The other side of defence.

‘Ivewrittenabookandyoureinit,’ I clumsily exhaled in a single, drawling syllable to Smiley Surgeon. ‘I mean, not by name. You’re not in it by name.’ (I thought best not to reveal my pet name for him at this stage. He can discover that himself, once I’ve taken my advance and emigrated to Hawaii.) ‘I haven’t mentioned any medical staff by name,’ I continued, awkwardly. ‘But it’s a book about this whole experience, you see. It’s a book about all of this,’ I went on, gesturing overanimatedly with open arms, as though I were a butler introducing him to a feast at a palatial dining table. ‘And so I’ve had to mention the people who’ve helped me through it, because they’re integral to the story.’

I realised I hadn’t yet looked him in the eye, and quickly met his gaze with, ‘But it’s all good stuff! Very good. Really very good. Of course it is; it’s all true.’ I forced myself to stop talking.

‘Well, wow, that’s wonderful,’ he said, obviously entertained by my clumsiness. ‘When will it be out?’

‘April. End of April,’ I beamed, catching sight of P beside me, sitting relaxed in his tub chair, smirking like a front-row punter at a comedy club.

‘And who’s publishing it?’

‘Arrow at Random House,’ I answered, simultaneously shooting P a stop-finding-this-so-entertaining look.

‘Oh!’ said Surprised Surgeon. ‘Random House! They’re big!’

‘Um, yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose they are.’

For a split second, I took offence. ‘What, did you think I’d be publishing it myself like some kind of Mel C solo album?’ I thought, mildly hurt by his surprise. But then, I realised, of course he was surprised. Smiley Surgeon is one of the few people in my stratosphere who doesn’t know about this blog – who still doesn’t know about this blog – so, as far as he was concerned, I was just some part-time branded content editor who figured she could sell books, like a call-centre worker at an X Factor audition proclaiming to be the new Mariah Carey.

The door handle turned, and we craned our necks to watch a cheery Always Right Cancer Nurse (who’s Always Right Breast Nurse in the book, just to confuse matters) and her equally cheery sidekick, Other Always Right Cancer Nurse pull up chairs to P’s right, each giving him a pat on the shoulder as they did.

‘Lisa’s written a book!’ exclaimed Smiley Surgeon. ‘And Random House are publishing it!’ (Despite his happy demeanour, Smiley Surgeon isn’t a man to often warrant exclamation marks at the end of his dialogue, but in this case I assure you they’re necessary.)

‘Ooh!’ they both chirped, as I wondered whether Other Always Right Cancer Nurse might take offence at not being a character in The C Word. ‘Will you send us a copy?’ asked Always Right Cancer Nurse The First.

‘Oh yes, you must,’ interrupted Smiley Surgeon. ‘Signed, please.’

‘Haha!’ I giggled, trying to be coy but secretly lapping up their interest. ‘Well, if you’re happy for me to devalue it with my scrawl, that’s your call,’ I said, trotting out my now-standard line. ‘But yes, I’ll make sure you have one as soon as I do.’

There was a reason for my consultation other than breaking the book news, of course. As far as Smiley Surgeon was concerned, this was an appointment at which he’d have his first chance to evaluate my New Tit since my nupple was tattooed. P winked in my direction as SS raved about my falsie. ‘It’s a really wonderful result,’ he beamed, as though looking at a Monet rather than a fake boob. He studied it with a furrowed brow, mentally patting himself on the back. I half expected him to do one of those Ali G-style finger-snaps. ‘It’s a shame I don’t have my camera today,’ he said, ‘as I’d love to show this in my lectures as an example of an excellent cosmetic outcome.’

‘Whoa now, steady on,’ I thought, instead opting for a calmer, ‘Oh, blimey.’

‘No, I’m serious,’ he said, gesturing at me to pull my dress back up. ‘I do hope you’re as pleased with the result as I am.’ (It had never occurred to me that surgeons have the same pride in the aesthetics of their work as Michelin-starred chefs. Perhaps I should pitch Mastersurgeon to the BBC?)

‘I really am,’ I assured him. ‘You’ve done a wonderful job.’

Perhaps it was because he’d done such a brilliant number on my New Tit that I then brought up a concern I’d spent some months agonising over. For Smiley Surgeon, this appointment was for the purpose of the above paragraph. For me, however, it was to bring up the issue of elective mastectomy.

Being, as I am, at a higher risk than most of getting The Bullshit again, it’s fair to say that I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what’s going on beneath my right nipple. And so, probably unsurprisingly, I had been considering the removal of my right breast to further reduce that risk. ‘Considering’ puts it lightly, actually. I’d done more than that. I’d read excessively about the procedure, had long conversations with P, my folks and my best mates about their opinions and had even looked ahead to see which month might be best for me to have the operation.

It’s perhaps a fatalistic view but, in my mind, I remain utterly convinced that this wasn’t to be my only scrape with The Bullshit. I don’t have any evidence to support that opinion – and perhaps it’s more a case of wanting to be prepared for a diagnosis next time, and not have shock make such a fool of me – and I’m loath to give such a wanky excuse as ‘I’ve just got a feeling about it’, but the truth is, I kind of have. I’m not being defeatist – I like to think of it more as accepting. And in accepting that there’ll be a rematch with The Bullshit, I’m more than prepared to pull on my gloves ready for round two, arming myself with all the defensive tactics that medical science can offer, be they an elective mastectomy, the removal of my ovaries, a hysterectomy… whatever. I will simply do anything necessary to (a) reduce my risk of this happening again and (b) make sure I’m as prepared for another cancer battle as a person can possibly be.

Which is why, prior to our conversation about my book, I asked Smiley Surgeon if he’d remove my right breast, with a tone that was less ‘if’ and more ‘when’.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘I really would advise against it,’ he continued.

‘But I want to do whatever I can to stop this happening again,’ I protested.

‘Of course you do, that’s perfectly natural,’ he added. ‘But I promise you – I’m going to keep you under such close observation that if ever there was an occurrence of cancer in your right breast, I will get to it.’ I instantly believed him, trusting him, as I do, with my life. 

‘Lisa,’ he assured me, with a quick look towards my left tit, ‘It will NEVER get to that stage again.’

‘Okay,’ I answered sheepishly, trying not to cry.

‘I’m not saying that there never will be another cancer,’ Smiley Surgeon went on, ‘Just that if there is, we will find it, and I will do anything necessary to remove it.’

‘Good,’ I said, still swallowing tears.

‘But let’s not put you through that unnecessarily,’ he said. ‘Not after everything you’ve already been through.’

P reached out to hold the hand that was wiping nervous sweat onto my knee. A moment ago, it had been clenched into a fist but now, with the reassurance of the only other man I’d trust with my chest, it was relaxing.

‘So come back to see me in June,’ said Smiley Surgeon at the end of our appointment as P and I were leaving the room. ‘We’ll do your mammogram then and I’ll make sure you have the results the same day.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ I said, remembering those torturous, sickening few days earlier this year between my scan at another hospital and the phonecall with my results.

‘No problem,’ he answered. ‘But send me a book first, won’t you?’

‘Gladly,’ I smiled.

The problem with pink.

At the beginning of this month, I opened my weekend paper to be met with a photograph of Martine McCutcheon and Jessica Taylor posing in pink Betty Boop T-shirts for Asda’s Tickled Pink campaign. ‘Cheers to pink ladies,’ chirped the headline, above a paragraph describing them as looking ‘sensational’ as they ‘joined the fight against breast cancer.’

‘That’ll teach me for buying The Mirror,’ I thought, before remembering that, of course, October = breast cancer awareness month. And breast cancer awareness month = a whole 31 days of everything even remotely aimed at women being turned flamingo pink.

Last year, I opted out of breast cancer awareness month. What with the odd combination of chemo doing its bone-crunching worst and the excitement of my brother’s wedding, it completely passed me by. (It’s amazing the kind of things you can ignore when you’re ill. Have you heard about this Barack Obama fella?) In the years pre-Bullshit, though, I would always get involved; wearing a ribbon on my lapel, buying pink iced buns from M&S and sponsoring whoever was doing something for the cause. Because, well, that’s what us women do, right?

But what I can’t say with any honesty is that breast cancer awareness month ever made me any more aware of my breasts than it did the fact that, during October, the pages of my favourite magazines are routinely filled with more pink products than you can shake a lipstick at. Maybe that’s because I always assumed breast cancer to be the kind of issue my Mum ought to be more worried about than I did. Maybe it’s because, despite all the know-the-offside-rule, down-a-pint-in-15-seconds bravado, I’m actually a girly girl at heart and quite enjoyed all the pinkness. Either way, as far as I was concerned, October was about little more serious than adding the odd pink-tinged impulse-buy to my shopping trips, while enjoying the smugness of knowing that a portion of the proceeds would go to charity.

Coming into this breast cancer awareness month with a perspective skewed by The Bullshit, however, I found my opinions on the campaign changing. And granted, it took losing my tit, my hair and my fertility to make me realise it, but didn’t October ought to be about more than retail therapy?

I once read a piece by Germaine Greer bemoaning the fact that pink is so obviously used to denote a cause predominantly relating to women. But I can’t say that the use of pink in breast cancer campaigns riles me in the same way. Any campaign needs its colour, just as prostate cancer campaigns are usually blue, and environmental issues tend to be green. Rather, my fear is whether the ubiquity of pink in breast cancer is excluding as many people as it’s embracing? Because let’s face it, people: goths get breast cancer too.

Now I’m more Supremes than Slipknot, but when I was diagnosed, I was as alienated by the pinkwash as I was by the blanket insistence that breast cancer is an ‘older-women’s disease’. For me, the problem with pink was – and continues to be – the way it is used to enforce on breast cancer the stereotypical connotations of feel-good-factor girliness, cutesy prettiness and just-us-girls fun. But what if that’s just not your style? I can’t help but think that, for a significant portion of the women – and men, let’s not forget – around the word who’ve been affected by breast cancer, October must be as sickening as Barbie puking Pepto-Bismol onto a bed of crimson carnations.

Hell, even I – who keeps The X Factor on series link and can recite the complete script of Pretty In Pink – have had a taste of how they must feel. You might remember me blogging about my experience of this year’s Cancer Research Race For Life. Standing solo at the start line with S Club 7’s Reach booming out of the speakers, the only head-to-toe black-clothed woman in a sea of pink tutus, cowboy hats and feather boas, I felt as conspicuous in my surroundings as I had in a chemo room filled with sixtysomething women. It was like some sort of terrifying giant hen weekend, and I couldn’t help but feel like an emo at a Take That concert.

As I wheezed my way round the 5k course, suffocated both by the lung capacity of a small rodent and the cloud of pinkness that engulfed me, I wished there was another way for me to do it; a way that wouldn’t force my round-pegged frame into such a square hole. And therein lies the problem with breast cancer awareness month: the pink approach, successful as it undoubtedly is, doesn’t work for everybody. And nobody, as far as I’m aware, is catering for the ‘alternative’ crowd.

Breast cancer awareness month has become a lazy marketer’s dream. And, by turning an important campaign into a fashion-and-shopping-centred celebration, they’re getting away with pink murder. Being diagnosed with breast cancer didn’t make me identify with Martine McCutcheon or Jessica Taylor. It didn’t turn me into a fan of S Club 7, or encourage me to shop for pink eyeshadow. It didn’t make me want to fill my wardrobe with pink clothes. I didn’t want to be empowered by breast cancer – I wanted to be angry about it. I wanted to sulk and swear and listen to Radiohead. I wanted to paint it black, not be ‘in the pink’.

All that said, there remains a pink ribbon on the pocket of my denim jacket. And I’ll continue to raise money for cancer charities. But in doing it, I’ll also be encouraging those charities – and the people who market them – to invest some effort into catering for the breast-cancer-affected men and women for whom pink just isn’t their colour. 

How I found my lump.

P often gets ribbed for his role in this blog. ‘Fucking hell, mate,’ his friends will say. ‘You come off well don’t you?’ And they’re right; he does. But that’s because it’s all true. P is every bit as wonderful as I eulogise in these posts. He’s loving, considerate, sexy and a damn good laugh – and it was thanks to him that I discovered my tumour. (You should also know that he snores louder than a Boeing 747, farts when I’m spooning him and is terrifyingly competitive to the point where I’m considering burning our Scrabble set.) 

I often wonder – were it not for P, and the play fight we were having on our bed during which he grabbed hold of my left tit – whether I ever would have known about my lump? And were it not for the spectacularly show-stopping fall I had in Debenhams the week previous, landing on my chest after tripping on a slippy floor in unsteady heels, would I have been as aware of my bruised tits as I was when P went in for the play-fight-winning grab? (Told you he was competitive.) 

I know there’s no use in going over these things. The lump was found. The lump was dealt with. End of. But, much as Mr Marbles used to chastise me for it, I can’t help but speculate – in some kind of Sliding Doors-esque parallel universe in which the above paragraph didn’t happen and the lump was never found – whether I’d now be dead. Because, given the size and spread of The Bullshit when we did discover it, you can’t help but presume that the long-haired me wouldn’t have been around to write this post. 

Today is European Breast Health Day, part of the wider breast cancer awareness month: the October-long, couldn’t-miss-it-if-you-tried, more-ubiquitous-than-Kate-Price campaign to make women – and men, let’s not forget – more aware of their chests. (But I’ll save that rant for another post.) And, in the spirit of getting to know your breasts, there’s been a #breastcancerawareness tag floating about Twitter, in which girls have been taking photos of their boobs and posting them on the site. 

Party-pooping ruiner that I am, I refused to participate, given that (a) I can’t help but wonder whether this Twitter-wide tit-flash was thought up by some cancer-ignorant deviant more interested in perving over the collective cleavages of the interweb than promoting an important campaign; (b) I seriously doubt that every lass who’s posted a picture of her assets then self-examined said lady lumps immediately afterwards; and (c) one flash of my, um, ‘alternative’ puppies online would be enough to bring about the prompt demise of the Twitter phenomenon for good. And so, bowing out of the fun, I instead promised to do my #breastcancerawareness bit another way. Which is why I’ve decided to tell the story of how I found my lump – something I’ve never previously written about on Alright Tit. (Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.) 

Pre-Bullshit, I was under no illusions of how important it was to self-examine. The only trouble was, I never knew whether I was doing it right. You read all these stories of women having found their lumps in the shower, when applying sun cream, or while trying on bras. And, frankly, I don’t know how they do it. I would never have found my lump that way. Because, until P made me aware of the lychee-like irregularity beside my nipple, I wouldn’t have had a clue what I was looking for. I may still not know what I’d be looking for. 

All the advice tells you to look for changes in your breasts. Which necessitates getting to know them in the same way that you know your hair; noticing every split end, difference in texture and the point at which your highlighted roots have gone from Kate-Moss-acceptable to Courtney-Love-urgent. The kind of stuff we all know instinctively – and with which we’re far more familiar than we are with the state of our boobs. Which is, of course, completely ridiculous, given that your hair can’t do you much damage. (Or, at least, it can’t until someone shows you the photos ten years later.) 

And the truth is, in the months prior to The Bullshit, I’d done nothing but look for changes in my breasts – but for an altogether different reason than cancer. Instead, I’d stand topless in front of the mirror every couple of days, studying variations in my nipples in the apparent hope that it’d be a better pregnancy indicator than anything ClearBlue had to offer. And, in all honesty, my boobs were changing. My left tit – always marginally bigger than my right – looked ever so slightly more weighty than usual, and my nipples seemed to look different every time I blinked. But with cancer as far off my radar as attempting a moon landing, I never would have concluded that the changes were down to anything other than the business of getting knocked up. 

My point with this post isn’t to tell you how to check your breasts for lumps. Despite my experience in the area, I’m still no more qualified than a rhesus monkey to advise you on how it’s done. Because, even though I prod and poke at my right tit more often than is becoming of a lady, I still know that every time I’m at a hospital appointment, the doctor I’m seeing will always check my breast for me. (And yes, that was purposely singular. My fake tit is never examined, as though it were as far removed from a breast as a Rubik’s cube, Cornish pasty or a flask of coffee.) So instead, I’m going to direct you here, to Channel 4’s excellent Embarrassing Illnesses microsite and, specifically, their step-by-step video on self-examining. (Twitter pervs will be pleased to hear that it features a topless chick and, rather wonderfully, you can also download it to your phone so you can fondle your tits on the move. Fifty quid to the first person to self-examine on the Jubilee Line.) All I can do is tell you what my lump was like, and hope – in the unlikely circumstance that you ever cop a feel of some suspicious stuff, too – that something you’ve read in this post might jog your memory and give you the required kick up the arse to introduce your lumpy tit to your GP. 

‘Oi, that hurt, you bastard,’ I whined to P as our play-fight came to a sudden halt after his victorious boob-grab. 

‘Really? Because it didn’t feel right either,’ he said, sitting up abruptly and facing me sternly in the means-business manner of someone about to begin a monologue with ‘I think it’s time we had a talk.’ 

I whipped off my bra and, with my index and middle fingers, prodded the firm swelling to the left of my nipple that, in a blindfolded test, could easily have been a lump of hardened Play-Doh. It was painful, yes, but I wasn’t sure whether that was because of my fall in Debenhams, P’s over-enthusiastic grasp or the lump itself. It seemed to be slightly moveable, too, but then I could easily have been kidding myself of that, convincing myself that I’d previously read that cysts moved about and tumours didn’t. 

‘Fuckfuckfuck, there is a lump,’ I said to P, grabbing his right hand. ‘Here. Feel it.’ 

‘Shit, there is,’ he confirmed, surprised, as though he hadn’t really believed me before. His startled eyes fixed on mine in a way that hinted at confusion over whether to suggest the obvious or reassure me that it’d be nothing to worry about. ‘Just get yourself to the doctor’s first thing,’ he advised. ‘Whatever it is, there’s nothing we can do about it now.’ 

‘I will,’ I assured him. ‘Maybe she’ll even tell me I’m pregnant.’ 

She didn’t.