The Inevitable....

When the news leaked to my friends, most looked at me with pity, which irritated me to the moon. God, how I hate that insincere sad look as they tried to look like they care when they really didn't. Some were really sympathetic, but for the wrong reasons. They might as well have balloons on top of their heads that say "Pity her not having any breast after this" or "The hubby will sure wander off soon". What they don't understand is, I didn't have any weird attachment to my breasts as they were never a source of self-esteem. I wasn't one to flaunt my cleavage, or wear tight fitting mini t-shirts to show off the C cups. In fact, when I first got them, they were an embarrassment, a nuisance I'd rather do without. For the first two years, I wore sweathers at midday, despite the 32 degrees Celcius.

Anyway, living with cancer inside you is like having a time bomb waiting to explode. Each day, a little of its toxicity leaks into your blood stream and when enough has circulated, either through the lympathic system or the vascular system, you turn into a mutant. Not nice ones like in Mutant X, but gory ones that everybody is eager to terminate.

So I quickly asked Ms Aina when could I get rid of this damnation and she looked relieved that I was so eger to do this. I imagined she came across enough patients who wanted delay so they could visit some shamans in some remote area of Kelantan who could miraculously transfer the cancerous cells to chickens or white breads. Or maybe that herbal tonic so widely advertised in tabloids would help, because they have pictures to prove.

Not yours truly though. So the surgery was scheduled a week after the 10th March, because I had to see the Gynae first to ensure that Qays, that's the baby I'm carrying now, was just as ready for the surgery, which he was. Then I had to go and see the Lung Specialist, to get a lung function test done because my asthma got pretty bad. She gladly diagnosed me with bronchial asthma and put me on the preventer and reliever. Next I had to see the Anesthetist who assessed the reports done by the lung specialist and gynea and decided on the proper GA.

I had never been so divided in my entire life. I was told that the GA could trigger an abortion. The Anesthetist couldn't make that clearer, and they made me sign forms for that. But the Gynea was confident that everything would go well, telling me that they see this all the time. I remembered thinking, as I was laid down on the operating table and all sorts of lines were connected to my hands and back, whether I should just bail out. As the Anesthetist injected the drugs that would put me to sleep into one of the lines, I screamed inside for everything to stop because the risk of losing the baby was suddenly too much to handle. The moment I was awakened from the GA, the first thing that I did was to grab my tummy to see if Qays was still there, and he was. Thank God!!

Unlike the first mastectomy in 2004, I didn't wake up puking green, bitter liquid. It was just like waking up from a deep sleep, and I could drink and eat soon after. But the recovery was worse, with soreness enveloping my entire left torso. But the thought of my daughter Qistina brought the best in me, and by the time dinner was served I could hold my left hand high above my head. Dr. Wilson chose just that momemnt to check on me and he was impressed, but probably concerned a bit because he quickly offered me painkillers, which I galantly refused. See, for this surgery, I didn't take painkillers at all. NOT ONE!

Later a nurse came and handed me a piece of paper and a pencil, for me to jot down the time each contraction occurs.
"What contractions?" I asked.
"Well, you baby of course", she calmly replied.
"Why? I don't feel any".
"Really? Because there were contractions during the op", she explained.
My heart almost stopped. I almost lost my baby. The next 48 hours was hell on earth. The pain was forgotten. I kept obsessing about the other life inside of me, about this piece of heaven that I carry inside my uterus. He was as strong as I was. We both survived the surgery.

Thank God.

These are pictures of the bath foam that they told me to rub my body with prio

r to surgery, the shaver to shave unwanted hair in the area concerned and the ceiling that I stared at on long lonely nights....