I lost my breast but not everything else!
By Siti Marlina Zainal (19 Mar 2006)

When a solid lump made its way into the lower outer quadrant of my right breast at the age of 27, I wasn’t worried. However, 3 months after I turned 28, I was told I had breast cancer.

At the hospital I was immediately ushered into room 9. I had wondered why only a few people were called into that room. Well, it turned out to be the condemned room. It was where your cosy world shattered into tiny little pieces. “It’s cancer” the doctor said as his eyes rested guiltily on my long hair tied into a pony tail. This was exactly the moment the course of my life detoured from the path I envisioned it to go. I had a good, comfortable job and was in the final semester of my master’s degree. I was supposed to make lots of money, travel all over the world and write deep, meaningful poetry that would express my wonder on the workings of the world. I was supposed to publish volumes and volumes of short stories inspired by the people I meet on my adventures. In a few months, I was supposed to be married to the man I loved. These did not happen then however. What did happen though were countless visits to the hospital and long stays at the oncology ward.

I remembered my father being shocked when I told him. I had never seen him so afraid. Then the coping mechanism crept in and he said the doctors must be wrong. It was difficult seeing him struggle to digest this painful truth and I could feel tears welling in my eyes. I blinked them away. I heard somewhere that when someone in the family had cancer, the rest of the family suffered too. I had read enough true accounts to know that the anguish faced by family members could break them apart so I was determined not to let that happen to my family. My mother remained calm, as did my elder sister, Julie, and my brother, Zul. My younger sister, Eida, was more sympathetic but she took the cue from me, and thinking that I was calmly accepting this, she relaxed too. I had prepared for the worst, yet I cried my eyes out when the biopsy result was confirmed. I didn’t want my family to worry but when they made little fuss, I felt like they didn’t care. I was a paradoxical wreck, but to the untrained eyes I was calm, controlled and tough as an ox.

To my fiancé however, I talked about it all - my fear, my anger, my frustration, and my chances of survival. And he sat there beside me day after day, listening to my quivering voice, holding my hands tight, and wiping away the tears that would not stop falling. I asked him about a million times if he would still love me if I had only one breast and I told him about a million times that I would release him of all past promises if the prognosis was not in my favour. He had to convince me over and over again that he was in love with me, not my breasts. I pretended to understand, but I really didn’t. I contemplated letting him go because even if I survived this time, I would always have to live in fear of a recurrence. I might even have to forget about having children as my body would be loaded with oestrogen, the breast cancer culprit, during pregnancy. Mie could have a better family package than the one I could ever offer. However, he was my pillar of strength, and I was too much of a coward to stand alone just yet.

A few days before the surgery, I stood straight in front of my new dresser. I slipped off my blouse and brassier and took a very good look at my diseased breast. Here was a perky, virgin breast, which was merely 28 years old, heading for an early demise. It had yet to serve its purpose as an amazing sexual tool that would drive my husband crazy and feed my children until they are big and healthy. None of these would ever happen. ‘In less than a week’, I thought, ‘that part of me will be dead’. Refused to be engulfed in constant frustration and discontentment, I spent a few minutes everyday bidding farewell to my breast, patting and caressing its soft texture while trying very hard to ignore the palpable time bomb that was nestling comfortably underneath the soft tissues. I also muttered sad goodbyes in preparation for the day it would actually leave the rest of my body and no longer be a part of the person I was. I remembered wishing I had a Polaroid.

Two days after I was discharged from hospital, I was busy making cookies and cakes for Hari Raya. Later I continued with more chemotherapy sessions. As before, when I started losing my hair, Mie shaved off his too. Looking at his bald head and grinning face as he teased me that I resembled that cool lady in the Chinese movie Shaolin Soccer, I fell in love with him all over again. In March 2005, I completed treatment and the doctors declared that the cancer was in remission. So on 4th September 2005, Mie and I tied the knot. It was one of the happiest days of our lives.

Passing me on the street, nobody could tell that I almost died. Nobody would have guessed that merely months before I was lying on the cold hospital stretcher with a huge noisy machine rotating around my body shooting radiation to combat the remaining cancer cells. With my prosthesis on, I look like any other young woman. But once I take off my clothes, reality strikes home. There in place of my right breast is an obvious scar, curving downwards, dark red in colour, running across my mutilated chest to end under my armpit - all 19cm of it.
 

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