. I blanched, amazed that anyone found my buzz cut appealing. I explained in a hurried fashion that the decision for short hair wasn’t really mine and that, no, I didn’t get cancer from smoking, despite the cigars in my hand.
In the same period of regrowing my hair I took my son into the wading pool at
