Page 154 - She's One Crazy Lady!

“Well, I wa“
told me that everyone at Albany House would be there for me whilst I was on chemotherapy, and I wasn’t to hesitate to ring them or go in for a chat if there were problems. Similarly, Jan had told me the same, that everyone in the Chemo Department would be there for me – at any time. These lovely gestures were really appreciated and comforting but still thoughts like, ‘How bad will I be?’ went through my mind.
Going to have a prosthesis fitted at Kettering, in a little room where I sat next to a pile of prosthetic legs, was an absolute hoot! I hadn’t worn a bra in months and was told to bring one with me. I thought of my bosom pal – Margaret ’86. ‘Betty’ introduced herself. (‘Betty Boob’ I mentally called her):
sa 38b so probably a 19a?” I was joking, as with only one boob, I didn’t know what
size I w”
as.
“What size are you dear?” Betty was very motherly.
“Well, I was a 38b so probably a 19a?” I was joking, as with only one boob, I didn’t know what size I was.
Betty rummaged round in her over-stocked cupboard, took down a box and opened it to reveal the biggest prosthetic boob imaginable. I swallowed. “Is that really for me? Surely not!” and looking down at my real boob thought, “No way am I that big!”.
Betty took the prosthesis out the box and had it in her hands. It really was huge and had extension like side flaps. I couldn’t help it and exclaimed my thoughts.
Very seriously, she said, “Oh, you’d be surprised just how much they take away dear.” and proceeded to, not very successfully, fit it inside my bra – me having already made my mind up that if this was it, there was no way I would be wearing it.
Suddenly Betty stopped and smiled. She had sussed me out and was obviously having a joke with me. She put the huge one down and took another box from the cupboard.
“Ah, this is more like it!” We laughed as she fitted a much smaller one snugly into my bra. I had two boobs again but the foreign body on one side felt just that – foreign, and thoughts of Mr Stewart telling me that I could possibly have a reconstruction played about in my head – and stayed – not confident that my new prosthetic friend and I would get on.
Next stop was the hairdressers where I asked my hairdresser (not Tanya at that time) to give me a very close cut, explaining why. The poor girl was very nervous, saying this was the first time she had been asked to do this, asking me if I was really sure. Yes, I was, thinking I didn’t want big clumps of hair coming out and this way there would be less to come out and having short hair anyway, people wouldn’t notice as much.
Finally, it was the wig department at Northampton Hospital, and like the prosthesis room at Kettering, Lynne was working from a very small broom cupboard, just off the Talbot Butler Ward, the ‘Cancer Ward’ as it was known, whose shelves were packed with boxes of wigs. Lynne was lovely and obviously sensed my reluctance to have one, my hesitation and my nervousness – she’d seen all this before. She studied my face and warmly commented that I would look lovely bald and good enough to go without wearing one. No, I wouldn’t. A wig would be bad enough,
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