So I put my hand up to be a guinea pig for the external probe, which normally does the labia only but could be trained straight ahead, and therefore hit the end of my vault, where the scar tissue lay. I did a lot of calm breathing and sweating as the gynaecologist worked this odd-shaped probe into me to reach the scarring in my vault. The process included me with a hand mirror checking out the white spots left behind after the lasering.
Imagine a thick circular probe that goes square and has two tongs on the end like you’d use to carefully flip tofu on a BBQ, and that’s what I got up me. I actually felt a vaginal achievement on walking out of the procedure – my adrenaline waning.
But what of the vagina at the end of all these breast cancer treatments?
I met a breast care nurse and survivor who’d received a Churchill Fellowship to study survivorship issues in America. She put me on to drinking a capful of apple cider vinegar in water every day. She too noticed, after treatments for breast and gynaecological cancer and being on Arimidex, that she didn’t smell the same. Her pH was out. Mine too. No longer.
The rabbit hole of sexual intimacy post–aggressive cancer treatments was and generally is not discussed by medical professionals advising you, the patient, on everything that will keep you alive. As survivorship increases, wonderfully, so too will the numbers of women (young to old) living with cancer as a chronic disease or with no sign of disease. This leaves a gap of care for those who want to live well post-cancer.
In my undergraduate study, my lecturer in philosophical psychology described the female orgasm and how the cervix pulsed in and out of the vaginal canal like a chicken picking up seeds (read sperm) off the ground. Chicken-beak analogy aside, orgasm quality is reduced, quite a bit, by having your cervix removed. No one talked about this. I couldn’t find it in medical literature, or in breast cancer stories. Why is the vagina and women’s sexual use of it so omitted? If a man’s testicle is removed or his penis operated on, there’d be a lot of conversation about sexual function. Not so for women. Yes, our sexual organs are ‘hidden’ from view, but does it go deeper than this?
Women’s sexual desire isn’t as important perhaps, or rather talking about women and their own desire, separate from men’s desire for them, is still not de rigueur?
But for all the stretching and lube and lasering, whether you maintain your pH or put a READY silicone capsule inside yourself for increased lubrication, or all of the above: ultimately, you are not the same.
Hope: can you learn to live well in conversation with death?
O spare me, that I may discover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.
Psalm 39:13 (KJV)
I walked into Dr Theile’s office on a brisk July morning with no nipples, and an hour and a half later I had some. They were not giving any peekaboo action through my shirt yet, of course – when I peered down my top all I saw was two 20-centimetre blood stains under waterproof dressings. The dressings stayed on a week.
I opted to have the nipple ruffles performed under local anaesthetic, to avoid a general anaesthetic and hospital stay. It was painless, and took the length of a good lunch with friends. I didn’t have to enter the hospital system and more importantly have my brain and body shut down for a minor surgical procedure. No nausea and no pea-souper.
While I was on the operating table, Dr Theile, his nurse and I talked about Charlie Teo – a renowned (some say notorious) Australian neurosurgeon. I’d just read Life in His Hands, about Dr Teo’s treatment of a young pianist with a hemangiopericytoma brain tumour. These tumours originate in membrane covering the brain tissue and are classed as malignant because the recurrence rate is high and they grow fast. They mostly occur in young men.
My plastic surgeon and Dr Teo met as registrars in Queensland. Dr Teo had sat in a coffee room in full bike leathers, with a thumping 1000-cc motorbike parked outside, after riding up from Sydney. Dr Theile liked his openness and thought him a genuinely nice guy.
According to some neurosurgeons Charlie Teo operated on patients others classed as inoperable. Some of his surgeries resulted in quicker deaths and unpleasant final days before the brain tumour took its toll. My discussion with Dr Theile that day was about hope. Dr Teo provided hope when others didn’t, even if the surgery was so risky the person’s life might end in the operating theatre.
If you have a doctor willing to risk a procedure that might give you longer on the earth, and you’re fully briefed on the consequences if the operation fails, then having the choice to hope, beyond medical doubts, is worthy in my eyes.
American haematologist-oncologist and author Dr Jerome Groopman put it like this:
My place is to provide choice and understanding. To hope under the most extreme circumstances is an act of defiance … that permits a person to live his life on his own terms. It is part of the human spirit to endure and give a miracle a chance to happen.
Dr Groopman said that what was once a miraculous turnaround from likely death is now more commonplace. The advancements in chemotherapy treatments have provided hope in areas previously thought hopeless.
The reason I was lighter and happier when I woke up without my breasts was that hope had flooded back into my room. I finally dared to think I might survive
